Average Jane’s Changing Media Consumption

Where did I hear that George Carlin had died? Twitter. How did I find out that the Phoenix lander had found ice on Mars? Twitter again.

Twitter is where I hear about all kinds of interesting things these days. I also use it to follow my local weather and get wind of online PR debacles as they’re happening.

What’s the trade-off? Television.

I first started cutting back on TV watching during the writers’ strike. Then our ancient TiVo died. By the time it was replaced with a notably inferior Time-Warner DVR, I was having trouble coming up with more than a handful of shows I wanted to program in.

Last week, the new DVR stopped working and I haven’t turned on the TV again since I noticed. Did we try to fix it? Nah, not yet. We’ve been too busy making music, hanging out with friends and cleaning the house. In that time, I also caught up on all my RSS feeds, read two books, spent an afternoon on a dairy farm with my niece and nephew, and went out boating and swimming in a lake.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m certainly not giving up television. In fact, I want to be sure we have a working DVR by the time Burn Notice comes back on, and I also need to catch up on episodes of Kathy Griffin. Still, TV plays much less of a role in my life now than it ever has. I spend most of my free time online or, you know, actually doing things.

I have a strong feeling that this trend is going to continue. I can envision eventually watching all my favorite shows online and dropping our cable TV subscription altogether.

How about you?