For Lent this year I gave up television with the exception of LOST. I got a lot of flak for including this caveat when I was asked about lent. I understand why people would think this was only going half-way or just a lazy attempt at spiritual discipline. The truth is I was really fasting from useless background noise.

Tv and film for all their similarities have very different effects on the viewer as well as the intended outcomes their producers have in mind. On a very basic level their relationship to selling products is very different. Insightful critiques about the constant product-placement in film not withstanding, the film is the product. The film is selling itself, we pay to see the film and then for 2 hours we watch the film uninterrupted. Television is set up to draw us to the tv for long enough that we will sit through commercials trying to sell us products. The show itself is not the product but the means by which we are exposed to the product. And so it is in the interests of television creators to create content that always leaves us unsatisfied, always wanting something better to watch. An excellent film will likely attract more attention and then more ticket buyers, but a television show that can be entertaining enough to keep our attention while always leaving us wanting something better helps to perpetuate the genre and expose us to more advertising. Bad tv is good for tv.

If you’re like me, you’ve fallen into this trap. I’ll turn on the tv hoping to find something good to watch (knowing full well that I can count the number of quality programs on one hand) and just end up having the tv on as background noise. After years of doing this I’ve become so comfortable with having the tv on in the background I felt awkward alone in a room with out it’s constant stream of sound. This is bad.

I never have a film on “in the background” simply to fill the air with sound. When I watch a film I do just that, sit down and watch it. So for lent I decided to give up all tv. I put the LOST exception in there because I interact with LOST like film, I sit down and engage the narrative and then turn off the tv and talk about it. LOST is never “background noise” I use to eradicate silence in my life. Tv in had become just that for me… a way to eradicate silence.

So for the entire season of lent I watched 8 episodes of LOST and the Oscars. That was it. In forty days I had watched 11 hours of television. It was so good. I wasn’t staying up as late, I was way more productive in my work and I began to read so much more. So I’m trying to keep up the habit. I haven’t been as strict as I was during Lent, but I’m trying to only watch tv if I’m going to engage it and turn it off if I find myself using it to drown out the silence. Because silence is good for the soul.