No value judgements just an impromptu poll. Straight up daily hour count, no excuses...

How many hours of TV do you watch per day?

Don't count DVD or video rentals...everything else goes...

I'm at around the 3.5 hours per day...

what about movies recorded on DVR? I wouldn't think that'd count if DVD rentals don't...

If not - less than 2 hours a day. None on weekends.

(I'm counting dvr use also)

It varies alot per day, but let's say it averages out to about 14-15 hour a week; I may be overstating it or maybe understating it. It's on sometimes just for background noise.
Let's say at least 14-15 hours a week.

Lately, I tend to exclusively watch DVDs and tapes on my bedroom monitor, which doesn't have a cable setup. I usually wait till I'm ready to lie down for the night before watching something and I have tons of tapes/DVDs I have to watch. I'm just so out of the habit of sitting down on the couch in the living room to watch TV. Partly because there's something wrong with the headphone jack on my TV set and I have to fiddle with it incessantly to hear anything. Time for a new set. I just haven't got around to it. I don't know what kind of set to buy. And I pay a high price for cable. I do tape stuff, though. But tend to watch mostly pre-recorded tapes/DVDs. Not very cost-effective or space-effective, I know. But I can't even recall the last time I actually sat and watched something on TV as it was cablecast. But it was almost certainly a movie on TCM. Whenever WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION played, I think. I don't even watch the news anymore unless some major catastrophe happens. But I don't recall even watching when the Virginia Tech massacre was in the news.

I don't know, but it seems to me that the more channels I have the fewer I watch and the less time I devote to watching. It's all kind of overwhelming.

I'm currently DVR-ing 7.5 hours per week, which will fall back to maybe 2.5 once May sweeps has ended, then pretty much nothing till fall once THE SOPRANOS, ENTOURAGE, and THE TUDORS have ended. (Though I may add another cable show or two if they appeal.) Per night is hard to say; tonight, maybe last night's SOPRANOS, ENTOURAGE, and TUDORS, which would be on the high side for us. I DVR shows like SCRUBS, KING OF THE HILL, 24, and THE SIMPSONS for myself; may wife had me DVR-ing THE DAILY SHOW and Colbert for her but gave up once the DVR overspilled with fresh shows.

Some nights, we watch nothing at all; we're not in the habit of leaving the set on for channel surfing through cooking/reality/news shows, which is why I always stare puzzledly when family and friends rave about DEADLIEST CATCH or something else on the far side of our remote. We like summers as it gives us time to go into my DVD stacks and watch more films.

In the mornings, "warming up" for work at home, I watch--or usually fast-forward--through movies I've taped. It has to be really interesting for me to invest my full attention if I haven't seen it before. A recent example was TCM's broadcast of Paddy Chayefsky's showbiz downer THE GODDESS, with the fascinating Kim Stanley, which I watched in 15-30 minute increments over the course of a week.

While working, I sometimes pop a DVD into my portable, which is how I refresh my Netflix queue. Maybe HARSH TIMES tomorrow. But they're often too distracting. Music is better accompaniment depending on the assignment.

I don't watch anything in original broadcast but THE SOPRANOS, ANTIQUE ROADSHOW, and whatever COLD CASE FILES thing is on while I'm eating dinner. That's only a handful of hours a week, maybe three or four. I just can't stand the commercials anymore. And I'm not being snooty about consumer culture... I just get bored watching three minutes of story and five minutes of commercials. I don't channel surf, except to see what's on TCM.

But on DVD, I'm TV-crazed, and watch between 15 and 20 hours worth of TV shows a week. Those lil discs were MADE to mass-deliver entire TV series.

I don't know, maybe four-six hours a week.

I don't have cable, I don't have a dvd player hooked up to my tv. I tend to treat the television as an appliance. I tend to flip it on when I'm doing something else, sort of background noise, then flip it off when I'm done. Even shows I like, like "House". I just had it on while I was doing my ironing. (Ah, my romantic life of adventure and mystery! :rolleyes: )

As a slight digression, I generally have a taste for schlocky tv, the more exploitative and out front the better. So I do tend to seek things out like WWF (I think Vince McMahon is a genius, this generation's P.T. Barnum), "Cops",
"Cheaters", "Jerry Springer", etc. During occasional periods of unemployment I became quite fond of court tv shows, especially the lower rank ones like "Texas Justice". Fox used to do great specials like -- anyone remember that eating contest one? Or the one where men are pitted against animals -- who would win?

