Requiem for an idiot box

Though my parents strictly regulated the amount of television I watched growing up, what I did consume burrowed deep into my subconscious. Recurring nightmares starred a green-eyed Lou Ferrigno. The bass-heavy Barney Miller theme sent me into a wild tarantism. And I harangued my dad into buying a motorcycle he couldn’t operate with two words: Arthur Fonzarelli.

I’m the last of a dying breed, particularly in Sacramento, where simply owning a TV is met with the same derision as if my car ran on kitten tears. In 2012, Nielsen estimated that the percentage of U.S. homes with a television dropped 2.2 percent to 96.7 percent, the first decline since 1992, but probably not the last. The economics of owning a television, the transition to digital media and the proliferation of multiple video platforms were all cited as factors.

The cost of maintaining a pricey, bloated cable contract with a monopoly-minded provider, oddly, was not.

That’s been an issue within my social circle, even before an audio recording of a cable customer’s dealings with an unhelpful Comcast drone went viral. People are realizing they no longer need to swallow 600-channel contracts to access their three favorite shows. And cable providers, by failing to offer tailored micropackages, are positioned to hemorrhage subscribers who once felt like indentured customers.

None of this means people are watching less television. According to a recent U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics survey, watching TV beat out socializing as the “leisure activity that occupied the most time … on average, for those age 15 and over.”

We still watch television, just not necessarily on televisions. Instead, people get their fixes through cheaper content providers like Hulu, consume buzzy viral clips rather than whole shows (how much Jimmy Fallon do you really need?), and eyeball mobile devices instead of pimped-out flat-screens.

Every generation bemoans the changes that make it feel old and obsolete, but this all seems great to me. Not only does it potentially stem the chances of a Comcast oligarchy, but creatively rich programming that couldn’t hit traditional ratings expectations before should thrive with smaller online audiences.

I’ll soon need some gen-zed kid’s help downloading the new season of Community from Yahoo! Screen. Like me, the NBC-canceled sitcom is obsessed with our junky TV culture. And, like me, it no longer needs a TV to indulge.