Commentary
Counting Ghosts
- by George Simpson , Featured Contributor, October 10, 2005
Let's see if we can help advertisers account for those eight hours, in case they are misled into thinking we are holding our breath waiting for the next three-minute pod.
My oldest son, who is 14, routinely has the TV on while he faces in the other direction to retag his music files, burn CDs and reply to dozens of IMs that swarm like a plague of technological locusts. I have no idea if he ever turns around to actually watch anything (I haven't seen him do so yet), but this process goes on for at least three hours a day.
We have this Black Lab who my wife thinks gets lonely whenever we are out of the house for more than a few hours. So my wife turns on the TV to keep the dog company. She (the dog) can't work the remote, so she's pretty much stuck with my wife's channel selection, but the dog manages to snooze no matter what is on. Kind of like me and football games.
Speaking of falling asleep, my wife works pretty long hours and ends her day in front of one of our TVs (usually the one in the family room), but generally she falls asleep within a half hour of watching whatever's on (a plus for syndicators, since she can't recall having seen anything the first time. I haven't the heart to tell her that Mark Green died about three years ago on "ER"). The TV stays on for another three or four hours, depending on what time she wakes and comes to her real bed.
I TiVO a lot of stuff, since I go to an endless succession of evening school meetings and sports practices. Since the PVR has to somehow access the programs, I wonder if the set is counted as ON during the recordings? That alone is probably 15 hours a week. Moreover, if I see the shows slated to tape live and in person, the tape still records my pre-sets, since that TV is in a room off limits to everyone, and I just delete what I have seen later.
Almost anything draws my family away from watching TV. The biggest distraction is the phone. There is a three-way pubescent contest to see who can answer it first. Somehow if the call is not for the answerer, there is a substantial emotional letdown, ending with a dismissive "It's for XXX," as if the person on the other end were the IRS or a pedophile. My youngest is an avid bathroom reader, so once he leaves the TV for the potty, he is liable to be indisposed for at least the next six to eight commercial breaks. Unless he has taken a comic book, in which case we could move to another town before he emerges to find a whole other family living in his house.
Meals are another distraction, since we have a "no TV during meals" policy (except, of course, if there is an important sporting event that Dad wants to see). No one turns off the various TVs they are watching when the chow call is issued. So, who knows how Nielsen factors in three unwatched TVs?
Which brings us to the biggest consumer of TV in our house, me. I am fiercely loyal to nearly everything on HBO, even the stuff the critics hated like "The Comeback" (although I confess to getting pretty damned impatient waiting for the apocalyptic moment in "Carnival" that never came.) But I am the classic male remote jockey, able to watch up to four programs at once depending on the timing of commercial breaks. If Nielsen tapped my cable, they would assume a truck driver with attention deficit disorder controlled the plasma set. Who else could switch from "Over There" to "The L Word" to the baseball playoffs to a college football game and back to reruns of "Entourage" and "Curb Your Enthusiasm" in the space of 15 minutes, somehow avoiding every commercial/show promo like it was a Mormon at the front door asking if I have Jesus in my life? All this while I am reading trade magazines and/or trimming my toenails.
It is entirely possible that with six TVs in the house, we log far more than eight hours of TV a day, but the chances of catching us with a commercial are between slim and none. Except my wife, who likes to see what her clients are doing on TV. That is, when she is awake.
