Conclusion: The Great No-TV Experiment

With less than a week left in my increasingly-empty apartment in Kansas City, I'm thinking it's time to wrap up The Great No-TV Experiment, gather the data, and report my findings to the scientific community at large.

What have I learned from being TV-less for the past month? Well, first of all, it's not as bad as I thought it would be. When you sell your TV, you quickly come to terms with the fact that, hey, the TV is GONE, and you couldn't watch it even if you wanted to. It would be much worse if I still had a TV and forced myself not to watch it. I guess what I'm saying is that with the actual appliance removed, it's not that hard to accept a TV-less reality.

Second, I realized that I can remain just as connected to the world without TV as I can with it. Let's face it, as a news media vehicle, the TV is damn near worthless these days. I can use the internet to get news on the topics I choose, on my own terms, without all the fatuous filler you usually get from the TV networks. If you watched local Kansas City TV news coverage for a month, you would deduce that Kansas Citians care about only two things: 1) Wasting money, and 2) The terrorist/kid next door/school official/household cleaning product/fashion fad/exotic fish that is trying to poison/kidnap/molest/breathe on/brainwash or otherwise warp YOUR children! Oh, the humanity! Seriously, someone should enact a law preventing cities under a certain population from producing TV news programs. I don't know what the population of Kansas City is, but it would most definitely NOT make the cut-off. Whew. Rant over.

Third and finally, I came to the conclusion that not having a TV would be much more difficult without the internet. Basically, whatever role the TV used to play in my rigorous time-wasting regimen, that role was gracefully assumed by the internet immediately upon the TV's exit. I would go so far as to say that, for me, the internet is an almost completely adequate replacement for TV. I think this says a lot about where TV is heading in the future. Allow me to make a prediction: in 15 years (maybe less), TV and the internet will essentially be the same thing.

All in all, I consider The Great No-TV experiment to be an unqualified success. News of Nobel nominations is forthcoming.