Now that I have a commute again (and until I get audio courses and books unpacked) I find myself listening to NPR at times on the road. The basic approach of NPR appeals to me far more than the conservative alternatives, though I find it's politics very annoying. (Now if there were a radio network that filled the audio niche which the Wall Street Journal fills in print...) But most amusing of all is when they run a story on what they consider to be some culturally emergent phenomenon which really just shows how far inside the bubble the NPR world is.
Such an example was a story this morning about people taking the radical (radical!) step of stopping their cable TV subscriptions. Yes, you see, some people just don't get cable TV. Have you heard of this?
To show what this radical new lifestyle is like, they interviewed a CNET editor whose blog Diary of a Cable Cord Cutter chronicled his life without cable TV... for one month. Yes, you see, he was going to go without cable in order to save money, but he and his wife found it's hard to watch a lot of TV if you don't have cable. So they got it back.
Perhaps, some day, if they search very hard in the hinterlands of this wide country, they will find someone who has pursued the even more mysterious path of not watching much TV.
Though I don't know, someone like that might be, I don't know, religious or something. Or read books. Or... Well, clearly be a pretty odd person.
Personally, I'm finding it quite relaxing to not have cable again after three months of having it while in temporary digs. Though we will be glad to have the high speed internet hooked up on Friday.
FROM THE ILLUSTRATED EDITION.
12 hours ago
9 comments:
This is way too funny. NPR is certainly out of touch with almost everyone I know.
That is hilarious.
I actually like NPR a lot (I guess I've just learned to brush aside the political biases -- truly an important modern skill). But especially when you consider that this comes at the end of a many-months-long recession in which countless people across the country from all walks of life have had to cut their household budgets, and in which surely a not-insignificant number of them had to ditch their cable bill too -- well, this displays a truly incredible disconnect.
Re: the cable bill, incidentally, we get cable but we never hook the TV up to it. It comes with our internet service and it costs more to get internet without cable. Actually, we hooked up the TV once to watch the Buckeyes play in the national championship. I think that's it. I'd probably shut off the electric before I'd shut off the internet. Except that wouldn't work.
Someone should tell NPR that I've been without TV of any kind for almost 4 years. (Never got around to it after moving.) That would get the camera crews out.
But Darwin, what do people *do* if they don't watch TV?? Don't they get bored? Don't they run out of things to do??
Jen <-- has really had people ask these questions. Before the internet. At least NPR knows how we might get the news.
I grew up without TV. I have one now because I married a man who owned one. We canceled the cable last spring because we were tired of spending $80/month not to watch TV. We get movies (and Friday Night Lights) from the library, but other than that, don't spend a lot of time in the basement with the TV. I read. He works and sings.
You too, eh, Darwin? I find many of the featured stories fascinating. (One such story on how to make a pop hit comes to mind.) I find myself able to see past the political biases most of the time, except when the venture into the realm of the environment and climate change. At those times, I must change the channel. Incidentally, my NPR station in Seattle plays jazz music when not engaged in their news shows. Jazz... I love jazz.
I, too, listen to NPR; it is audio alprazolam in approach and often just what the doctor ordered. That being said, they are certainly out of touch with we, the "mundane". Their politics are predictably liberal, and there is a hint of disdain for the bourgeois...
Our local NPR station, though, committed the grievious sin of removing jazz programming...AGHHH. I have been forced to listen to a station out of Toronto. I have then realized that perhaps NPR isn't so bad.
As far as TV - I am a cable subscriber for one station only: Food Network. I am unabashed in that public confession. If they put it on network I would drop cable like a dumpling. Pray for me to the Lord our God.
Great blog - just found you - will be back!
Golly gee whiz, I've been a radical since...oh, about as long as there's been cable!
So our CNET editor couldn't find his way to something like Public Television to get his fix? NPR missed an opportunity to put in a great plug there!
My wife and I have 6 kids, and sometimes people think we don't have TV. :)
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