I have become comfortably numb...

Leigh Rodrigue 10/30/08

Since school has started I've found it has put a serious dent in my TV viewing and made me dependent on my DVR. This day I watched 4 shows, which is much more than usual during a semester, in an attempt to catch up on some of my favorite shows. Normally I will watch about 1 or 2 hours of TV a day between 7 and 9 p.m. if I'm lucky. I watched an older episode of "Chuck", which I think is one of the best comedies on the main network stations, and also Monday's episode of "Heroes". I think "Heroes" started strong when it first aired but has definitely gone downhill this season. Also, I'm a born again "Survivor" watcher who has gone back and forth in my viewing habits of the show over the last 5 years and watched this night's episode. Finally, I finished up with "The Office" which gets my vote for best comedy on TV right now. I've seen all these shows before and didn't watch anything new and didn't wish I watched something I didn't. I DVRed "Survivor" and "The Office" out of habit but deleted them after I watched them.

I didn't watch any TV away from home or on DVD. All my TV viewing for the day happened at my house from the DVR and is logged in the journal. My husband, Adam, starting watching from "Survivor" on because he had already watched "Chuck" and "Heroes" during their normal telecast. This is a bit of topic but we just got DirectTV this summer and I was disappointed that NBC was no longer in HD like it is on Time Warner. However, you can get some local HD channels by purchasing an antenna and hooking it up to that back of your box. Just a helpful hint, for those who didn't know about it like I didn't.

I think logging my TV viewing was an interesting process and made me less attentive at times to the show. I'm not a channel flipper but I have been accused of thinking the guide is a channel, which is an ongoing discussion at my house. It was hard to log the shows due to the time increments and since I watched everything from a recording I was able to fast forward and pause, changing the length of the show. I wasn't surprised by the amount of TV I watched because I went into this with a mission to catch up on shows I've missed. Overall, I find this process potentially has a lot holes in it. I think this journal is easily manipulated and you're relying on people to be honest which can lead to inaccurate results. If I was asked to fill this out for Nielsen I would probably forget to do it after a few days and end up guessing. Isn't this journal used to study ratings and determine how much stations charge for commercials? I looked on the Nielsen site and noticed they had a "people meter" that looks much more reliable. I would hope the use of journals/diaries is a process they're moving to get rid of for more dependable methods.