What I don’t miss about TV

I will never be one of those annoying snobs who doesn’t have a TV, and needs to be sure you know it. Or, an even worse bore, someone who does have one but forbids their children to watch it. Listen, my kids have learned very important lessons from television — not just some seriously interesting things about the scientific method, quantum physics and time, but also that guys running around without shirts on are generally to be avoided (see any episode of “Cops.” Or “Campus P.D.” for that matter).

I have enjoyed, even loved TV since I was old enough to be babysat by it. But the advent of the DVR taught me I should only watch what I want, when I want (“no flipping,” as Larry Sanders would have said), and an extended battle with my cable company led me to conclude that I was paying a lot of money to bring crap into my home that I didn’t want there, just in the hope that something good would come along once or twice a day. So we cut the cable and went with the internet model, using Hulu and Netflix to get most of our TV doses, with the promise of some iTunes subscriptions and the occasional highly necessary cycling package to fill in the gaps. And I could hardly be happier. So here’s what I don’t miss:

• Constant banners, pop-ups, promos and other distractions. Over the past few years, nearly all the channels have decided that a) whatever they’re showing right now isn’t any good, but something better will be showing later on; b) the audience is made up of jittery monkeys who won’t watch the screen unless something flashy is happening. I couldn’t be more annoyed by the constant banners, logos, pop-ups (some with sound!) that played OVER what I was trying to watch. It’s the channel saying, “Sorry, this is some shitty programming we don’t believe in, but boy have we got something for you later on!” Which they will interrupt with banners, logos and pop-ups blocking the show they promised would be worth watching. They have no faith that what they’re presenting will keep me interested. Generally, all the buzzing just made me change the channel no matter how much I wanted to watch something; I’d go find it on DVD or streaming so I could watch it without distractions.
• Reality TV. It started so innocently, with “Survivor” and then maybe “Amazing Race,” a nice mix of real-ish people in extreme situations that made for entertaining television. “The Real World” started out that way, except that the extreme situation was communal living and free booze. Then they hit on “The Osbornes,” which flipped the paradigm to un-real people in non-extreme situations, and it was a rapid downhill slide. Don’t watch it, you say? Yes, agreed, but my not watching it didn’t keep it from permeating the culture, from being advertised every minute and talked about on other TV shows during every minute it wasn’t advertised. Without cable, I’m living an existence of willful ignorance of all things Kardashian; I can’t even learn things I don’t want to know accidentally, and believe me it just makes me a happier person. 
• Waiting for cancellation. Because scripted TV just can’t attract an audience these days, the few shows that I’ve tried to give a shot to have died on the vine. Sometimes they’re gone before I can even start to watch them. It’s hard to commit to a storyline that you know is likely to go away by the fourth episode. I used to say that I was into bands from the ’60s because they had already broken up, and couldn’t disappoint me (at the time, I didn’t know about the state fair reunion tour circuit). I don’t know how this model can work to produce quality programming, but now we take the time to dip into a series in little bursts. We’ll watch a few weeks of “Buffy,” then “Ally McBeal.” Suddenly we’re deep into “Doctor Who.” We know the end already came, and we’re dealing with a defined universe of shows, and that’s okay. (Wasn’t the original “Twin Peaks” supposed to be just a few episodes, and wouldn’t it have been endlessly better if it had stayed that way?)