Tivo Generation - Posted by Chris

A couple of things stand out about television when I was young. The first is that my family had two televisions; one was a large color console TV (the kind that sits on the floor) and the second was a small black and white. We could watch three channels with decent quality and a couple more that we’d still watch but whose quality would be unacceptable today. The second thing that I remember is that for a kid there wasn’t much on TV. Apart from Saturday morning cartoons, only a few scattered half hours of programming existed that appealed to children. The idea of recording television to watch later, wouldn’t come to our household for many years.

Fast forward thirty years, my family today has three TVs (all color), we record television shows on computer hard drives and we can pause and rewind live TV. We have Disney, Nick and Cartoon Network just to name a few. My sons will never know a time when it was not possible to replay a funny commercial, rewind a show to hear a missed line of dialog or play your favorite episode with the press of a button. I often wonder how this “convenience” will affect my children. Will it be harder to get them to watch less TV? Will it be easier to get them to do chores (i.e. pause the show and say ‘you can finish watching after you’ve taken out the garbage’)? But most of all, I wonder what my sons will write about thirty years from now? How will life have changed for them?