I hate to admit it, but for a non-TV watcher, over the 12 years of my retirement I'm leaving the TV on almost all the time, although I'm not necessarily watching it "actively."
It's sort of like a new skill, but I can catch most of the (rather simple, let's face it) plot lines just from the dialogue. Or maybe that's just because I was brought up in the radio show heyday.
There are some shows I will actually plan to "actively" watch, but for the most part, I can putter around (or trash up APS) without eyeballing the screen every second.
And incidentally (yet another new skill) I've found that commercials get "blanked out" in my head, despite the fact that various devices are used to get my attention.
Various strange sounds like clocks ticking or door knocking have been used to alert your "what's up?" neurons for commercials, but I've also learned to automatically filter that crap out after I caught on to that advertising ploy. And they seem to have stopped that lately.
Bear in mind that much of my younghood took place before TV became common, though we were "the first on my block" to have a TV set. So this sample set of N=1 doesn't mean much. It wasn't until later that kid shows like Captain Video and Mr. Wizard became a habit.
Terry, 230RN
REFs:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watch_Mr._Wizardhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_Video_and_His_Video_Rangers
