by Aerynne Aiudi

Created on: December 20, 2008

Because of the sexualization of many television programs, (ie. America's Next Top Model, Two and A Half Men, Weeds, etc.), I haven't watched television on a regular basis since Cher's "farewell" concert aired on NBC in 2001. Even then, there was a part of her concert in which there was a lesbian laced dance sequence that titillated me but repulsed me all at the same time, so I swore off television from that day forward.

I have replaced my television addiction, an addiction that was begun at the tender age of two with the watching of the Fred Flintstone cartoon show and at night, I watched Liberace tickle the piano ivories, with listening to radio, primarily radio drama on the Christian radio network, WIHS 104.9 FM out of Middletown, CT. Television no longer leaves anything to the imagination. I often quote the United Negro College Fund phrase, "a mind is a terrible thing to waste," and in relation to radio versus television this adage rings so true. When I listen to dramas on the radio, it's like reading a book in the sense that I imagine what the people look like, what the situation they are dramatizing is actually like. I have to use my imagination to try to visualize what I'm listening to, and that's the most fun part of listening to the radio. Television just lets it all hang out, and in my opinion, I think television is mindless and requires no work to watch. Network television is really the idiot box!

I do have a television in our home, but we, my husband and I, watch DVD movies instead of watching network television. In order to keep up with news and current events, I read news on the Internet, listen to the radio network news or read US News and World Report and/or Time magazines. As far as the media goes, however, it is so skewed towards hedonism, that once again, I refuse to watch too much network news on television. The only time I watch television a little bit is when I go to work at my Dunkin' Donuts because there is a television that plays there for the customers. The only show I do try to get interested in and yet haven't seen in its entirety is the NBC show The Biggest Loser. I've only seen 15 minutes of it though, because Jillian Michaels cussing out an obese dieter and reducing them to tears by calling them gross and hurtful names is offensive and painful to watch. I have never watched the major shows like the new 90210, Desperate Housewives, I have never heard what the Jonas Brothers sound like in their music, and I think I heard what Jessica and Ashley Simpson sound like once during an E! news interview. I used to watch tennis, gymnastics and the summer Olympics, but now sports shows are more about whose dating and sleeping with whom, and frankly, I don't care. But that's entertainment!

In closing, I like radio a lot better than television now. I used to watch soap operas, but then I began to act out the melodramatic situations of the latter and my life took several turns for the worse. I lived with two guys a la the television comedy Three's Company, and once again, that resulted in pure unadulterated tragedy. Television is too caustic and too salacious in content. My time is better spent using my imagination. Radio helps me to do this, so if given the choice, I choose radio over television any day of the week.

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