Giving up Television Is the Best Thing I Ever Did for Myself

Not too many years ago, I remember my friends and me aspiring to be like those children on television. Whether it was having soft-spoken white parents who would let you get away with murder, long straight hair (blond preferred, but brunette would do), or big comfortable suburban houses – we wanted what we perceived these “people” had.

For me, this happened in the pre-Cosby era. For my friend’s daughter, it’s the post-Cosby era, after the advent of Fox and the WB or the CW – stations that exploit, then abandon, us. But the fact remains that there are very few faces and voices like ours on television.

This is one of the many reasons I gave up television some years ago.

In my formative years, as soon as I figured out how to escape my mother’s vigilance, I watched television constantly. “Tom and Jerry” ushered me through my youth. The kids from “Eight is Enough” filled my life with love. Once we got cable, MTV was my constant companion, and stayed that way through my teenage years. As I got older, I turned instead to CNN and C-SPAN and their 24-hour coverage of government, politics and current events. But no matter the channel or decade, the faces looked nothing like mine.

Going, Going: Downhill? Uphill?

It was CNN that was the beginning of the end of television in my household. Over 10 years ago, I was newly married, and my husband had the habit of coming home from work, camping out on the futon, and flipping to CNN immediately. One day I left the room and when I came back, there was my husband in a dress shirt and tie, and chinos, watching a segment on the history of the T-shirt hosted by Jeanne Moos. It took me a few seconds to pull up my dropped jaw. I had never seen anything more vacuous in my life, and I could not believe this otherwise intelligent man was wasting precious life energy on T-shirts and the history thereof.

I grabbed the remote control and turned off the TV. This is crazy, I said. I didn’t think this was the best use of our time. Never to be outdone, after some contemplation my husband took it one step further. The cable goes, he proclaimed. We were poor, and every penny counted. We could use that 30 or 40 dollars per month to defray our student loans instead of sending it to some mega corporation, paying for television already paid for with commercials. So I cancelled the account, unscrewed the boxes, and returned the small black instruments of distraction. Giving up those 36 channels was hard, but there was still the regular network programming grabbing our attention.

Some Habits Linger

Even with fewer choices, I still got sucked into serialized dramas (no longer could you just watch a show and walk away – everything continued, and continued, and continued), and the beginning of reality television. My dog had to figuratively cross her legs during the first season of “Survivor.”

Then I moved to the hills, and I lost almost all television reception. For a few weeks, I debated getting satellite. There was no dearth of free offers stuffed into my mailbox. But as the days, weeks and months passed, I realized that I didn’t miss the boob tube. Suddenly, I had extra hours in the day to read, to write, to catch up on all that exercise I’d put off for years.

Giving up television is the best thing I ever did for myself.

I lost weight. I also lost my desire for what I didn’t have.

Never Saw ‘Em, Never Missed ‘Em

At dinner parties friends talked about the latest cars, the fastest console games, the newest cell phones. I didn’t have them, didn’t need them, and didn’t want them – no matter how much they tried to convince me otherwise. (Maybe those big advertising execs are really worth the big bucks). I remained blissfully unaware of marketing campaigns. I stopped wanting. It was liberating.

But it got better. My self-worth improved, and this is the point. I stopped being bombarded with images of people who didn’t look like me, and constantly being surreptitiously (or not) told what people look like if they are educated, successful or beautiful—and what they look like if they are ignorant, athletic or dangerous. That was the greatest relief of all.

“Friends” has no black people? Didn’t see it. “Seinfeld” has no black people? I didn’t have to watch it. Tired of seeing black people on the news always labeled the “suspect,” and being exploited by Black Entertainment Television? I’m not, because I missed it. Well, I heard all about it, but didn’t have to witness it firsthand.

Sure, I’m not so much fun at parties. Television shows have come and gone that I’ve never seen or heard of. When people lean in to whisper in hushed tones about their guilty pleasures, like “Gossip Girl” and “Dancing with the Stars,” I take another sip of wine, smile and nod with a blank expression. But I don’t judge.

Desire Never Entirely Vanished

Oh, yes, TiVo? Missed that, too. The explosion of satellite television from a few dozen to hundreds of channels? Didn’t see it coming, and don’t care. The vitriol encouraged by Fox News? Never had to watch it. (Come to think of it, neither do my friends).

Sometimes I still desire television. But that desire wanes quickly, especially when I find myself flipping channels in a hotel room and glance up only to find that hours have slipped by unnoticed.

When President-elect Obama’s transition team announced last week that the switch from analog to digital should be delayed, I had mixed feelings.

On the one hand, poor folks like my grandmother and her kin in Brooklyn have had to shell out their hard-earned money to buy digital decoders and hook them up to televisions already laden with VCRs, DVDs and rabbit ears in neighborhoods cable never reached.

On the other hand, I think that American’s could do with far less television. If older TVs “stop” working on Feb. 17, it would probably be among the best things that could happen to this country. Other than the house-bound and infirm who have no other window to the world – perhaps people would actually talk to each other. Not by texting through cell phones. I mean, actual face to face conversation.

A few weeks ago someone floated the statistic that the average married couple only speaks to each other for 15 minutes per day. Compare that with the statistics for watching television. Most people actually dedicate far more time to television than to their spouses, or their kids, or their health.

Humans have survived tens of thousands of years without TV, but my friends get withdrawal after only a couple of hours. I know, I know, I’m a little weird – but maybe, just maybe, a few people will consider books, or music, or even going outside if their televisions fade to black.

That’s the best advice I can offer my friend’s child. A former version of myself.

Jessica Gadsden has been controversial since the day she discovered her inner soapbox. She excoriated the cheerleaders on the editorial page of her high school paper, transferred from a co-educational university to a women's college to protest the gender biased curfew policy, published a newspaper in law school that raked the dean over the coals with (among other things) the headline, "Law School Supports Drug Use"—and that was before she got serious about speaking out. Progressive doesn't begin to define her political views. She's a reformed lawyer, and full time novelist who writes under a pseudonym, of course.This will mark the debut of our newest, and perhaps most charismatic, weekly essayist. A Brooklyn native, she divided her college years between Hampton University and Smith.