Anyone else here that stopped watching TV almost completely?

You can still read news, no need to be uninformed.

This is the majority of young people. I've never paid for cable TV.

I'm middle aged and have only had cable for one six month period in my life.

My next goal is to kick streaming. So far, I'm down to only having one or two services at a time.

Definitely, TV is useless.

Yep that's me!

I have YouTube TV and only use it for sports.

I'll go one step further and say I haven't watched a new, regular network television show in at least a decade. Who has time to watch 20-something episodes each season - with much of that time spent on fluff story lines that only exist so the show can fill a time slot for 22/23 weeks a year?

Here's a great example: Lost.

At the time it was amazing. But there was also a lot of unnecessary BS in there because, frankly, they needed to fill time. If you go and look, almost all of the top rated episodes for the series were the last handful of episodes at the end of the season.

Now imagine if they took that show and made 10/13 episode seasons out of it.

I think you could make the same case for most network TV shows. Even if they were amazing at 23 episodes, they'd be even better at 10 or 13.

A great example IMO is Friday Night Lights. Amazing show overall, but that first season was just too long. Then because of a variety of reasons, they moved to 13-15 episodes a season (instead of 23 in season one), and the show excelled.

Tbf, all the well written shows of the last decade only made 10-13 episodes per season. This was one of the major reasons for the writers strike since they only got paid per episode.

I use Jellyfin and watch DVD rips. I can get box sets cheap at goodwill. Haven't paid for TV in 15+ years. Sometimes I'll watch streaming on FreeTube.

Haven't watched TV in 15 years. I've wanted my media on a TV though.

I don't even have access, it would cost me extra. And the content is cancerous and riddled with ads, I see it every time when visiting my dad. For news there are news websites and the big news corps have their program online anyway.

TV is hot garbage riddled with ads. So yeah, I no longer watch, ca. since 20 years.

Zoomer here, I grew up without cable/tv access. The only thing plugged to the black rectangle was my Wii and the other consoles I got. When it (tv) was available, I didn't see the appeal at all, I had internet access already.

I pretty much exclusively watch the local and sometimes national news. YouTube is where I go for most of my mindless content consumption.

I haven’t watched regular tv in 15-20 years, with the occasional exception if I’m in a hotel. Mostly just stuck to streaming platforms in the last ten years, however my attention span for those has dwindled and I also just don’t really have the time or mental energy to watch much. I probably watch 1 movie per month, with one or two shows here and there. As a result, I’ve just cancelled almost all of my streaming packages.

I was in a hotel just this week. Got in late, after traveling all day, so I flipped on the tv. I pulled up the guide and clicked a channel that sounded interesting. It was in a commercial break, after 1 commercial I brought the guide back up. I scrolled through hundreds of channels with the crappy hotel remote control. The entire time, the commercials were still playing in the background. I eventually made it down to HBO at the bottom of the list and picked a movie that had just started a few minutes ago. The outrageous length of the ad break from the first channel was unbelievable. Easily more than 5 full minutes. Why do people put up with it. And why do people PAY for the "privilege"?

Not watched it in 20 years.

Any time I'm somewhere else and a TV is on, it seems worse. Adverts seem to be mostly "waste money on scams" and "borrow money in scams". The content has gone beyond even the cheapest reality TV nonsense.

I can't believe they even film some of that crap, let alone broadcast it.

It's hundreds of channels of adverts, with gaps between them filled as cheaply as possible. Doesn't seem to be any more actual good content than we had when there was only 4 channels.

I can't believe they even film some of that crap, let alone broadcast it.

It gets even worse. There are people who actually watch it. And not just a few.

I love TV but the content is so terrible,

I watch The Chase with my mum when I go to see my her. TV is so thoroughly removed from my life that it makes that special occasion all the more enjoyable.

I have a media PC running MythTV that I use as a DVR for over the air broadcast TV. Over the years I have been using it less and less. Today I use it for sports almost exclusively. It is good for things like the oscars too. Most of the time I am just trying watching Youtube on my media pc.

I only use it to watch live sports, everything else is watched online.

I stopped watching almost entirely back in 02 when I got sick of watching planes flying into the WTC over and over. And over. And over. I also hate ads. I've never paid for cable or streaming, aside from YT premium.

If I want to watch a show I buy a disc, watch at a friend's place, or I don't bother. Is it that important, really?

During the past couple of years my media consumption gradually decreased to none. I don’t remember when was the last time I turned on my TV, and haven’t watched a single thing on Plex. My only source of news currently is whatever is on Lemmy. As for youtube, the occasional tech video or a guide for something I’m trying to do.

