I watched a significant amount of television when I was a kid. It was mostly on a small, round, black-and-white screen, and we had seven channels to choose from, so it probably wasn’t all that much. In my teen years, though, I mostly stopped. I’d try to catch the occasional episode of Monty Python’s Flying Circus when I could, and for a while I was a regular watcher of Star Trek: the next generation. Mostly, though, I didn’t even own a television (I remember having to buy one when I started working on video game hardware and software in the 1990’s). I didn’t have cable. I’m watching a bit more now (perhaps 3-4 hours per week) what with lots of content available asynchronously and I’m retired and married (movies seem to be a good shared activity in a relationship — better than “hey! let’s code this new backup script together!”).
A number of times in my life I’ve been asked how I came to be filled with so much information, trivial and otherwise. I don’t honestly know, except that I love to read and have had a lot of time to do so. I think reading supplies information at a much higher rate than video, so perhaps I can attribute some of my encyclopedic knowledge to my lack of interest in TV.
—2p