Wow, what a terrific thread you started, Liface.

I have a TV, which I guess I use a couple of hours a week. I watch The Simpsons most days because it's on while I'm cooking or eating dinner. Now that the cold, rainy winter evenings are starting, that figure will probably go up due to increased video watching. My highest recent amount of TV *program* watching was last year, when one channel somehow managed to have about eight shows that I considered unmissable. I spent two solid evenings a week in square-eyed bliss, but it didn't last long.

We get four free channels here, and they all have similar programming. When I was a teenager we had two, so it's doubled in my TV-watching life. I watched a lot more TV when I was a kid, maybe three hours a day. However, I also read about half a library a week, and had a lot of other interests. I don't believe TV (like the Internet, or anything else for that matter) is a bad thing unless it's done to the exclusion of all else.

Usually, I watch TV when there's a program I really want to see. It's usually a movie, and if it's one I *really* enjoy, I tape it at the same time so I can cut out the ads and watch it "properly" some other night. I once taped a movie which took three and a quarter hours on TV, cutting the ads as I went, and when I watched it later the actual movie was less than two hours long. If ads were kept reasonably short and unintrusive, I would probably watch TV more. At the moment, though, there are no series screening that I particularly want to watch, so maybe not.

While we're on this subject, let me divert to a subtopic: TVs on boats. (The bit about TVs on motorbikes leads me to this one.) When I bought my boat, one of the first things I ripped out and threw away was the cassette deck and speakers. It didn't have a TV on board and it's never going to. If you've never done any boating, or camped by a lake, or lived near water, you wouldn't believe how far sound carries over water at night. There are few things worse than buying a boat, and getting some time off work, and sailing it to an isolated bay, so as to enjoy listening to the water and the birds and the breeze, ONLY TO FIND some ***CENSORED*** anchored at the other end of the bay blaring forth When Children Go Bad And Attack Animals Who Attack Stunt Men Who Are Redecorating Their Neighbour's Houses And Reveal Their Dreadful Secret And Handy Pasta Recipes Right Here On Ricki Tonite. If I ever come here and say I've bought a TV for my boat, somebody please get over here and shoot me.

Brunnen-"Why leave home at all, if that's your idea of a holiday?"G