Confessions of TiVo junkie…

Back when I was predicting Ruben Studdard would be the next American Idol I got TiVo. Let’s say April 2003. It’s no joke, and no commercial either, to say that TiVo has revolutionized the way I watch TV. I read about a program and plug it into the TiVo. I don’t have to remember what night Survivor: Guatemala is going to be on. Or how many nights Rock Star: INXS is on. Or when does the Amazing Race 8 premiere? The TiVo takes care of that for me. So when I sit down to watch TV my shows are always waiting on my “Play List”. And I’d like to add that I’m not embarrassed at all to say I watch reality TV.

I’m busy prepping for an article I’m writing for the IDA magazine about reality shows and it’s got me really thinking about it and how much of it I’ve actually watched. Over the holiday weekend I crammed in the final 5 episodes of the first season of Amazing Race (it shows on the Game Show Network which is now trying to be cool by calling itself GSN). Thanks to TiVo I’ve also managed to watch the entire first season of Survivor on the Outdoor Life Network (OLN…sounds cooler right?). Sure…I knew Richard Hatch was going to win. But it was still fun to see how it all played out in beautiful Borneo.

It’s also a great way to track trends. Want to know what Ashton Kutcher is creating now? I watched one episode of Beauty and the Geek. Want to find out what all the hoopla is about? I watched the Surreal Life and then a couple episodes of that show with Flavor Flav and Brigitte Nielsen (train wreck).

And thanks to “Season Pass” technology it doesn’t hurt to know that I won’t miss a single episode of POV, Independent Lens, 60 Minutes and Lost. (What?! You think I only watch non-fiction programming?)

It’s pretty safe to say that any day of the week the TiVo is at work quietly recording something for me to enjoy/review at my convenience. Whether or not absorbing all this programming is doing anything to my brain remains to be seen. If the TiVo didn’t record this stuff I might spend more time outdoors or learning how to knit. One might ask, TiVo, curse or blessing? Anything that requires more than 300 words…definitely a blessing.

Now…I gotta go program the TiVo for the Fall TV lineup.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 6th, 2005 at 6:33 pm and is filed under Originals. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.