TV Blog

Raquel Aguilar
November 4, 2008

I would consider this a rather atypical day as far as my television viewing habits are concerned because this day was pretty atypical in itself. The presidential election results were broadcast tonight naming Barack Obama as our nations next president. I myself as well as I'm sure millions of Americans was glued to the tv, anxiously anticipating the results. Now I normally wouldn't watch something like this, but this day was special and only comes around every four years so I couldn't pass it up. Normally on tuesday nights I would watch one of my favorite shows The Rachel Zoe Project (Bravo), but it just recently had its season finale so that is no longer an option. Typically most of my tv watching is done late night, or I'll turn it on just for background noise while I'm doing homework. On this day however, I chose to turn the tv off once the results were announced, to better direct my attention to the tasks I needed to complete.

Since this night was a special occasion, I didn't do all of my tv viewing at home. I watched some of the local election results at the campaign headquarters of my friend State Representative Solomon Ortiz Jr. He held a results party for all those who had volunteered for him throughout the day at the polls, and there I viewed give or take, about thirty minutes worth of politically specific tv. Once I got home from the party, My mother, sister and I watched some tv together and were able to see Obama give his speech to the nation, live from Chicago.

I didn't feel that this process of writing down tv viewing times was too weird perhaps a bit inconvenient, but not necessarily weird. This perhaps is because I really didn't watch too much tv on this one particular day. I think if I was to journal my tv viewing on a typical day, I would find the process much more tedious in that I do watch different shows at different hours in the night. I think on this night I would do much more flipping through channels. I would realize on this night that I spend a good amount of my time watching ridiculous tv like Chelsea Lately and George Lopez. In my opinion I don't feel like the networks can really get a good feel of what the people are watching through these journals. Though a bit creepy, the best way for a company like or similar to Nielsen to get accurate reads on audience viewership, is to input visual scanners into their sets. These scanners can literally read peoples faces and tell who is watching and whether they are doing just that or merely have the tv set on for noise.