Bye Bye TV

Just like everybody else I come from a place where the TV forms the background story of my life. In my house it as always on even if there was nothing on as The Boss demonstrates below.

I have realised that over the last year, possibly because of the reason given in this post here, that now the TV is playing less and less of a role in my life these days. I go to the internet for any news I want, I have explained before about my low information diet in another post in these pages, check out a search for “Low information diet” on the right here.

As for the title of this post, “Bye Bye TV” if it wasn’t for the insistence by the family of keeping it I would be very tempted to get rid of the dust collecting 37 inch TV dominating our living room. I watch the following on TV and all are almost replaceable now:

Have I Got News For You/Mock the Week Type Programmes: Almost all of the episodes can now be found on YouTube.

Frasier: Ditto and no more are being made of course

Liverpool Matches: Ever heard of Veetle? Almost always it is possible to get a good stream for the match now if your broadband allows.

Some News: BBC, Guardian and El País websites have more than enough allied to Google Reader looking for news I actually want.

A report has been produced in the States that says that the internet is now more important to Americans than TV. Now that is a surprise from the nation where TV is king. In Spain a report came out recently that showed that people are spending more time per day on the internet than watching TV. As I have mentioned before, it is not really a surprise due to the astoundingly low quality of Spanish TV but ten years ago Spanish people watched the greatest amount of TV per day in Europe at just over four and a half hours. Now that is down to less than half of that and the extra time has been taken up by the internet.

So we still have addiction to a screen but maybe a different type of addiction as each person is in charge of their channel. Ever heard anyone complaining that there is nothing on the internet? Not very likely is it.

As P2P networks increase their scope and bandwidth increases and even the greater use of services such as Tivo or Sky+, on demand entertainment, as opposed to being served up the menu by the networks, is becoming more of a player in this World and the TV is not the best way to consume that entertainment in many cases. With the popularity of the iPhone and other Smartphones and the advent of the iPad and other ultra quick tablet computers expect this move away from traditional TV to continue.

In 2007 I went to a conference in Arizona where I was given the bald figures about how much time we waste watching the gogglebox and what we could do with that time otherwise. The question is, what could you do with just an extra hour per day? One hour per day gives seven hours per week, meaning 30 hours per month. Over a 12 month period that hour a day you take away from TV watching could mean the difference between having a comfortable life and struggling to pay the bills if you choose to spend that time doing something constructive.

What could you do in just an hour a day? Well you will be happy to know that when the Bootstrapping Business book comes out very soon we will be giving you a few ideas that can make you a nice little extra income that maybe in the future you might want to follow up and make bigger. Nothing too complicated just ways to spend time that don’t involve watching television and are much much more interesting.

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Originally posted 2010-04-21 09:37:00. Republished by Blog Post Promoter