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U.S. television viewing
Fresh data from Nielson:
For the 2008-2009 TV season, the amount of television watched reached an all-time high as Americans spent four hours and 49 minutes a day on average in front of the TV, up four minutes from last year and up 20% from 10 years ago. The average household watched eight hours and 21 minutes a day on average, also at an all-time high.
In the words of the late Neil Postman, we are “amusing ourselves to death.”
Most audio editions of the New Testament can be listened to in less than 25 hours.
So, if you give up television for one week (Monday-Friday), you can listen to all of the New Testament.
Topic: Entertainment, WorldMagBlog
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back to top44 Comments to “U.S. television viewing”
Kill your TV.
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Weird, that was exactly what I was about to post, Drill.
You da man!
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I always wonder how people come up with all these extra hours in a day to watch TV . . . or why. When I watch it, most of the time it seems so annoyingly stupid.
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Yes, but have they done a study on how much time a person spends on blogs?
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I would love to kill the TV. We use to have only a 13″ for a long time and then splurged to a 27″. It’s not a flat screen or anything fancy. You could get a hernia carrying that thing on your own.
The stuff they show on TV now is just too scary. At least when I was a child we had “Leave It To Beaver” with our ever popular philosopher Wally Cleaver. He had such insight for Beaver’s problems. (And backtalk for Mr. Cleaver.) Ok, probably not a real good example of good TV. Ok, kill the TV.
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I wish we would kill the tv! LOL. I get addicted to news sometimes. We sure dont watch 8 hours, more like 2 a day.
We love Netflix, we are in the middle of watching Rawhide, the old Clint Eastwood show where he played Rowdy, the cowhand. No commmercials, yeah!
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Television is just another tool. It depends on what you use it for. It isn’t all bad.
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My wife and I don’t watch television.
Oh, I might watch an hour or two while I work out at the gym.
While I was at a training seminar last week, my wife watched a few hours in our hotel room. I guess we are both a little bit pregnant.
By the way, virtuous people who killed your television, how many hours do you spend on worldmagblog? Me, too.
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How do the Nielsen people know if I am actually sitting in front of the TV as opposed to leaving it on in an empty room? Come to think of it, how did Blockbuster Video know, before I even picked out a movie and brought it home, that it would be formatted to fit that TV screen? Scary how much they know. Gotta go, the commercial’s over.
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Ken 11.10.09 AT 1:00 PM
How do the Nielsen people know if I am actually sitting in front of the TV as opposed to leaving it on in an empty room?
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If you get picked they will asked you how many TV do you have. They then will send you back a booklet per TV. You are to write in the time and the station you are watching. If you watch a DVD you write in the time slot DVD. An then you send it back to them,
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Hubby and I have made a living off TV for over two decades, so I may be bias. There is good and bad. There is a lot of junk, but I have seen some things on TV that rivaled the best classic drama. I love TiVo. You can pick just what you want to watch and watch it when you want to.
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When I went away to college I did not have a TV. It took me 25 years or so to getting around to that purchase. My years without TV were not really so radically different than my recent reunion. It is all about what you choose to do and watch. It is, like the internet, a benign object. You give it time and meaning.That is why I suppose I often find the Neilsen ratings so baffling. And News2me’s question of blog time is equally important.
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I like the old black and white cowboy movies. Sort of matches my hair color.
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roger patno 11.10.09 AT 1:52 PM
I like the old black and white cowboy movies. Sort of matches my hair color.
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I watch High Noon the other day
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The way you kill your TV is like this:
Do not let it know your intentions. Announce loudly that you are going to vacuum behind it. Get the upright vacuum cleaner and conceal inside the vacuum cleaner bag a sawed-off shotgun, preferably double-barreled and loaded. Move slowly and reassuringly toward the TV, making little calming cooing sounds, rolling the vacuum cleaner toward it. Do NOT look directly into the screen! Keep your eyes averted (do it casually though!) and your hands visible as long as you are in front of it. DO NOT CONTACT THE RABBIT EAR ANTENNAS WITH ANY BARE FLESH! (The antennas can detect the electromagnetic scent of human fear.)
Then, move to its side while humming the theme to ‘Love Boat’.
