We don't have a telly for some of the reasons Kim lists upthread but there was also the subtitles issue - so many things are utter shite and what isn't utter shite often doesn't have good enough subtitles (bollocks timing, too many mistakes) or they break mid episode or mid series. Even with subtitles I find TV incredibly tiring, so it's not relaxing for me cos I'm trying to hear and parse the audio, read the subtitles and follow the plot. It is one of the things which reminds me that I am severely deaf, I can hear enough speech to try and parse but not enough for that not to be exhausting.
I find I am bad at the being able to do x at the same time every week, so when we had a PVR (MythTV++) we recorded whole series and watched them in batch which was great but our TV was downstairs in a cold dining room. In the winter which is most prime TV weather we'd rather be upstairs where it's less cold.
When the TV broke I felt that I was so unhappy with the BBC that I wasn't willing to pay towards a TV licence while they were putting subtitle quality so low down their agenda (iPlayer had 150m initially invested in it and no subtitles at all for the first 18 months - not good enough, and the message that sends is loud and clear!). For me the last straw was the abysmal quality of the subtitles during the 2010 election debates on iPlayer etc I formally complained to the BBC about the brokenness and they simply didn't care. I got no response to my written complaint and the rage/fury was doing me more harm than good. Better not to try and care than to actually get into something and have the subtitles fail and suddenly it's not accessible anymore. I don't need any more accessfail rage in my life so I 99% gave up on TV. I occasionally watch something good on iPlayer but I still have a 10-20% subtitles fucked up fail rate (often they fail about 20 minutes into a really good prog) which is a lot better than 18 months ago. Cos "I don't care" I simply give up and walk away - I'm too tired to complain and fight the lazy broadcasting corporations. I don't use anything non BBC watch again replaying system cos I've never managed to get the subtitles to work well and I see enough of the fail via deaf-uk-tech.
As a child I really struggled with TV as most children got home from school and vegged out in front of the box. I couldn't cope with it as it added to the overload of audio I'd had from school and I couldn't access it. Before I learned to read independently this was the main cause of tantrums that there wasn't much I could do while all my friends/siblings did TV. We didn't have a caption decoder and for some reason my parents didn't know about subtitles (although pre reading they'd have been minimal use). Eventually at about 6-7 I learned to read so when everyone else did telly I'd be in a corner with a book which solved the tantrum problem.
My favourite telly for years was The Snowman and Cartoons because they were easy to hear and visually excellent - my grandfather had a pair of VCRs from 1981 onwards and used to keep us entertained with his home made compilations of cartoons etc. Eventually in 1991 my dad exchanged a computer monitor for a TV with a friend which had subtitles so I got into working out subtitles and reading Ceefax which I loved. I could read Ceefax for hours! I was annoyed to discover European TVs have a memory thing which stores Ceefax pages in a sort of RAM so you can flick between them fast - I did this in Holland on a friend's TV *ENVY*.
I can't do radio at all as it quickly gives me a splitting headache and I have to put 100% of my attention just to make sense of it. Even after about 10 minutes I generally can't follow radio speech cos my ability to focus gives out. Music radio is OK but I don't listen to music I don't know well much.
I suspect I am a telly snob in that live TV is impossible to subtitle well and is hideously tiring even by telly standards to watch. I hate it, I always have. I grew up in a house where live "reality" TV was hated and gameshows were loud and horrid and eww. I really really hate reality TV cos the speech is dreadful quality wise and it's boring and hard work even if I was interested in it. I stuck out the first series of big brother cos I was a lazy student at the time but haven't watched any of it since then.
We didn't have the TV on unless it was being watched for something although my mum now has it for background noise which is fine unless I'm trying to talk to her in which case I ask for it to be turned off. I can't talk in a room with a muted telly in it because the flickering images are so distracting.
Give me the Internet any day, more reading
