Is TV the baby in the bathwater?

There is another area of my own personal life that I have a hard time bringing into balance; the television. An old expression for someone who wants to make a radical change for the sake of a relatively small offence is; don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater. That applies to TV and I suppose to the internet as well, but I do not struggle there as much as my children do.


I like to watch the news and a couple shows on TV – NCIS, Lie to Me, The Mentalist. It is a short list and I do not have to watch anything at all. Mama likes HGTV and will tolerate the news as I watch it. Just so you know, I watch Fox News, Glenn Beck, O’Reilly, Hannity, those troublemakers who seem to be telling the truth when it is hard to find in the world at large today.

All that is beside the point. What happens is that we often get involved watching a show and end up stealing the entire evening listening to some agenda-driven drivel for an hour at a time. Not only is there no way to redeem the time, there is no way to know what lie has been planted in our hearts and minds and those of our children. (I am not nearly so clever as those who have an agenda.)

I have one son who likes Sci-fi and horror. I have one daughter who is nearly addicted to Japanese cartoon. I have daughters who could not care less about TV shows or movies, but would idle away their days in equally empty pursuits. I have a wife who cannot stand to leave a show unfinished – even though I can usually predict the ending, including the script. (You ought to see how she struggles when she starts reading a book and does not want to put it down.) It all takes time; time that is very poorly spent. I think when the Bible talks about us giving account for every idle word, watching television and movies will fall under that general category of time and energy poorly invested. In the home, I have responsibility for my family in that area of distraction.

When we moved to Texas we got DVR so we are able to record what we choose and watch it when we choose. I suppose that is somewhat better since you can be very selective, don’t waste fifteen minutes per hour in commercials, and there is not the mad rush to be in front of the TV when a show starts. It has at least eliminated the frustration my wife and daughters feel when they miss something they were planning to watch. It has not alleviated my frustration, but it at least makes the whole experience of owning a TV and paying for the programming more tolerable, but it costs. My daughter and her husband have chosen to keep cable out of the house both for the money saving as well as the time saving. They select movies for the kids and, when they choose to do so, they can use Netflix for movies they want to see. It is what we did when we lived on the farm in West Virginia – minus the Netflix part.

To her credit, Mama will leave the TV off all day and the girls will occupy their time at home on the internet, generally on Face book. It is the evenings I am concerned with since that is when I am home.

This is not the first time I have thought about this. It will not be the last. For at least as long as I can afford to buy programming, I will struggle to find a balance. Besides, I am locked into a contract for another year anyway.