Now is the critical time.
Reach with one hand swiftly and yank the plug out of the socket in the wall, at the same time, unzipping the vacuum cleaner bag and swinging out the shotgun in one fluid, practiced motion (did I mention you need to practice this in the woods BEFORE?)
Immediately fire two shots (preferably two) into the back of the TV unit and then fall back behind the sofa and reload just in case.
Wait until there is no motion and no more sparks or crackles. Then take your fireplace poker and bludgeon the case until it is recognizable.
Bury it at midnight in unhallowed ground, somewhere where the sun never shines and birds do not sing.
And speak its name no more.
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Random Name: Actually, Drill does not spend any time any more on WMB. In fact, several years ago Drill wrote a software program that automatically generates posts by randomly combining nouns and adjectives and adverbs and linguistic stuff like that.
This actually turned out to be an improvement on the real Drill’s original attempts at writing posts and poetry, at least in this software’s opinion.
Drill then went away and was hit by a truck while he (Drill) was chasing his old worn-out hat which had been blow off his head by the wind. Ironically, the truck that hit Drill was full of brand new hats being delivered to a store where Drill was going to buy a new hat to replace his old worn-out hat.
So you can plainly see the moral of all THAT.
Random Name, there are a lot of things you simply don’t know about your fellow WMB posters.
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Drill: At least your post-generating program is more interesting than the late, unlamented llama’s. I still have visions of him in his post-election bunker waitin’ for the Commies to come over the rise.
Yours is more…well…dare I say…random?
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listening to the NT for 25 hours
Luke 3:24 Which was the son of Matthat, which was the son of Levi, which was the son of Melchi, which was the son of Janna, which was the son of Joseph,
3:25 Which was the son of Mattathias, which was the son of Amos, which was the son of Naum, which was the son of Esli, which was the son of Nagge,
3:26 Which was the son of Maath, which was the son of Mattathias, which was the son of Semei, which was the son of Joseph, which was the son of Juda,
3:27 Which was the son of Joanna, which was the son of Rhesa, which was the son of Zorobabel, which was the son of Salathiel, which was the son of Neri, Who was Zerubbabel’s father?
3:28 Which was the son of Melchi, which was the son of Addi, which was the son of Cosam, which was the son of Elmodam, which was the son of Er,
3:29 Which was the son of Jose, which was the son of Eliezer, which was the son of Jorim, which was the son of Matthat, which was the son of Levi,
3:30 Which was the son of Simeon, which was the son of Juda, which was the son of Joseph, which was the son of Jonan, which was the son of Eliakim,
3:31 Which was the son of Melea, which was the son of Menan, which was the son of Mattatha, which was the son of Nathan, which was the son of David, “Nathan, which was the son of David”
From which of David’s sons was Jesus descended?
3:32 Which was the son of Jesse, which was the son of Obed, which was the son of Booz, which was the son of Salmon, which was the son of Naasson,
3:33 Which was the son of Aminadab, which was the son of Aram, which was the son of Esrom, which was the son of Phares, which was the son of Juda,
3:34 Which was the son of Jacob, which was the son of Isaac, which was the son of Abraham, which was the son of Thara, which was the son of Nachor,
3:35 Which was the son of Saruch, which was the son of Ragau, which was the son of Phalec, which was the son of Heber, which was the son of Sala,
3:36 Which was the son of Cainan, which was the son of Arphaxad, which was the son of Sem, which was the son of Noe, which was the son of Lamech,
3:37 Which was the son of Mathusala, which was the son of Enoch, which was the son of Jared, which was the son of Maleleel, which was the son of Cainan, (3:37-38)
3:38 Which was the son of Enos, which was the son of Seth, which was the son of Adam…
Or not…
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I also confess that I like a “chick flick” from time to time.
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arcadia – why do you feel the need to degard the Christian Faith?
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I don’t know anyone who watches this much television except my brother-in-law the news junkie and sports fans.
Internet . . . is another story. Our foreign exchange student spent 2.5 hours Skyping with her parents in Brazil last night. If they keep this up, I should understand Portuguese in a couple weeks . . .
Not such a bad thing.