Occasionally I go to senior citizens homes and watch their broadcast TV. It's like going back in time, and I don't like it.

The TV is used as the device it is: A giant monitor for YouTube. Nothing else.

You mean broadcast TV? Yes.

But TV is just another part of the internet now.

I still watch scripted, episodic, video content and get my news, local; national; and world, from the internet.

Same here. I’ve never watched broadcast or cable TV since I moved out of the college apartments. But I’ve gone in and out of watching shows, whether they were normal tv shows on dvd, YT series, streaming, or shows from 🏴‍☠️. And I’ve always got my news from the internet or local papers when they still existed.

Television as a medium, defined by scheduled programming became obsolete as soon as internet-based streaming became viable. The viewer being able to choose what to watch and when is vastly superior.

Piracy was viable a bit earlier, and I quit watching traditional TV then.

I started watching again after moving in with my now wife. Fortunately our TV has a recording function, which has the benefit of being able to fast forward through commercials.

That way I can mitigate the horror that are ads. Otherwise I'd refuse to watch tbh

Every once in a while I turn on actual television — usually when I stay in a hotel. I’m always completely blown away by the number of ads. It’s almost a joke at this point. Sorry. I don’t have the attention span for 5 minute ad breaks anymore. It’s like equal parts show and ads too.
- Yeah they are almost eight minutes. Without fast forward it's unbearable

I stopped watching linear tv 13 years ago, but my Plex library is not what I'd call small lol.

Same!! :). My kids grew up without commercials or news. We've never missed any of them. On the contrary. When they are over at friends, if the tv is on, they get annoyed with all the interruptions and just don't want to watch any.
same. last I new was at 1400 movies and 8k hours of television.

I stopped in 2006 because I did not feel like paying the public service fee.

When we moved into our new house 5 years ago, it was technically complicated (or expensive) to install our TV. Now, it's just a screen to stream Twitch and VOD platforms.

Actual TV? Hell fucking no.

TV Shows? Sure, I'll #yaRrr it from the 🏴‍☠️'Bay and watch it. No Netflixes or crazy subscriptions, I'm broke, lmfao.

Although, I haven't found any thing new in the past few months, so I just watch youtube videos and sometimes download old TV shows / Movies I watched for nostalgia, and maybe catch some minor details I missed.

Here's a new one for you. It's by Tina fey, it's called Girls5Eva

I have a torrent client in a country where nobody cares so I can get all the shows but I don't.

However, I recently found an old sat box in the trash. The house still has a dish pointed at the Astra 3B (most of Europe) satellite for my grandparents' TV so I plugged it in and it can still tune in to some FTA channels that use the old MPEG-2 SD standard. They're all German, haha. I use it to browse teletext for nostalgia, I bought a hopefully compatible capture card and I'll try to archive some of it with vhs-teletext before most SD channels' broadcast shuts down for good in 2025. I found lots of auto-updated or non-updated headlines, hundreds of phone sex ads, SMS chat rooms (kind of shitty IRC where receiving is 100% anonymous but sending is $0.50 per message), use guides to analog satellite broadcast and ShowView VCR codes (how is that still running?) and found out that Germans still import like ¼ of their TV fairytales from the Czech Republic for some reason (never the other way around though).

On ProSieben, my good old method for "skipping" ads still works. I'll be making a video about it and editing it in Movie Maker style like I'm 12 and it's 2007. My TV is that old and I can use a badly inserted RF connection to pretend analog is still running.

I got my own place a decade ago, I don't have a TV, never had.

I just don't see the point, it just feels restrictive.

I am considering getting a projector though...

Drag has a TV for xbox and plex. It's never been connected to broadcast

Yep, stopped probably 7 years ago when we moved into our place and cut the antenna cable. We pretty much watch political commentators on YouTube and the odd movie on stream, as well as whatever's in our DVD collection.

OTA, no. Cable, no. $$ for streaming, no. Ads, no. I watch a lot of shows from many countries (AKA I read a lot of shows), but rarely from the US. I hate US tv, it's so formulaic and boring. I don't even watch very many movies anymore. Mostly documentaries.

I don't watch TV, not even streaming.

I haven't been able to watch broadcast TV in decades. The commercials were making me physically ill. Too much flash flash between them with sudden volume changes.

As for news, it's easier and faster to read, plus I can deep dive on anything interesting. For everything else, there's streaming or piracy.

