STILL IN-TUNED OUT: ANNUAL MEDIA ANALYSIS

In late 2018, I came across an article by Marketwatch in which they shared the chilling research findings that the average American spends a total of 77 hours each week volitionally staring into a screen for such things as television, videos, gaming, social media and the like. Over 34 hours alone are spent watching TV! I considered it both equally shocking and revolting that we Americans have created what amounts to 2 full-time jobs for ourselves engaging in electronic media.

It also made me apply a certain degree of scrutiny to my own electronic habits. Was I, like the rest of the U.S., mindlessly swiping, binging and clicking the precious moments of my life away? This then led me to conduct my Total Blackout Project where I successfully lived a modern life without a screen for 30 days. Following the success of that experiment, I decided to monitor and track all of my media time in 2020, specifically TV, News, Video, Films and Reading. Each month I collated and published this data on Twitter as a “Monthly Media Memo” post.

I did precisely the same thing in 2021, tracking all my key media engagement habits to get a far keener insight into my behavior and to identify any interesting changes year-over-year. Let’s examine each category starting in ascending order.

NO NEWS IS GOOD NEWS

My position on Big News is well documented and exceedingly unfavorable, so I offer a reprieve from the usual soapboxing. However, last year was certainly an anomaly what with a global pandemic, a market meltdown and a presidential election. As such, I probably read more news last year than in the past 5 years combined – about 30 minutes a week. My goal last December was to get this number way down and I did have some success for which I’m grateful as I lack the requisite levels of sociopathy and heartlessness to handle an unceasing barrage of trauma and doom porn.

Once unhinged fuckwits were fired and returned to their former successful endeavors of starting shitty, quick-to-fail businesses and U.S. governance returned to its normative levels of imbecility, things got infinitely easier. Moreover, once epidemiologists got a more clear picture of Covid and began to produce vaccines, that also eased a desire to engage with the news. For the trifecta, the markets not only stabilized, but blazed ahead, thus making not reading any news pretty easy.

TOTAL 2021 NEWS TIME: 9 HOURS

HOT, BUTTERY CORN!

I don’t generally watch a lot of movies, even though I have an ever-growing list. It’s usually about 2-3 per year and was 4 in 2020. My goal was to finally get some more flicks under my belt this year and, I’m happy to say I doubled it! Moreover, half of them were in an actual theater with my nerd gang (guess which)! I have to say that not having the ability to see films in a theater for such a while really re-kindled my joy of munching on hot buttery popcorn in a dark room with a giant screen, quality sound and good friends.

An Industrial Accident – The Story of Wax Trax Records – Excellent documentary on the legendary Chicago record store and label that brought industrial music to national prominence in the U.S.

The Public Image is Rotten – Another great music documentary on John Lydon’s long-running post-Sex Pistols (and far better) band, Public Image Limited.

Bowie: The Last 5 Years – A glorious, albeit, heartrending documentary on David Bowie’s last 5 years of life. It was also the inspiration for my A Lad Insane Project.

Cracked Actor – Pretty much regarded as the quintessential Bowie documentary made in 1975 at the height of his glory days.

Black Widow – I was only marginally familiar with this Marvel superheroine, but overall a fun Summer popcorn movie. Also, zero complaints about having to watch Scarlett Johansson in a white skin-tight suit for 2 hours.

Enormous: The Gorge Story – Fascinating documentary on the spellbinding, iconic Washington music venue. I’ve never been, but after seeing the film, cannot wait to make the pilgrimage next year.

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the 10 Rings – Another of the 4 Marvel movies released this year. This was among one of the best!

Ghostbusters Afterlife – Was wary about this since it could have gotten squirrely pretty easily, but Jason Reitman did a magnificent job retaining the charm, humor, and fun of the original in a wholly new flick. Plus, great cameos from the OG Ghost Busters!

TOTAL 2021 MOVIE TIME: 14.5 HOURS

THE RETURN OF TV!

Alright kids, I’m going to get this confession right out of the way so we can get on with things. I watched a (relative) shit-ton of TV/Streaming this year! Yep, I sure did. To wit, in 2020, I watched a total of 4.5 hours of TV compared to 22 hours this year. An over 5X increase! What happened? Two shows on binge is what happened.

Letterkenny – People have been telling me about this show since it originally aired and that I’d find it right up my comedic alley. And they were right! One of the funniest things I’ve seen since, like, forever.

Workin’ Moms – This just kind of happened over a Summer weekend in Arizona when it was just too hot to be outside. Watched the 1st episode and got sucked right into the rabbit hole.

This was also rounded out by a couple of one-off episodes of Ted Lasso, Sex Education, and Pen15. What I found most interesting is that virtually all my TV time was both a) watching humorous shows and b) sharing the experience with someone else. My guess is that this number will go up next year for precisely the same reasons.

TOTAL 2021 TV HOURS: 22

MY TUBE, YOU TUBE!

While my YouTube/Video engagement was down slightly from last year, it’s still the 2nd highest on the list. Like last year, all of it is accounted for by only 2 topics: music videos and gaming. As a board game geek, I subscribe to about 5 or so board game review channels and watch them fairly consistently. To be fair, I’ve stopped watching those on games I’m not interested in, but still. As for music, it’s generally just watching old stuff or for the purposes of learning a song by a particular artist. Another interesting note is that like reading, this is also something I do (almost) every day.

TOTAL 2021 YOU TUBE/VIDEO HOURS: 47

WHEN I HAVE MONEY, I BUY BOOKS. WHEN I HAVE A LITTLE MORE MONEY, I BUY FOOD.

Coming off the 2021 Fates on Fire Book Awards and to the surprise of absolutely no one, reading again was a the top of the list in terms of media engagement with a total of 188 books as of this writing. That certainly sounds like a lot and I guess that it is. However, as I stated last year, what I find even stranger is that, in the context of average TV hours, I’m actually a lightweight reader. If I read the same 35 hours a week that we Americans watch TV, I’d actually be reading over 300 books a year. It would be over 600 if I used the entire 77 hours referenced in the Marketwatch article. Now that’s certainly some perspective.

TOTAL 2021 BOOKS READ 188

THOUGHTS & REFLECTIONS

Documenting all of this over the past 2 years really has been interesting. While, it’s not shockingly revelatory, it does give good insight on how I spend my media time and the shifts between this year and last have been interesting. I’ll continue to do this into 2022 and see what happens. Anywho, I have to roll as, sadly, my 39-month run of being sick-free ended a few days ago, so time to chill and watch some more Letterkenny!

HOW ABOUT YOU?

Do you track your media habits? If so, were are you spending most of your time? What would you like to do more or less of, if anything? As always, I’d love to hear your comments.