Friday, September 22, 2006

How many TVs do you have in your home?

This article just seems kind of sad to me. At first I was a little worried that I fell into the guilty category, but then was relieved that I have only 3 TVs in my home compared with the 5 people. I admit that as I think about it, 3 television sets does seem excessive.

We have one main television in our living room...a second in our "Game Room" (which is a long skinny room filled to the brim with board games, video games and food storage...so that TV is primarily dedicated to video gaming, though it does also serve as an alternate TV for when the kids don't feel like watching boring adult TV). The third TV is actually the one that is most odd...early on, my wife and I both agreed that there would be no TVs in anyone's bedrooms. At a company Christmas party, I won a portable TV/VCR combo. It was a nice item to take on our drive to Disneyland a while back. For the times when it wasn't in the car, it was shoved in a closet. Then, I had a little surgery (*snip snip*) that laid me up for a few days. In addition to doing some reading, I decided to set up the TV...along with the Xbox. So I had video game plus movie abilities. And there it stayed. It has served as a nice convenience for those days when our 2 year old refuses to take a nap...we settle her on our bed with a kids video at low volume and generally speaking (until recently) she dozes off about halfway through and naptime ensues.

Anyway, while 3 TVs to 5 people still does seem excessive to me, I don't feel terribly guilty. Eventually I'll put away the portable TV so we don't have a bedroom TV anymore. I definitely have no plans of setting up any additional TVs in the house (no kitchen TVs or kids' room TVs). We often feel in the minority (and as our kids get older and talk with other kids about cartoons and TV, this will be more an issue) for not having Cable TV...but honestly, we don't watch enough TV to warrant the cost, let alone the trouble of having to filter through all the garbage. There are definitely a lot of interesting programs that I'd be intrigued to check out sometime...but frankly, PBS has programs comparable to most of the things I'd like to watch on cable...so I'm fine sticking with PBS, even if I do have to deal with the occasional static that forces me to adjust my "rabbit ears." ;)

How about the rest of you? What are your TV:people ratios?

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