Someone please steal my TV

On May 5, I will leave the impoverished status of University student and receive paychecks that will cover more than a week's groceries. Will all that dough flowing in, an upgrade for my tiny Signature 13-inch television set was high on my greedy wish list of material possessions. But hmmm, now that I think about it, why bother?\nWhy have an expensive, state-of-the-art flatscreen TV with 800 channels when everything transmitted through it is unfettered crap? Sure, the flashy set would be great for video games or Blockbuster rentals, but they make computers with DVD drives now. Why would I need to buy a device whose sole purpose is to receive broadcasting or cable signals?\nTelevision is not only a dying medium, as sagging ratings attest, but it's near death. The industry that boomed in the 1950s by transmitting visual as well as audio information has lost much of the immediacy, impact and influence and risks becoming obsolete soon. I've seen the overall quality of television deteriorate since I was little, and I highly doubt my children will huddle around the TV set any more than I would huddle beside an oven-sized radio listening to my favorite program.\nTherein lies the problem: I haven't had a "favorite program" in a long time. In my younger days, I would arise dutifully every Saturday morning to watch "Pinwheel" on Nickelodeon. I would arrange my day around "my" shows, like "Perfect Strangers," "You Can't Do That On Television" and even "Avonlea." Watching TV was fun and even satisfying.\nThen something happened. Video rentals and the Internet arose as entertainment juggernauts, and the TV business was scrambling to stay afloat. Shows started playing to the lowest common denominator. Originality waned, and shows turned again and again like crusty towels in a dryer as networks frantically sought lineups to keep advertisers appeased.\nNowadays, I stare at the television, and hours later I awaken from my trance feeling exhausted and dissatisfied. All the theories of evolution, vocabulary words or nuggets of scholastic knowledge I learned during classes slowly melt away as I unwind on the sofa watching TV. Secretly I thought IU was trying liquefy my brain so I would fail classes and not graduate, giving the University another year of tuition money. But not even that would explain the horrendous programming.\nABC, NBC, CBS and FOX are locked in seasonal battle of regurgitating the same law-police-hospital drama, gross-out comedy or vote-you-off reality flicks. The innovation is not there. Then there's the factor of frustration. I'm frustrated that local news broadcasts pathetically try to trick me into believing their useless information. I'm frustrated that Animal Planet reruns the same episode of "The Jeff Corwin Experience" every night. I'm frustrated that MTV shows 10-minute blocks of commercials. I'm frustrated that stars of "Friends" and "ER" receive six-figure salaries per episode when they're doing OK (read: average, nothing special) jobs. I'm frustrated that celebrities like Bette Midler and Michael Richards automatically assume a show all about them would be interesting to strangers.\nAnd I'm frustrated that unlike a decade ago, not one single show, not one, has engaging characters or plots like a novel. It seems every TV show assumes I am stupid, and who needs a flashing cube to do that when I have an economics final next week?\nNeedless to say, a high-definition television was scratched off my want list.\nAnd if I figure out how to plug my Nintendo 64 and VCR into my computer monitor, I'll be dumping the old set on the curb next to the worn out sofa on move-out day.