Thursday, June 24, 2010

What happens when you don't have a DVR

We're probably one of the only families left in the state of Utah without a DVR. Since we only get the 5-ish free channels through an antenna, it is hard to justify the expense.

I vividly remember having to sit through the agonizingly long commercials when I was younger. Not only were they longer than the show I was trying to watch, the same advertisers reserved a slot at each commercial break. The monotony made me wonder if they were actually driving customers away.

With the advent of DVRs, I'm curious if we are raising an entire generation that is completely unfamiliar with the pain of having to sit through the commercial breaks.

Well, my daughter is definitely not one of them. She has to sit through commercials, and she hates them just as much as I did. She has even learned to say the word "commercial" and associates it with anything boring or distasteful.

The other day, she was looking for a book to "read" to my wife. Pulling books at random off the shelf, she happened to grab a chapter book without any pictures. Immediately, she looked at it with disgust and tossing it aside, muttered, "Commercial."

It will only be a matter of time before she starts calling her father the same thing.

2 comments:

Shorty said...

I like using the word commercial as an adjective. You could really verbally label a ton of negative things while out in public and no one would know!

And I'm one of the families w/o a DVR, too. We briefly had one when we had Dish Network for our satellite service, but my husband got mad at them for billing issues, canceled, and switched to Direct TV. We didn't opt to pay for the DVR that time around. And now we have the most basic of service. That's ok. I was just thinking how much time I wasted watching tv last night instead of working on projects. I think having a DVR at my disposal would only add to my ability to procrastinate.

Christie said...

It's good for her. :) Besides, it gave you that cute story to share! And we don't have DVR either. WAY too cheap for that. I also adore channel surfing. It means I can watch multiple shows at once when there are plenty of commercials.