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For the record, in Chicago I took part in one of those television surveys. It was actually a whole series of surveys–as I recall I had a short telephone one, followed by a longer telephone one, followed by several mailings I had to fill out. And then I had a booklet where I had to track everything I watched on television for some time, a month I believe. So, every Thursday night I dutifully pulled the thing out and recorded my viewing of ER. And I think I watched half an hour of the news once.
Now, the question “Have you plugged in the little gizmo that makes it possible to watch your old TV?” would probably disqualify me.
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I admit I’ve watched a little for the first time in decades. And it wasn’t all the losing of the World Series.
There are some imaginative shows that hold my interest for the first time in a long, long time. We are having amazing conversations with our teens about all sorts of things that would ordinarily not come up.
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We watch news, my husband loves sports, so he watches a few games on the weekend and Monday night football – I watch very little TV, what we do enjoy are the educational channels which are offered on cable.
Perhaps other people are watching more TV in the past year or so, because they have lost their jobs and this is how they spend some of their time. Don’t forget, people who are ill, elderly, or those with small children often watch more TV.
I also believe it has a lot to do with where one lives, the weather (snow, rain) keeping people inside their homes.
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Does anyone know what # 18 has to do with watching television?
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Roger,
I think they are checking to see if their copy paste skills still work.
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VICTORIA: You do come up with jems a lot.
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26: Heh.
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I do not miss TV at all. I have Drill and Random Name and Arcadia to entertain me! Actually Arcadia, I always wondered why God bothered to put all of the genealogical records in the Bible. But then I learned that it was important to the Jews of the day, and to later historians. Also, one time a friend and I researched the meanings of those names and it was quite interesting.
Also, just as I was reading your post, I thought, ‘Wow, God loved all of those people too, and knew them and took the time to record their existence – how cool that not even one person is insignificant to Him!’ So thanks Arcadia. I guess if you were having trouble sleeping, you could listen to them on CD and that would work better than counting sheep
So th
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Contented-joy:
how cool that not even one person is insignificant to Him
You mean, except for the hundreds of millions or billions who lived and died without ever having heard of him?
Pastor Roy: Sadly, the “Christian Faith” insists on trying to run everybody’s lives. So does the Muslim Faith, the Jewish Faith and every other faith that thinks it has discovered some kind of direct pipeline to the wishes of an imagined supernatural being.
I have no trouble with “faith”, ‘though I do from time to time examine it’s sillier aspects. It’s when the faith seeks to bend the state, with its police and armies and jails to its purposes that I feel moved to action.
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CONTENTED-JOY – How much I love your take on Arcadia’s cut&paste!! I might suggest this to my women’s Bible study group, or even as my personal study in the morning before Washington Journal on c-span
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Pastor Roy: Sadly, the “Christian Faith” insists on trying to run everybody’s lives. ”
No we are not trying to run anyone lives.
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Television is the opiate of the masses.
So kill your TV.
Now, kill it.
Before it clambers up on your bed in the blackness of some troubled witching night, pins you down, writhing and squalling and straining vainly against the bed, and then proceeds to slowly suck your brain out. When it is finished, it will inject tapioca pudding back into your skull.
If it has already done this, don’t worry about killing it. It is too late. The process cannot be reversed and you may as well flop back to your sofa and sit mesmerized, mouth hanging wide open, goggle-eyed, limp-jointed, leg-splayed, occasionally twitching and mumbling inarticulately, with two greasy tear-lines of tapioca pudding running slowly from your eye-sockets and down your cheeks to drip into the darkness at your feet.
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Arcadia (#18): Hey, don’t leave out the end of Lk 3:38 – “…the son of Adam, the son of God.” Luke provides us with Christ’s geneology to show that Jesus was son of God in the sense that Adam was son of God – He was truly human. But not merely a man, as Luke had just revealed Jesus as the Son of God as well when He was baptized (3:21-22). Jesus as God and man – not one without the other, but both. Isn’t that neat!!!
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To Drill: I do hope you will write a book full of Drillisms.
