Television Viewing

I watched considerably more television that I normally do on the fifth day of November, 2008; due to the fact that I wasn’t feeling well. I watched approximately 3 hours and 15 minutes of AMC. I tend to not watch a great deal on AMC. I watched all of The Hunt for Red October and the beginning of Rocky II; I have seen both in the past. I typically view one channel at a time when I watch television in my room because I am lazy—I do not have a cable converter box connected to my LCD so I have to rely on the coaxial tuner built into my LCD. This built in tuner does not give any specific information on the channel; it is quite annoying to flip through anonymous channels that typically show garbage that I do not care to watch nor care to spend the time to find out what the mystery show is. I did not miss any shows I cared to see; nor did I miss any shows that I view regularly view or rarely miss. If I watch video it is almost always a movie out of my collection or on the internet (YouTube, Google Video etc), and occasionally Adult Swim on Cartoon Network. Apparently, I am deprived because I do not own the coveted DVR, so I did not record any shows (although, if I absolutely wanted to I could have with my antiquated VCR or to my computer hard drive). I watched some random videos on YouTube for a few minutes; however, decided my time would be utilized more efficiently if I were to write this blog. I did not watch any video anywhere else sans the film shown in Dr. Huie’s Film History class where I watched On the Waterfront in its entirety.
I find the process of being forced to write down my TV viewing unnatural and impossible at times. For example, YouTube hosts very short clips and if you close your browser you are forced to recollect what you watched, and what I watched was so fleeting I simply forgot the titles. I did notice that I was more critical of the commercials when watching television under the guise of academics. I found the repetitive Enzite commercial particularly annoying. It was displayed every commercial break and sometimes more than once per break. This annoyance actually prompted me to find out what exactly Enzite is (not to buy) I found this site while writing this blog (personally I find it hilarious, but unethical on multiple veins).

I do not feel any paper based journal for cataloging individuals’ viewing habits adequate. Some sort of hardware to record viewing is the only fully accurate option. For example, individuals might forget to record a show or make inaccurate recordings, also those who may watch a show that is controversial would most likely not admit to viewing such a show (i.e., adult films and illegal videos). I cannot think of a viable solution that would fairly facilitate to the recording of video viewed outside of personal home viewing (ambient video at colleges, restaurants, etc)