TV-Free Tuesday: How Lucky I Am!

TV should not be this hard. I tivo to skip commercials and live a freer life; I can watch more tv. But really, I actually stick to fewer shows no and abandon good tv that I might have stuck w/but feel overwhelmed by a backlog of episodes to even attempt to watch. This is why I abandoned Fringe.

It was easier when I just said I'm staying home Thursday and watching tv. Now, people say come and tivo. And a month later I delete everything and walk away from good shows.

TV should be homework. But you get far enough behind, I just figure I'll wait for the season to come on dvd.

I like tv on dvd. It's a lot easier to manage. I think they ought to just put the season on dvd and tv at the same time. Mostly because I don't watch tv on the train so the istore doesn't work for me; because really when else will I read if not during my commute?

Is Economics really this hard? (Or, more accurately, are CNN's editors really this bad?)

There's always an infinite number of choices we can make - the opportunity cost is the difference between what you've chosen and the _single_ best other option.

Of course, knowing (especially ahead of time) just how much entertainment you'll get from each of your options is difficult to assess with any accuracy. Or is that really the draw of procedurals - that their entertainment value remains relatively constant from week to week - even if that value is lower than the peak value, of, say, an episode of Lost?

The real problems of Tivo are two fold: First, what the analysis hints at (but gets the terminology wrong): The opportunity cost analysis is no longer just "which is the best option out of three or four channels" but "which is the best option out of forty cable channels and every single item I have recorded on my Tivo". Which, it will not take an economist to tell you, is tough to determine.

The second issue is that Tivo makes it far too easy to record too many shows vs. how much actual free time you have. The net result being that a) the unwatched shows accumulate, making every subsequent opportunity cost analysis even more difficult, and b) eventually you reach the point where you simply have to delete items or the device stops working, which in turn leads to the homework effect and/or the pat rack effect (the desire most people have to not throw anything away because it may have some future value - even if the opportunity cost (the space for storage) is greater than the likely benefit they'll get from that item).

Or to review,
Tivo: Great for watching shows when you want to/are available to. Tivo: Not so great at getting people to do an honest assessment of how much actual free time they have.

yes, i got my tivo and thought 'i'll only watch what i want to watch' no more bad tv... and then i realized i like some bad tv, one cannot live on Lost alone, so i added some procedurals and some junk, and then some more... and then the backlog taunts me, but i do think it's interesting what i don't watch, Masterpiece Theater, Heroes... i am officially taking Heroes off my season pass.

Mr. Noblet is my favorite history teacher ever:
"It's unthinkable, the atrocities that the Native Americans committed against the buffalo. No one is certain what exactly the Native Americans did to the poor creatures, but whatever it was, it caused the buffalo to become so depressed, that when the white men came, the buffalo committed suicide by jumping in front of the white men's muskets."
And I miss Amy Sedaris. Where is she?

TiVo guilt sounds like my podcast guilt.

We are getting rid of our TV, but with so many other opporunities to view "content" and so many other screens in our faces, are we really giving up TV or just giving up our TV? Check out my post about it at eyesofbabes.wordpress.com.