My Viewing Habits

Enjoli Claire
November 4, 2008

This day was not typical at all of my weekly viewing habits. I hardly ever watch TV, and when I do, it's definitely not in the morning, during the day, or late at night. IF I ever get to watch TV, it's in the evening, and I catch a glimpse of the evening news or sit down with my mom for a few minutes and watch Dancing with the Stars. I'm not a regular viewer of any shows, but in the summer, when I have more time to watch TV, one of the shows I like to watch is Seinfeld, and I got to watch that on this day. I would love to watch The Office regularly, but I have band practice on Thursday nights, so my only option is to watch the episodes online, but even then, I really don't have time, so I've only seen the first episode of this season. Everything that I watched, I've watched before. I didn't miss any shows that I wish I could've watched, because, like I said, the only show I desire to watch is The Office. I didn't record any shows on this day to watch on another day because, again, I only look forward to watching The Office.

I didn't watch any TV shows on a website on this day, although that is my only way to watch The Office. I didn't watch any TV at a friend's house, at a restaurant, or on a DVD. My sister and I watched Decision '08 to see Barack Obama's acceptance speech, but that was the only time that anyone watched TV with me.

I didn't really like the process of having to write down my TV viewing, because at every commercial break, my habit is to channel surf and find something interesting to watch while waiting for the commercials to pass, so I felt like I didn't have the liberty to change the channel. I knew coming into this project that I would have to force myself to sit down and watch TV, which is not something I was looking forward to, because watching TV is absolutely not a priority to me, and more a waste of time than anything else, except, of course, when I watch The Office. Therefore, I knew before this that I watch very little TV, so it wasn't a surprise to find how hard it was for me to sit down and watch it. I think that the reliability of journals like this for keeping track of what people actually watch is not very reliable at all if the people using it are in the habit of channel-surfing randomly and during commercial breaks. If, however, the people that use a journal like this watch a show for at least 15 minutes and never change the channel, then I think it can be effective, informative, and useful for Nielsen. Furthermore, in my opinion, it depends on the individual's viewing habits to conclude whether or not the journal will be able to find out what it's meant to find out.