Great stuff, all of it. And to get back to the point, you can "watch" that stuff very well as background.

doug

O ...unless some big news occurs and I need to turn on the news for 10 minutes or so.

It's all DVD's and tapes for me. Actually, over the years, just the sound of tv broadcasting has started to really annoy me, especially the commercials, of course. I guess it's partly getting older and having less patience with all the noise, but I also like to control what I watch and not sit and be fed whatever the networks are trying to sell me every night. I know some people live night by night around what's on tv each night of the week (my mother, for example :lol:). She has it all planned out for every hour, knowing which nights are "good tv nights" and which ones "stink". The tv is on the first thing in the morning and stays on all day and is the last thing off at night. Even when I call her on the phone, you can hear the tv blaring in the background and she never turns it down. It's "company". When I visit her every year or so, I'm literally up the wall after even one day of non-stop tv blather. When I was a kid I used to leave the tv on to fall asleep. Now, I've gone the complete opposite - I can't fall asleep if a tv is on in hearing distance. Maybe I'm going insane.

EDIT:

Oh, I do catch Ebert and Roeper every now and then when I remember to tape it. Wishing Roger a successful recovery.

I haven't watched TV in about twenty years, but it's for everyone else's good...if I was still tuned in, The X-Files would have only lasted a season, and Arrested Development only three episodes.

Fortunately, now there's DVD and I can catch up if I feel the need. And the fickle finger of fate can't jab a show in the eye on my account (because yes...the universe does rotate around me).

When we moved house recently, we decided not to cable for TV and we haven't missed it at all (especially the bill). TV tends to suck hours out of your life - there's always something yet nothing worth watching. Also, it's only purpose (regardless of programming) is to sell you stuff through advertising. Now so many quality TV shows are available on disc, we control our viewing. Since we had our baby son Akira (10 months tomorrow!), we don't get much time to watch the screen. Weekdays we'll watch about an hour of a serial (presently alternating GHOST IN THE SHELL (SERIES 1), TALES FROM THE CRYPT (SERIES 2), FRASIER (SERIES 6) and BUFFY (SEASON 5)) and then try and watch 2-3 movies over any given weekend.

Victor

Not counting DVDs and rentals? Then I'd say maybe an hour a day on weekdays. Maybe 2-3 hours on weekends. About 10 hours a week on average.

It averages out to about an hour a day / 7 hours a week for me. Most TV does not interest me - poverty forced me to drop cable a number of years back (at which point I hadn't) been watching much anyway) and, while I now have cable again, the vestiges of an immersive taste for TV never re-appeared. I did try sampling a few new things about a year ago and found that I'm not a fan of the modern storytelling approach of shows like LOST or HEROES (expostulating verbosely while treading water is still treading water) or the snarky new character paradigm and most other stuff seems so mean-spirited or indicative/evocative of the worst traits of mankind that I'd rather read. I watched a LOT of TV as a kid (mostly to my detriment, I freely admit, although things like TWILIGHT ZONE reruns, SCTV, THE PRISONER and I CLAUDIUS did help shape my worldview to the better) and only realized in middle age that I will never get that time back. Weaning myself from the "endless font" of TV has left me lots of time to catch up on the classics (reading the complete works of De Maupassant this year!).

I watch THE SIMPSONS consistently, and fairly consistently catch KING OF THE HILL, THE DAILY SHOW and TWO AND A HALF MEN (it's the modern ODD COUPLE!) . Occasionally I'll watch FAMILY GUY, AMERICAN DAD, THE COLBERT REPORT and reruns of SEINFELD. I'm also watching SOPRANOS and the new season of DR. WHO on dvr, so only when they arrive by mail. And that's really about it.

Regularly, I watch HEROES, LOST, DR WHO and a couple of episodes of THE SIMPSONS. Chuck in the occasional glimpse the news or some football (soccer!) and it's probably still less than an hour a day average.

All the more time for watching DVDs and going to the cinema.

At the very most, it's 2.5 hours a week, for me. There is just so much to do between writing and running a Web site, being a dad, keeping house, maintaining a marriage, playing music, burning CDs, and television offers very little more interesting to me than any of that other stuff. I try to sit down and watch 24 just to spend some time with my wife, but when the torture starts I'm out of there. DAILY/COLBERT I'll watch if it's on. Somehow, I'd rather see a bad movie (to a limit) than the best TV, and even at that I'm lucky if I can sit down and watch more than one film a week, most likely on my portable during lunch. I try not to be snooty about it (I'm not spending the time listening to opera), it's just not what I care for these days. Once you lose the habit, it's gone.