Channel Zero

Jonathan Karp, 40, occasionally thumbs his nose at his TV-viewing friends, but he says it's all in fun. The software developer throws a non-Super Bowl party at his Cleveland Park house every year and cooks for friends while most of us are tuned to the game. "It's pretty rare that there's a televised event that I feel like I have to see," Karp says. He characterizes himself as "non-TV" rather than "anti-TV" and stresses that he's "your normal, average D.C. resident." As evidence, he points out that the couple who live across the hall from him don't have a television either.

Susan Campbell knows that her TV-free life is unusual, and she's fine with that. Campbell and her husband, Mark Pugliese, were never big TV viewers and didn't buy a set when they got married. Four kids (all boys) later, she says they made the right decision: "It's very noisy in our house, and when you add the TV to that noise, it's just a cacophony. Who needs that?"

A few years ago a friend gave them a TV. It's in the basement, not the living room, of their Cleveland Park home. The boys watch it only on "special occasions," such as the State of the Union address, she says. They have to get permission from Mom and Dad. Campbell's oldest son, Nick Pugliese, a junior at Gonzaga College High School, says his mom would be puzzled if she caught him watching their set. "She would have to ask me what I was doing," he says. "It's not like she would be furious, but it's not the kind of thing that you would see in our family."

The boys "periodically" pester Campbell about TV, she says, but did so more often when they were younger. Nick remembers rallying together with his younger brothers on the issue but says it was so the three of them could play video games, not watch shows.

Nick is active in sports, clubs and his school's musical, but says he's a bit out of the loop when it comes to certain TV shows, such as "24," a hit with his classmates. Regardless, he says, the benefits of his non-TV life outweigh the negatives: "My parents told me I read 'The Chronicles of Narnia' at a really young age. I did a lot of stuff that I wouldn't have done if I had watched TV."

Nick may be on to something, according to Dorothy Singer, co-director of the Yale University Family Television Research and Consultation Center in New Haven, Conn. Children who watch a lot of TV have less patience and don't share as well as their counterparts, Singer's research has found. They're also less likely to pick up a book and read for fun.

And yet Singer does not advocate completely removing TV from a household. "I think television can give us tremendous information, depending on how you select it," she says. "You'd be foolish to get rid of it." She recommends that families keep their set in a common room, where everyone has access to it, and remove TVs from children's bedrooms.

Nick Pugliese says he plans to enjoy a few shows in college and will probably buy a television one day. And although Triplett considers many TV programs to be "trash," she isn't ruling out buying a set when she has a family of her own -- as long as her kids don't watch too much of it.