Ask Lemmy

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.

Yeah I haven't owned a television in years

Yeah 25 years ago.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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..