A friend of mine is preparing to cut the umbilical cord of cable TV and go all internet, something that I did quite a while ago when I felt like my TV-consuming life was becoming unmanageable. I suppose it helps that I've never been the sort of person who needs (or necessarily wants) for something to be on "in the background" or just to provide movement and noise at the periphery of my consciousness (my consciousness takes care of that for me, happily).
At the same time, on
yuki-onna's
meditation on why she doesn't watch the Academy Awards (which is insightful in its own right), I stumbled across this gem of a quote from her in a discussion within the comments:
life is short--too short to force myself to watch things on TV that I don't find pleasant
I don't really have much to add to that, except that sometimes it seems like more people could stand to learn this. I'm not talking specifically about people who watch "so bad it's good amusing" fare, but people who watch things that frustrate and disappoint them. Some of the things that I do watch (The Cape) I have pretty low expectations of, but I wouldn't watch it if I didn't enjoy it.