The dynamic range wars totally rat fucked music but for some reason Television never even attempted to catch the Ads. The volume swings are fucking nauseating. But any show worth watching will still have a DVD release.
- TV ad volume is an intentional problem. They went all out to stop auto volume controls from being put into TV's.
I'm trying to watch Earth Abides for free and I'm getting gutfucked with popup ads. How do you do it?
- How are you still browsing the internet without an adblocker?
- Not my kinda show, but I'd just take a sub to mgm for a month if I really liked the show. Otherwise it's a trip to the torrent farm. Honestly I really have to want to see a show for it to be worth dealing with the bay. There's just way too much for free, or already on a cheap stream, to keep me distracted.

I had hated the commercials on local TV (and their insipid local newscasters), and the way Cable networks chopped up films to the point where a 90-minute film took 2-1/2 hours to watch. NOT to mention their 200+ channels with 7 worth watching (for many $$$).

When they shut down analog TV in 2009, that was it for me. I didn't even grab a ~~free HDTV converter for local stuff. Nothing but Internet ever since. Music? HUNDREDS of online stations.

The TV is for the wife, but even she gets annoyed with the amount of ads and reruns to increasingly turn to streaming.

I did that 20 years ago. It's great!

I stopped watching TV a few years ago. It wasn't a conscious choice. I just didn't find it interesting.

I do still follow current events. There are much better sources of information than TV news.

Don’t even have one anymore. The number of books I’ve read in the past few years exceeds that of the rest of my life, or at least comes close.

At least in my country, yes since 2016 after our election.

It's almost just kiddie shows and news back then, but now after our next election in 2022 it I stopped watching news, since its almost all yapping about the dictator's son

When our TV broke along with the storm in December that year I stopped watching it altogether

Of course it's over-the-air TV. My higher-ups refuse to install cable/sattelite TV that time before

Yeah I haven't owned a television in years

Yeah 25 years ago.

Me too. I have no idea what's on TV now.

I haven’t had access to cable since like 2003 when I lived with my parents. I, like many others here, pirate a bunch of stuff (plus some physical media for independent media and stuff I want to support)

That said I recently got an iptv subscription bc my partner got into sports and the available options are either stupid, prohibitively expensive, or both. NBA streaming package is not crazy at $10/mo but it has a blackout for your local team, so you can’t watch games of your team, forcing you to a cable provider if you follow them. Anything for local sports is minimum like $60 a month and often double that. absurd. Iptv is super piracy but it’s like $70/yr for all the games of all the teams of all the sports plus all the channels of all the countries plus a huge library of content.

I watched tv for like a day with it and it was insane how terrible it was. Most networks just marathon random episodes of mid shows with obnoxious ad breaks. So it’s like comedy central- 6 hours of family guy, 3 hours of american dad, 4 hours of south park, 3 bad movies, 6 more hours of family guy, 4 hours of infomercials, repeat. Maybe there’s like one episode of new content every few days, and it’s something low effort like the daily show. Or another network like hln that literally just shows forensic files and informercials 24/7.

The news is toxic bullshit. Hyper focus on rage bait and propping up anything that gets ratings (which is basically trump and elon nonsense).

It’s insane. It’s just streaming networks where you can’t pick what you watch. They realized people like binge watching and leaned into that, hard. The advantage they had is creating new content but there’s none of that the overwhelming majority of the time. They’ve given up and are propped up solely by sports

I will say some of the other countries have decent programming at least. Tbs from Japan has some good shit (although you have to speak Japanese of course). They tend to have better news too

Here’s what I don’t get, who are these marathons for? People who don’t understand what streaming is? Do the only people left with cable use it as the world’s most expensive white noise machine?
- It’s to fill dead air. I would bet the overwhelming majority of cable subscriptions are people who just watch sports. That’s why it’s such a nightmare to pay to watch sports online, it’s the last draw to actually purchase a cable package and for a lot of people it actually is worth the insane $120 a month or whatever bullshit they charge.
  
  An ever shrinking minority are extremely tech illiterate people who actually watch that content and refuse to adapt from the system they learned in 1996 but those people are literally dying out.
  
  But the channels realize the majority of cable subscribers don’t actually give a shit about watching cable. So they don’t bother with the expense of churning out content, instead going with endlessly regurgitating syndicated shit.

Your public library has a ton of content for free. Music, tv, film, print… honestly, what more do you need? Just throwing that out there.

I will rent movies and television shows from the library. I don't watch broadcast TV unless I'm forced to at the gym. Speaking of, I don't understand why gyms subject people to watching the shitty news while on cardio machines. I wish they would turn them off or just show random inspirational stuff instead.

I watch the morning news with my hubs, then pretty much play video games. RPGs to be precise.

I’d much rather be part of my entertainment than merely a spectator.

