A Series Of Tubes.

I don't consider myself a television watcher. Over the past decade or so there have only been a handful of shows I'd commit to watching as they aired -- even more so now that Hulu, Netflix and torrents exist. Now that my last commitment, Lost, has broadcast its final episode (my thoughts about which could certainly fuel more than a couple of blog entries), I'm without a show to watch. And that's okay with me.

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Some people are constantly glued to the television. Others like to turn it on just so they have some kind of ambient noise at home. I, like a lot of other people I assume, only turned it on to watch DVDs -- and even that doesn't happen anymore since I've stopped buying/renting movies. Eventually, my ten-year-old CRT lost its vertical hold function (giving me only a bright multicolored line that ran across the middle of the screen) late last year and my brother and I unceremoniously set it down next to the dumpster at my apartment complex. It had served me well for a decade, and by the time it quit, I was only using it maybe once a week for a few minutes at a time. It was time to move on.

By no means am I some sort of anti-TV purist. I'll be the first one to admit that many of the hours I would've spent in front of a television have instead been spent in front of a laptop monitor. To me, Web-surfing seems like a (slightly?) better use of leisure time than just clicking a remote. Sure, both activities are largely passive, but the sheer amount of information and entertainment available through the Internet simply dwarfs the combined offerings of network, cable and premium television.

I mean, you can watch TV on the Web now anyway, even most live events (if you look hard enough).

If I went another five years without cable, I really don't think I'd miss it at all. I'm curious to see what the television experience will be like by then, if a successful convergence device will be on the market (one that combines Web-surfing and TV-watching, like WebTV 9.0 or something). For now though, I'm happy catching the inevitable Lost re-run on Hulu.