Is there life after television?

For some bizarre reason, I started thinking last night after I got home from class about television: what shows I watch, how much TV I watch, and so on. After a little thought last night and this morning, I came to the conclusion that my 3-4 hours per day of television viewing consist mainly of:

• local news, weather, and information;
  
• ESPN Sportscenter and other sports programming;
  
• M*A*S*H reruns (95% of which I've seen before);
  
• Star Trek reruns (95% of which I've seen before);
  
• The Simpsons (98% of which are reruns that I've seen before);
  
• The occasional cartoon on Disney Channel or Cartoon Network (95+% of which are reruns that I've seen before);
  
• Movies on cable; (90+% of which I've seen before); and
  
• Specials on The History Channel (75+% of which I've seen before).
  

In other words, most of what I watch on TV is either information I could get from other sources or escapist programming that I've most likely already seen. "So why watch TV at all," I asked myself? I couldn't come up with a good answer.

So I've decided that I'm not going to watch TV for the next week. I'll lean on my Internet connection and my radio (anyone remember radio?) for news and scores, and on books and CDs for relaxation. And homework too, of course. Mustn't forget about that.

Will I miss it? I don't know. I suspect that most of why I watch TV is habit; I can probably go without seeing Hawkeye and B.J. make a fool of Frank Burns (again) for a week. I may miss watching an occasional game, but it's not like the Rockies are playing that well anyway. Heck, I might even go out and see a movie, or a minor league baseball game. (Of course, the Salt Lake Stingers aren't playing that well, either, but at least I could see the game in person.)

I'll let you know how it goes. If you find that my writings have suddenly become either slightly insane or remarkably lucid, you'll know why.

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(By the way, did you know that Rosalind Chao, who played Keiko O'Brien on Star Trek: TNG and Deep Space Nine, also played Soon-Lee, the Korean girl that Klinger married in the series finale of M*A*S*H? Amazing what you can learn on the Internet, isn't it?)