Yes! Agency!

I’ve been living completely without TV until recently, but after finding out that things on TV is worthless, I stopped watching it.

I’m surprised many of you still watch TVs. Maybe the quality of contents is different between countries. In my country, TV sucks.

You mean broadcast tv? Only for sports. Cut the cable years ago. Streaming and piracy only, now. There are some amazing shows available right now. Don't watch the news.

What are your favorite shows to watch?
- I loved Ted Lasso. I know I'm late to the party on that one, but I only recently watched it and it was very good.
  
  I also enjoyed the Diplomat, and I'm excited for the new season coming.
  
  I've been catching up on Star Wars series backlog, which I'm enjoying, but not all of it is good.
  
  Resident Alien was fun.
  
  But there are literally hundreds of other new and recent shows available to suit any taste. Westerns, horror, romance, thrillers, irreverent comedy, family, procedurals, fantasy, whatever you're into, they are making several shows, many of them good, for you.

Haven't had an antenna connected to my TV for... 17 years.

Haven't missed a single thing of worth. Can pick and choose from the net

I have. If there something that is really good I wait to hear about it from word of mouth then totally find a “legitimate” source for it.

Cable, about 30 years ago. I bought a TV a few years ago to watch my digital movie collection. A bigger screen is nice.

Gave up TV and movies like 15 yrs ago. Still have old TVs in the living room, no one will take them...

Haven't missed it at all.

Its been about 15 years.
The shows I actually do watch I hoist my flag for.
Most recently, silo season 2

I watch some shows I've aquired here and there on Plex. And a bit of Youtube. But most of my time in front of a screen is spent either working or playing games. I've spent years ridding my life of advertising and I cant stand even 10-minutes of watching cable or broadcast TV.

Streaming only. I was pirating tv shows for years until I could pay for what I want.

yup. cable got too damn expensive to have just to be able to get the local channels (only way to get them where i am). really should've dumped them years before i finally did. haven't had a streaming sub in a couple years either. i mainly watch old recordings (some on tape, even), discs, and other things i have here. and maybe once or twice a month, i'll look for something different or 'new to me' on a free service. i get enough news and current events from public radio when i'm in the car or when the radio is on at the office.

Cable TV? Yeah, I once in a while hop in for some free IPTV and deal with what comes with it (mostly use Pluto TV BTW) that is mostly for background noise of course, for TV Shows, Anime and Movies I use my own means 🏴‍☠️

I refuse to end up watching YouTube and reels exclusively lol.

I stopped watching television in like 2007. I'm not sure why anyone puts up with it.

iwatch allkinds of media and my local news every day. I mean a lot of times in in the background while im doing other things.

Haven't had a television set in my life ever. Don't understand why they're still sold either.

I'll have YT on in the background on my desktop PC for noise while I work or do chores and occasional purposeful viewing for some select few channels mostly for me and my gf to watch and discuss while we lounge, (I turned the algo off with no search history, no home page, only subscriptions, ublock, dearrow, sponsorblock etc.)

For news I tend to prefer reading to stay on top of current events in politics but I'll also overhear the general headline gist in the morning from political YT channels. I think people should generally try to stay informed and have a fully-formed worldview which necessitates a political ideology once they're at least a few years into adulthood, lack of curiousity and worldliness isn't anything to be proud of imho.

For shows I just download what I want and stream it off my Jellyfin server. I find out about them mostly through word of mouth.

Dunno/don't care about sports or anything like that personally.

You don't understand why someone would want a giant screen to watch films on?

I'm not exactly scratching my head here

I never started. Soon as I left my parents' house, it was just more time for games and reading and adventure.

I have... lots of media available on a local Plex server, several thousand movies and tv shows, continuously growing, never getting smaller - more than you can say for streaming services. I have an OTA DVR for local stations so I can watch sports on the weekend and maybe some PBS content. I pay $0/mo for all of it.

Since having kids, it's just PBS Kids. Didn't watch much before that

Yeah. Pbs kids is great. Getting pbs kids on a TV that got bad signal was my impetus for installing a big antenna in my attic, setting up nextpvr server and getting my home setup going. I'll never understand why kids like Daniel Tiger but I can get down with Mecha Builders for a few episodes at a time.

I just generally avoid all video media, yes. Occasionally, maybe twice a month, I will watch a feature film with my family.

I still watch my favorites on Adult Swim, but if a show isn’t on Cartoon Network, I probably don’t even know it exists.

You can just tailor what you want to see. That's the point of having internet on your TV.

I'll watch a season of a show here and there but other than that its mostly just football and Jeopardy randomly..