Weather or Not
Note before I tell my story: I'm featured over on Mommy Bloggers this morning, answering questions with some other very fine gals. Look for 'Mary, mom to many'. My answer to question #2 makes utterly no sense, but if you wait and read it after #5 (which will be posted tomorrow) it will be uproariously funny, K?Ok-- now the story.
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Phone rang this morning.
"Hi, this is x from St. Louis conducting a survey on the Weather Channel."
"Sorry," I said, eager to avoid a long phone survey, "we don't have the Weather Channel."
"Oh," she sounded genuinely puzzled, "what about satellite TV?"
"No, we don't have that either."
Looong pause, then she asked incredulously: "You mean you only get the weather on your local TV station??"
"Right!" I said cheerily.
"Oh." Obviously she was having a hard time wrapping her mind around this. But she finally accepted it and gave up, still sounding flummoxed. "Well, then, thanks for your time."
I hung up the phone, laughing, but almost as puzzled as she. People like us must be more rare than I realized. Help me out here--am I really the only person in the universe without cable or satellite TV?
posted by owlhaven @ 11:29 AM
21 Comments:
We don't have cable -- and I am really trying to limit the amount of "local" TV we watch, too.
My parents, in contrast, have cable, as well as TiVO, so they literally watch one show while recording two others, then watch the shows they recorded while taping something else on another TV. It's sad to see how much time they spend watching TV, and how little time they spend together as a family (with my younger siblings). They have also dealt with some negative family issues, which I personally feel can be attributed to the amount of TV they watch. So, therefore I'm motivated to be at the opposite end of the spectrum. :)
my husband and i don't have a tv; we watch movies on our computers.
growing up, we had local channels only, never cable.
normal? maybe not. i think it makes sense, tho. if there's something you want to watch on tv, you'll watch it. but it cuts down on the surfing to find something to watch. if that makes sense.
WE don't have either..either.
We have cable because my husband really likes watching football. He grew up with some family bonding traditions surrounding football, and it actually is important to him to pass down these *very meaningful* (snort) traditions to his sons. So... Whatever.
But other than that we almost never watch TV at all. We used to have a few shows we watched, but it's amazing how freeing it is not to be attached to any particular shows.
We have not had cable nor satellite since getting married 25 years ago. Our sons felt very deprived all their school years.
We do get 3 good stations and two fuzzy ones with the antenna set up in the attic, so we watch a show every once in awhile, on an 8 year old 19 inch television.
Our current favorite is NUMB3RS.
We get the weather and news from online sources.
We rent dvds from a really cool single owner store downtown, then we walk back to return them to the drop box.
We also drive paid for cars and contribute to a couple charity favorites.
That's normal living, right?
I have always thought so, anyway...
No cable here, no satellite, my dh and I spent the first 10 years of our marriage TV-less, much to my FIL horror. He was always trying to buy us a TV, and could not understand when we said we CHOSE to not have a TV. Now we own an obscene amount of TV's and videos. But still it is only stuff we bring in, not garbage that we pay to not watch.
We just have basic cable. Enough to get the better deal on our cable internet.
We don't have either..no local channels either. No Tv since July 2003. If I want to know the weather I open the front door =) My friends and family have called many times to tell about all the snow we are supposed to get......we never do. The weathermen are never right anyway.
We have cable but I sure wish we did not even had a tv. It seems to take up way too much room and time in our lives...someday!
umm, heth up there in comments.
You must have a system where your internet service comes with cable. That is what my sister-in-law has, and she lives on the East Coast.
Our DSL bill comes with our phone, which is why we keep the land line.
Otherwise, the cell phone would do much of our communicating.
I guess there are trade-offs by necessity.
I have cable, but we just tivo things and watch them when we have time. I never really flip through the stations just to see what's on. If it weren't for Nick Jr. I'd probably be willing to give it up.
The weird thing? That the lady was shocked that you watch LOCAL news for weather. Who watches The Weather Channel? If I want to know what the weather is like I get on the computer or look outside. :)
Wow. I thought we were the only ones without tv, but reading the comments there are others out there. We have a tv but get absolutely NO reception of any kind from any station. The tv is for video's and dvd's only. We can control 100% what we and the children see that way... and we like it! We also get those stares and stutters when we mention it though.
we don't have anything but 'local' stations.. we even have BUNNY EARS we have to adjust to make the station come in clear... shocking isn't it?
And Even with our 3-4 clear channels I still feel like I watch too much TV. I always confuse the cable people because we have cable internet, but no tv... they are constantly trying to convince me to join one of their "deals" were internet and cable tv will 'only' be the sky rocketing price of 80 dollars... rather than the 40 we pay for internet now... hmm what a deal!
well, we have cable but only because the reception here is horrible. We only have the 13 dollar, just-the-network and local channels version. The cable company keeps calling us to offer the high-end version at a great price and we keep turning them down. They just don't understand. I do, though. I don't want to turn into a TV zombie, which would happen very easily.
We don't either. The tv is rarely on at all-- except in the morning to catch snipets of the news & weather.
Wha... No cable?! No Tivo? Nothing? My head is exploding.
But, seriously, I'm very impressed. I often wish I wasn't so tied to my television.
nope, no cable, no satellite. We get 5 local channels; only 2 come in perfectly clearly.
We chose this because A: we can't really afford cable and B: my husband and I are television addicts if given the opportunity. Really, cable for us is as bad as leaving an alcoholic to tend bar. So we cut it out. Life is much happier and more productive.
But the people who owned the house before us had Dish Network - and the dish is still on our roof. It confuses the heck out of our neighbors when we tell them we don't have TV.
You go Mary! We don't have satellite OR cable, and our antennae is broken and we have yet to get it fixed. Even when it wasn't broken, we rarely watched TV.
I think it is a blessing for your kids (and you too!) that life doesn't revolve around the TV!
We don't have it either. We have a TV but it is stored down in the basement. Needless to say, it only gets turned on if there is a movie in from Netflix or if there is a football game on... (I'm the one responsible for that.)
To top it off we don't get the newspaper, we don't have internet access and if there were a way to live without the phone, it would be the first thing to go.
Gosh after rereading this, I sound like a kook. We just prefer reading, spending time outside and friends. So much better than paying a $40 bill to watch something I really don't want to see...
We don't have cable or satellite TV, either. We don't watch any commercial TV. We do have TVs for the sole purpose of watching DVDs at our convenience. About 15 years ago I had had enough of TV commercials -- trying to convince me that I NEEDED things that are totally unnecessary for a happy life. So, bye-bye cable.
I'm the same way with magazines -- I gravitate heavily to ad-free publications (like Bookmarks, Cooks Illustrated, etc.).
One time, a co-worker started going on about a TV show, so I tried to slip in the fact that I don't watch TV. He paused, I think because lots of people say they hardly ever watch TV, but then he continued on about this show I knew nothing about. So, I had to say, "Really, I don't watch TV. At all. Ever."
Well, that was adamant enough to get his attention. His reaction was priceless. He said, "Well, what do you DO, then?"
Uh, none for us, either. We try not to watch television, but if we do we are limited to your basics (PBS, NBC, CBS, ABC...etc).
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