Wave Goodbye by Sophie Madeleine

This time last year, if you had asked me, I would have told you I never watch TV. I rarely, if ever, did. I often went months without ever watching anything. This was my pattern for many years. But don’t fret! This past year I have made up for every electronically-induced-thought-coma-moment I missed. I have now clocked my television watching hours and then some. All in fun. Television can be useful. It gives us an outside view of our society, ourselves. This is what I have learned:

10. I live in an alternate reality, one completely unlike “Reality TV.”

9. You can watch an entire season of any show in a weekend with just enough wherewithal and Starbucks.

8. Even the intelligent and geeky are dumbed down eventually.¹

7. Networks can and will make you wait an entire year or MORE to find out what happens next in your favorite television program.²³⁴ NEWS FLASH: This is not a cliff-hanger, its a drop-off. This is not about patience. This is simply ridiculous! By the time it returns—it is a brand new show for me and if I have not lost interest, I generally have to watch it all over to remember what the heck is going on.

6. DVR in any form is a friend—freedom from electronic slavery.

5. Those networks which have learned to put their ENTIRE episodes on their website, thus sharing, profit from the web traffic—those networks that opt not to in an attempt to force watching on their terms will lose out to pirated copies streamed on video sites.

4. The Nielsens do not acknowledge my watching choices as a credible source of good television and all rating systems seem to be entirely and mysteriously based around two criteria: American Idol and the number of commercial interruptions.

3. Good programming is very difficult to find.

2. Once you find it — it is canceled after one season.⁵

1. The Angels have the blue box.

1. See the SyFy channel. [↩]
2. http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/ [↩]
3. http://abc.go.com/primetime/lost/index?pn=index [↩]
4. http://www.nbc.com/Heroes/ [↩]
5. See Life on Mars and Journeyman. [↩]