My Dark TV

I turned off my television just over a month ago. With the exception of two stations – PBS and Turner Classic Movies – it's still off. Here's why.

TV had always been a part of my life. When I was a kid I had the entire weekly TV grid memorized from season to season. I knew what was on when, on which day, for how long, and who was in it. I read TV Guide as if it were a treasure map, even if I had never heard the word “debut” spoken before and thought I was reading “de-butt” before each listed series premiere.

Back then, TV was as important to me as the movies. In fact, some of my most powerful experiences with the tube were movies. It was on NBC Saturday Night at the Movies where I first saw Rear Window and Vertigo and developed a lifelong love of all things Hitchcock. Even today, I can look back on my adult years and say that some of the programming I've seen on TV is as good as anything I paid for in the theater. (Hill Street Blues was better than most cop movies, and I still think Lonesome Dove is one of the great Westerns on small or large screen.) Spielberg has grown to be one of the great Hollywood directors, but I think his first film, Duel, is not just the best made-for-TV movie, but it's as accomplished and as breathtaking as almost anything he's done since. (I say “almost” because I doubt anyone who watched Duel in 1971 could have even remotely foreseen Schindler's List.) Incidentally, as some of you I'm sure know, Duel was released into theaters after its initial TV de-butt. The only other movie I'm aware of to make the transition from TV to a brief theatrical run is Brian's Song. They were both that popular. (If you know of any others, let me know.)

Television has provided me with some annual traditions, too. I've probably watched every Super Bowl game since the Packers beat the Chiefs in 1967. Except for nights when I was teaching, I haven't missed an Academy Awards show since The Graduate lost to In the Heat of the Night in '68 – except once. I decided that I'd become a slave to my TV obsessions and would deliberately miss the Oscars one year just to prove I could. Well, I did miss it, and I was completely miserable the next day. TV 1, Vince 0.

It was also my primary source for news. Walter Cronkite was like a trusted uncle in our home when I was growing up, and later, even with the advent of the Internet, CNN kept me glued to updates on the Gulf War, Columbine, and so much else. Bernard Shaw and Lynne Russell became my new Cronkites.

Then Newtown happened.

Columbine had been rough, shocking, tragic, all those things. But when Adam Lanza entered Sandy Hook Elementary on December 14, 2012, opened fire on those little children, then let the remaining few sweat out their final terrified moments as he stopped to reload – this was something new to me. This was news I couldn't make go away with my remote. This was news penetrating some shield I'd always had between the outside world and my own personal realm. I couldn't even escape it in dreams.

So I protected myself the only way I knew how. I stopped watching news altogether. For four months, I avoided the news channels and even skipped the local news. I didn't read any news coverage on the web or buy a newspaper. (I was especially grateful not to have been privy to the conspiracy rumors floating around during that time that claimed the massacre had never happened.) I didn't miss it, either, which surprised me.

Then, on April 15, 2013, two bombs went off at the finish line of the Boston Marathon, and I just had to know what was going on. I was by that time far enough removed from Newtown to handle coverage of yet another tragedy. It seems odd to consider that it was one crisis that flung me away from the news and another one that brought me back. I don't try to understand it. I was just glad to be a news junkie again. As in years past, I couldn't get enough of it. Politics, the entertainment scene, violent storms on the Weather Channel – if it was big news, I was right there with my remote, glued to every image, every facet of the story.

But then last year, ISIS came along.

Where had these guys come from? How did we go from hearing about Ebola one day to being inundated with global threats and shocking videos the next? It just seemed to get worse and worse as weeks went by. A friend of mine recently said she'd had to stop watching coverage of 911 because networks kept replaying those planes hitting the towers over and over again. I'd said that it hadn't bothered me as much because I thought it was important we not lose sight of or become complacent about what had happened to us. (In fact, I think maybe I needed all that repetitive footage to help jolt me from my state of shock. Even a decade or so later, when I was being flown over the New York City skyline I once knew so well, the sight of a Manhattan without the towers was too surreal for me. I still couldn't grasp it in my heart.)

But I just couldn't take one more of those videos or even news of one. What purpose did they serve other than to give the terrorists the worldwide publicity they wanted? News about them was one thing, but showing clips from their murderous propaganda campaign? Beheading after beheading with no repercussions, no end in sight. Then those 21 Egyptian Christian men lined up on a Libyan beach for a mass beheading. My God, I thought, could it get any worse? Well, yes. That Jordanian pilot who was doused with gasoline and put in a cage, where he was burned alive for the world to see. That did it. I might care about what happened to those captives, but I didn't have to grow more despondent over it day after day. I felt guilty about it, too, as if I'd be selfish to turn my back on all that suffering. How callous could I be? Well, I knew that turning off my TV wasn't going to free them, but I did know that if I did so, I'd be freeing myself.

So I did.

I turned it off without realizing until 24 hours later that I hadn't turned it back on for anything else, either. Feeling bold, I let another few days go by. No Shark Tank. No SNL. Was I nuts? I was afraid I'd begin to experience the void I'd created and go into withdrawal, but instead I actually added something to my life – serenity.

Oh, I already had serenity in the spiritual sense. But it was constantly threatened by all sorts of outside stimuli. TV wasn't the only thing, but it was the most invasive. I'd turn it on in the evening without thinking, and instantly people I didn't know would start bombarding me with imperatives: Buy this! Watch this! Call today! Now no one was yelling. I could buy and watch anything I chose. I didn't have to call anyone. The pressure was off – even though I never did any of those things, it had still felt like a mob yelling outside my window.

I did check every evening to see if Turner Classic Movies had anything worth watching, because I could never give up James Cagney or Myrna Loy. Plus, TCM's movies weren't interrupted by ads, so many at a time that I could imagine forgetting what I was watching to begin with. I could watch a movie without a message at the bottom of the screen telling me what else I had to watch, so that the network was never satisfied. The movies on TCM gave me the entire closing credits instead of scrunching them up into half the screen and cutting off the sound to tell you about something else to watch. Again, nothing was good enough. But, of course, Turner had one more real advantage for me – no news at all.

I also kept PBS around, another commercial-free station. Some programs, such as Charlie Rose, did occasionally touch on news topics, but I quickly realized I didn't even want that. So if I come across Nova or American Masters or Austin City Limits, I'll stop and see if I want to stick around. I usually don't.  Same with TCM.  I like having the option, but I'm rarely using it.

That's because something else was now happening: sitting in front of the TV made me restless, almost frustrated. I started playing more CDs, or the radio, or nothing at all. I found I had more time to write. If old friends called long distance, I relaxed and talked as long as they wanted to instead of getting fidgety after a few minutes. I even slowed down my reading. I used to go through maybe two books per week, though lately I'd been trying not to feel I had to keep up such a hurried pace. But now, without television, I'm still reading the same novel I started a month ago. I've never done that. I feel as though I know the characters intimately, and while I always want to know what happens next, I know they'll still be there when I get around to them. I was discovering just how much time I have in my life and how to savor it.

I don't know how long this will last. Last time it lasted four months. This time, it feels more like a new lifestyle than simply a news moratorium. I still enjoy hearing friends discuss last night's episode of The Blacklist or Survivor. I enjoy their enthusiasms, and I don't feel deprived at all. But I know that there has to be some sort of compromise beyond TCM and PBS. That compromise begins today, in fact.

It's opening day of Major League Baseball. Go Mariners!