April 2, 2010

By Pete Williams

I missed the Winter Olympics.

I missed the Academy Awards

I missed March Madness.

I missed the various half-confessions of Tiger Woods, the latest debates and passage of health care reform, and anything else that has appeared on television since February 17.

Actually, I didn’t miss anything. That’s why my wife thought it was lame of me to give up television for Lent; I don’t watch much anyway.

I have not watched a network television program regularly since the first season of Survivor in 2000. I have not seen a single episode of American Idol, Lost, Dancing with the Stars, 24, or most anything else that has debuted in the last decade.

I’ve enjoyed several series on HBO, especially Six Feet Under, Rome, and Band of Brothers. But with True Blood on hiatus until mid-June, I knew I wouldn’t miss anything there, though I did have the DVR set to record The Pacific.

I was inspired to give up TV for Lent because we’ve had an ongoing struggle trying to find a phone/TV/Internet provider we like. At one point, we considered cutting the cord and going with our cell phones, over-the-air television, and stealing the Internet signal from one or both of our next-door neighbors. I wanted to see if I could live without.

In the end, we decided that was unrealistic.

Our neighbors’ Internet signals are just too weak.

By then, I felt committed to a no-TV Lent and forged ahead. It’s a challenge to go 43 days without watching a single minute of television. I had to turn off the eye-level TVs in the locker room at my gym whenever I entered. (In the main room, it’s easy to ignore the endless loop of stale ‘80s music videos.)

I stayed out of sports bars, barely entered our family room, and did not touch the TV in my home office.

It helped that I was on the road in Orlando for March covering the Atlanta Braves for Fox Sports South. (Oddly enough I twice appeared on Braves broadcasts.)

My biggest concern was how I’d deal with spending so much time in baseball clubhouses and press boxes, where there are televisions everywhere. Thankfully, there are no TVs in the Braves clubhouse and I stood with my back to the one in manager Bobby Cox’s office during his post-game media chats.

Unlike the regular season, where writers routinely glance at press box monitors to view replays, nothing in a spring training game is that important. Plus, most spring games aren’t televised anyway.

I grew up in a home where my parents refused to get cable TV, but I still watched a fair amount of network programming. I can recite dialogue with any of the 200-plus episodes of M*A*S*H, for instance.

But gradually my viewing has diminished to almost nothing. Maybe it came with having kids or taking up triathlon. Maybe it came with the lack of quality programming. Maybe it came with Disney hijacking ESPN and making it unwatchable. Maybe it came with the transition of television from news and entertainment to talking heads yelling about politics and sports.

For whatever reason, I barely watch TV and I’m not alone. I have several friends who do not even own televisions, people in their early 30s. Buster Olney, the terrific ESPN baseball writer, grew up on a farm in Vermont without television and still managed to follow baseball religiously. I had TV in the Virginia suburbs, but mostly followed sports through newspapers, magazines, and baseball cards.

As someone whose living depends partially on following sports, I wondered if I could pull it off for 43 days. But because of the non-stop chatter surrounding sports, you need not watch the games themselves anymore to follow along. In 2008, I did not watch a minute of the NFL season until the Super Bowl and still felt like I could keep up with 20 minutes of daily online reading. (Heck, millions of people watch six hours of NFL every Sunday but are too drunk to remember any of it.)

In October, I was on a cruise ship during the World Series. I thought I’d be like Jack Nicholson in “One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” itching to watch the Fall Classic. But even though the Yankees/Phillies series was on in our cabin and all over the ship, I barely watched it. There were more interesting things to do.

Without TV for the last six weeks, I got through my magazines more quickly. I read my Wall Street Journal cover to cover every day and I remain on pace to reach my goal of reading 52 books this year.

I was able to stay mostly on track with my triathlon training even while dealing with the grind of baseball beat reporting. Mostly, though, I felt more focused and it transcended into other areas. I didn’t check the Blackberry as much, kept the radio in the car off more, went to no movies, watched no videos online other than the Braves-related material I posted for Fox Sports South.com, and just felt better overall.

It’s probably just a coincidence, but several cool projects came my way during this period.

My Lenten television fast will end Easter Sunday, in time for the NCAA basketball championship and Opening Day on Monday. I could even watch Tiger’s latest confession, were I so inclined.

I feel like I could go another 43 days, though not right now.

Maybe the next time Lent rolls around.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 2nd, 2010 at 9:19 pm and is filed under Sports Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.