Ditching the Dish

"There is nothing on TV". That was a very common phrase around our house this year. Doug and I would sit down after the kids went to bed and would try to watch TV. Most of what we found was either violent, dirty, reruns, or children's programming. The 10 versions of Law and Order are good, but repetitive. CSI was good, but now every show is so similar, even ones without CSI in its title. Then there is the whole gay thing. Try to find a show that doesn't have its token gay person or persons. You can't find very many anymore, can you? The History Channel, Discovery Channel and other "learning" type channels are usually good bets, however they often take a non-Christian view of things like creation and time lines. It's not that I don't want my kids to know that other views are out there in the world or to know that there are people who believe differently than they do, but I do want to be able to teach them about those differences. TV often presents these different views as fact not as theory or they only tell one side of the story and forget the opposing view point. I could go on for pages, but I won't. Ultimately we decided to cancel our subscription to Directv. No more dish. No more junk. Do we miss it? Sometimes. There were shows and channels that we would have liked to have kept. ( SCIFI, Disney, Nick Jr, Noggin) I wish you could by channels al a carte. Alas, that is not an option so we are back to basic TV: NBC, CBS, ABC and FOX. Sometimes PBS comes in clear too and the only one not fuzzy is NBC.

This is good. The kids were watching too much TV anyway. Now they can watch DVD's of mommy approved programming. (TIVO was too expensive) They still will be able to watch the things they like, but I don't have to worry about inappropiate commercials or other agendas being snuck into seemingly innocent shows. And hopefully they will watch less and less TV or videos and eventually they will not miss it. There is more to do in their little lives. Baseball, bikes, sandboxes, soccer, volleyball, swings and friends that is what they need. It is amazing how much time TV takes up and how fast an hour or two goes by when zoned in front of a TV.

I suppose the next step is to get rid of the TV altogether, but this TV addict is not ready for that step yet. Did you know that Blockbuster has complete seasons of shows for rent? Now I can pick and choose what I want and there are no commercials!! There are still shows out there that I like to watch or wanted to watch but were on at a bad time. Now when the kids go to bed we won't find our selves saying "There is nothing on TV." We can pull out the show we want and watch it when we want to. (Yes I know that is what TIVO or a DVR does, but I said TIVO was too expensive remember. We are on a budget.) So we will try it the "old fashioned" way and see what happens. We will keep you posted.