The Gift of DTV

I have six rooms in my house, not counting the bathroom. And I shouldn’t admit this, but I have televisions in five of them. It’s not because I love TVs so much. My sweetheart is electronically inclined, and broken TVs that are really not broken rain down on him like water. Three of them have ended up in my house. Consequently, I have the TV on a lot in the evening. It’s always PBS, and it’s usually because I have watched the news during dinner and just kept it on for whatever informative thing is coming on next. I don’t have cable. I think the network offerings are awful, and the only reality show I’ve ever tuned in to, even once, is The Biggest Loser (cringe, but there, I’ve admitted it). But even if it’s The American Experience or Frontline, it is television.

Thanks goodness for the advent of DTV. The big switch is supposed to happen tomorrow, but I’ve had the boxes installed for several months, and spent weeks buying and exchanging antennas afterwards trying to get some sort of reception in my various locations, with any sort of success in only one place in the house. The gift in this is that the signal with DTV is bad, so bad that it’s not really watchable. You can’t just listen and ignore the snow, as you could with analog, because DTV doesn’t work that way. If the signal is weak, the picture freezes and pixillates, and the sound goes off altogether. So when they discontinue the analog signal I may have the TV on less in the evening. I may not have it on at all some evenings, even to watch the news. I might listen to the Newshour on the radio, instead of watching it on TV, since the local NPR affiliate carries it—or I may wean myself of my news addiction altogether. It may evolve that there is only one place in my house that I have TV reception, and if I want to watch something, I have to go there and one-pointedly sit and watch the thing. I may get rid of two or three or four of the televisions. All the things that I envision myself doing during my free time in the evening when I’m not at work and my time is my own—sitting and reading a novel, meditating before bed, taking a walk, doing tai chi-- may actually happen. I may even clean my house, write, or go to bed early enough to get eight hours sleep. What I am most looking forward to is the gift of consciousness, the awareness that I’m alive, that comes with being in silence. It would’ve been nice if I had had the strength of character to do this more often without the help of DTV, but I’ll take it any way I can get it.