TV Blog

Keeley Motton

Wednesday, October, 29 2008

          I chose to document a Wednesday night of television after I got home from a day of work and school. This night was not a typical night of watching TV. I got home that day a little earlier and didn’t have any homework the next day so I ended up wanting to relax and just watch TV on my couch. I used to watch Project Runway religiously on Wednesdays, but now I have replaced it with The Real Housewives of Atlanta that also comes on Bravo. I also rarely miss an episode of E!News and almost never skip an episode of my beloved soap opera The Young and the Restless. As for Young and the Restless, I got hooked on it as a kid when my parents watched it. If ever there is a day that I miss an episode I go to soapnet.com to see the recap so I’m not behind. I don’t just watch it for the drama, but also to see how they handle their day to day issues. The soap usually sparks new discussions for me and my friends. I keep up with E!News just to keep my life interesting and stay in touch with celebrity current events since I’m stuck at school and work all day.  I didn’t watch any new shows that I hadn’t seen before. I used to watch America’s Next Top model but since it comes on at 7pm I usually miss most of it. I didn’t record any of the programs because I don’t have a VCR or a DVR system. I have also found that when I have recorded shows at my family’s house, I never have time to watch them so I get further and further behind. I try to prevent getting behind on my favorite shows by reading the synopsis online the next day.

             I did not watch any TV online mainly because I don’t have internet access at my apartment. If I did have internet access, I probably wouldn’t have the time to watch it there. The only show I keep up with addictive show Weeds. I have to watch it season by season since I do not have Showtime. My best friend was watching The Real Housewives of Atlanta together. Each week, no matter how much homework we both have, we take an hour out to watch this show together and mostly laugh about it. Watching these rich women fight over stupid things and waste their money serves as comic relief for the both of us in the middle of our busy weeks.

             I liked the idea of tracking TV viewing. I have had to do the Nielsen surveys before and thought it was very interesting. I wish I had gotten money for this one! I found that I generally stuck to one channel and flipped a little to CNN during the campaign. I noticed that most of my TV viewing fit into one hour increments. I think I watched more TV that I thought I did. It’s easy to slip into 4 hours of TV when you watch show after show and aren’t really paying attention to how much time has passed. I think these surveys are a really good way gage what people are watching. I would imagine it would be difficult to determine these statistics any other way. I believe they can be very reliable if people fill them out correctly. Also, since people get paid to fill out the Nielsen surveys before they mail it in, they are probably more likely to fill it out honestly.