To Arcadia: Your question is a very important one, and one that keeps alot of people from faith in the Creator. I’ll refer you to two passages that talk about it, Romans 1 verses 18 – 20, and the whole book of Job. If you haven’t time to read the whole book, just read Chapters 38 – 42. The first part of the book deals with religious people of the sort who have you thinking that God is just another bunch of onerous rules. The last part of the book is God’s reply to them. It would be helpful to read Genesis 1 and 2 too, because in the beginning humans knew God personally, that’s how it was originally supposed to be. Then when people messed it all up, God told the parents to tell their children about Him, many didn’t, and it only takes a few generations for knowledge of God’s Word to be lost and forgotten. I
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Help – for some reason I can only type a bit, then the computer goes all crazy on me and won’t let me go to another line. I hope one of you could help me figure it out.
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Arcadia #30: “It’s when the faith seeks to bend the state, with its police and armies and jails to its purposes that I feel moved to action.”
That sentence is a bit troublesome. Care to clarify what “action” you are talking about?
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JOY #36
Someone else has that same problem. It seems that they just break it into parts and post each separately.
If mine gets too long I just “cut” half out. Post. And then paste the other half in the open box. Post.
Sometimes my Post gets stuck. It just keeps trying to post.
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ROGER #25
The article above mentions the following as an alternative:
“Most audio editions of the New Testament can be listened to in less than 25 hours.
So, if you give up television for one week (Monday-Friday), you can listen to all of the New Testament.”
I missed that part too.
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#16
Random Name, there are a lot of things you simply don’t know about your fellow WMB posters.
As the old joke goes:
I sent out a telegram [today would be email] to all my acquaintances saying, “Leave town! All is discovered!”
The next day, 25% percent of the people I knew were nowhere to be found.
I am sure there are a lot of things I don’t know about my fellow WMB posters. Though, on the other hand, I know more than you imagine. However, I don’t reveal things people tell me in email, fortunately for some. However, I will have to leave it to your imagination.
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Pastor Roy:
No we are not trying to run anyone lives.
Sure you are. You seek to determine who can marry, who can have sex, what kind of health care women get, what rights they have, what children are taught in school, what wars we fight, which countries we defend and which we don’t. In earlier days, but to some extent even within my lifetime some sought to prescribe dietary rules.
You also seek to control what movies and videos we watch, which magazines we can read and even sometimes, which books will be in our libraries.
When any public servant dares to speak up against your world view or your particular deity, she/he is excoriated and accused of a multitude of sins.
You also seek to control what art is displayed and what is not.
You seek to do all of these things to us at gunpoint, using the police enforcement powers of the state.
Of course, you have come a long way from the days when the bible was used to justify slavery of millions of us, or jail for blasphemy, but nonetheless, control remains the basic goal.
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Bill Watterson agrees.
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#17 Arcadia
“Drill: At least your post-generating program is more interesting than the late, unlamented llama’s.”
Unlike you, I miss Llama’s posts greatly! He explained big money things well. As for his “rants” about communists and socialists, do you know anybody who left a communist controlled country? Have you listened to their stories?
One story from a man working in a Home Depot. He was a Contra in Nicaragua. When a poor person raised a pig under Somoza, he got to eat his pig. When a poor person raised a pig under the Sandinistas, the Sandinistas came and took the pig but “gave” the poor person a leg.
How about the two students my wife taught from Cuba. Their father spent 5 years in jail there for stealing a loaf of bread to feed his family.
A former girl friend’s grandparents walked out of Russia when the Reds took over the country.
My brother in law’s mother and grandmother walked oujt of Russia ahead of the retreating Wermacht. His father was captured by the Red Army. He decided to starve rather than stay in custody. They put him out the front gate. Both of my brother in law’s grandfathers were taken away by the Communists and killed.
Stalin 20 million
Mao 50 to 70 million
Pol Pot 20+% of the population of Laos
And you complain about Llama’s rants against Communists…
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There are some TV shows I’d like to watch, such as Heroes, but why not just watch them on DVD? THen there won’t be any commercials, right? (and you can pause and rewatch it as much as you like) Well, I also don’t have cable TV, but there aren’t many shows I’d really want to watch anyway. More movies than TV shows. People need to get up from in front of the TV and go exercise sometimes lest they all turn into fat slobs…
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