Turning Off the Television

It's been several months now since we canceled Direct TV and said goodbye to paid programming and we haven't looked back. With the new Federal regulations, however, we did get the voucher for a digital antenna in order to pick up the local channels. Even so, we only ever turn on the television on Mondays to watch Heroes as a family.

We still watch movies and play console games and the children play free educational games on the internet and borrow software from the local library, so there is plenty of entertainment to be found in our household. What we've cut out, though, is a large portion of commercial advertising. This doesn't sound like much, but seeing things that you "must buy" every 10 to 15 minutes does it's part to turn us all into what I like to call Unconscious Consumers.

We all have to buy some things some time, it's true. Even the best of us living in suburbia can't produce everything we'll ever need. But by avoiding commercials and routine stops to the store without a specific grocery list in hand, we create a mindset of buying local, buying green, and buying fresh rather than a mindset of simple convenience.

Furthermore, with more and more commercials geared towards kids (either talking directly to children and inferring that they should take care of their parents, or by using child spokesmodels) what is the television teaching our children behind our backs, or in some cases, right under our noses?

As part of the Television Babysitter generation, I can personally attest to the struggles I had as I first entered 'real life' and how hard it was to curb the idea of casual spending. I think I did better than some, for sure, but it took a few years before we settled into a concrete spending system. Direct TV was costing us upwards of 60 dollars a month, but we found that as we grew more and more aware of our values, the less we ended up watching. We found ourselves spending more time outside in the backyard, working on the garden, and pursuing other forms of entertainment.

Another pleasant side effect of turning off the TV was that the rude and ignorant sayings our children were picking up from their programs stopped. That and I no longer had to filter out which of their kid's shows they could and could not watch as a result of those comments. Now we can enjoy an evening on the Wii Fit or playing Mario Cart instead. And if a commercial comes on while we're watching Heroes that has an obvious marketing ploy that catches the little ones in the snare, we explain it to them.