Television has not always been a required appliance in everyone's household. As a matter of fact, the television has not even existed for 100 years. Yet, many people believe that having at least one television in their house is necessary.

In 1970, my parents got their first television. I was four years old and I remember coming in for dinner after being outside playing with my friends and there it was, a huge black and white television sitting right in our living room. My mother talks about how I ran into the door frame as I went toward the bathroom to wash up for dinner. I was so engulfed by this new television that now had a dominating presence in our home.

The furniture had to be arranged to account for this new appliance. No longer could the chairs and couches face each other. That arrangement made it comfortable for people to sit and talk and play board games on the coffee table. Now all the furniture had to face forward toward the television. No more coffee table, that just got in the way. We could watch TV now so why would be play board games? Episode after episode of various TV series came across our screen and we were happy.

Television has come a long way since then. Now we can watch television on large plasma LCD screens with high definition (HDTV) signals and digital cable. But is it really a requirement? I don't like most television programming but I do use it to watch either a DVD or a VHS tape of movies or old shows that I do enjoy.

Some people I know truly believe it is a requirement of life. An acquaintance of mine was once telling me how frustrated he was that he could not find the time to start his own business. From many conversations with him I knew that he did have an idea of a business strategy and that he had agonized over this for a long time. I told him to take baby steps, to just go ahead and incorporate his business and start asking around to get his first consulting client. As we sat there in front of his television, he told me he didn't have the two hundred dollars to incorporate. Yet I knew from previous conversations that he was paying over a hundred dollars a month for cable television programming. And I knew since he was single with no children and very rarely went out with friends that he was watching over five hours of television a day.

So I told him to drop cable for a couple of months and that would give him an extra two hundred dollars and an extra three hundred hours to work on his business. And if he really worked hard at building his business that he would not only need that extra time but would end up not even missing television at all. He got quite upset with me and indicated that in his opinion, not having digital HDTV television programming was the equivalent of living in a cave. Five years later, he will talk to me every other month or so and still expresses his frustration at not having the time or money to start his consulting business. But he can tell me what shows he watched on television last night.

Is television a requirement in your home?


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