Televison Journal

Valerie Vega
Date Logged TV: 11/05/08

Unfortunately, I do not get to watch very much television. Normally I record my favorite shows, catch the news at ten, and watch the late night shows once the kids are put to bed. My life is very hectic and television just doesn't seem to fit in throughout the week. Needless to say the amount of television I watched yesterday was more than my usual amount of television programming. I normally don't sit and watch over six hours of television. As I have a busy household, I was multitasking as I was watching. One show that I watched that is definitely one of my regulars and that I rarely miss is Gary Unmarried. It is one of my favorites, probably because it reminds me of my life and is completely hilarious. One of the shows that I saw that I have never seen before was Dirty Sexy Money. It was alright, but I expected more especially with all the great actors it has in it.

I didn't watch any television shows on the web and actually have never tried that. I need to check that out one day. All of the television that I logged was watch from the comfort of my living room. My kids were in and out of the living room, but no one was interested enough to actually watch my shows. One thing that I did do, was pause a lot, go and do a task, and then go back to my show. This helped so that I could fast forward through some commercials, which is my pet peeve to have to sit and watch them.

This was an interesting assignment. I thought it was going to be nice for a change to be "forced" to sit an actually watch show for a change. I rarely get the opportunity to do so. I usually live by my DVR. I record and watch later, omitting all unwanted and time consuming commercials. Surprisingly, this was not as fun as I thought it was going to be. I have come to realize how much I appreciate my DVR and the ability to not be a slave to programming and it's time constraints. I don't like to have to be on a time line and it felt as though this had time constraints. I also like to flip around during commercials and sometimes when I do that I may find something else to watch. I felt restricted and did not allow myself to do that. I felt as though the television watching really was for an assignment and not for enjoyment. I think that journals such as these are not a very reliable source for keeping track of peoples viewing habits. This is definetely the case for myself. If people have to actually log what they watch they may alter there habits so that they may not have to write down every little thing they actually do, or they may not actually write it down. It is not the truest and most accurate form of what the viewers are watching. I believe that an electronic devise attached directly to the television set is the best way to get an accurate picture. Viewers have too short attention spans, I know I do, and tend to wander off, and channel surf.