I no longer watch television.

This is an unusual state of affairs coming from someone who three months ago was watching an average of 30-40 hours a week. (Retired, remember?) And you know what? It is incredibly liberating to have severed the ties that kept me glued to that idiot box.

Why this change of heart?

TiVo does not work in Mexico, other than in Mexico City. And after 10 years of watching TiVo, "television" (defined by having to search out the few grains of wheat among the bushels of chaff in 200+ cable channels, those grains constantly interrupted by commercials) is absolutely and totally unwatchable.

Add to that the fact that only about a half dozen of those channels are in English (it is disquieting to see Mythbusters overdubbed in español) and the only reason that the TV set is even in the house is my DVD player. (At the moment I am just starting season three of Buffy, spending about 45 minutes a day at it.)

I am on a one-month free trial of the local cable company's premium service, and in another 10 days or so I will give their cable box back to them and keep only the basic non-HD service which I need for my internet connection. (I am paying top dollar for the fastest possible internet, and my download speed is less than one-third of what I had in California.) That basic service includes exactly ONE English language channel: CNN News. I've never watched CNN before, is it always so badly programmed? There has been nothing but 24-hour continuous coverage of the Haiti earthquake since it happened, and after the first hour or so all they have done is repeat what they already said. I suspect that there may have been other newsworthy events in the past week, but I have no way of finding out.

So, I will continue to watch this thread, but my interest will be purely academic.

tanstaafl.