NEW YORK -- Stage actors love theater. Film actors see movies. Musicians dig concerts by their fellow musicians. But TV performers just don't seem to catch much TV, according to an unofficial survey spanning years of interviews I've had with them.
Let me stress the not-at-all-scientific nature of this poll. Among the scads of TV stars I've talked to, I never made a point of grilling them on their TV consumption. I don't recall how often it came up. But over time I started to realize (and marvel) that, out of everyone who did address the issue with me, fewer than a dozen of them copped to being TV fans.
The rest: Well, they don't shun just the programs they appear in. They don't watch TV, period. Or so they claim.
Why would they blind themselves to the truth (TV's vision of the truth, anyway, which they're all part of)?
They're busy! They have to be up early and they work late! Those are explanations I've been handed.
Besides, after spending so much time in the candy factory (I'm paraphrasing here), they just don't have a sweet tooth anymore.
Some stars make a rare exception to the no-TV rule. Maybe they watch cable news, maybe ESPN. Who knows? Maybe they're sneaking a peek at the smart comedy of the moment ("The Office," or, before that, "Seinfeld") or the fashionable drama (early in its run, I'd often hear "ER," and then, for a number of years, "The Sopranos"). Or maybe an admitted guilty pleasure like "The Amazing Race" or "Project Runway."
Beyond that, it seems, they shut their eyes to what's on TV, at least when it's on. For them, apparently, watching TV is akin to slumming, off-puttingly exotic or, unaccountably, none of their business.
Of course, being a selective viewer isn't bad. The average American logs 4 1/2 hours of TV per day, a sum that should set off the get-a-life alarm.
But many TV stars insist that catching up with even a program they confess to liking is more trouble than it's worth. They claim to never be around a TV when that show is on the air. They seem to have never heard of TiVo.
I've been hearing this kind of thing from TV-averse TV stars since long before anybody ever heard of TiVo. And I think it reflects the stigma that TV has been saddled with since birth -- a stigma TV will still be stuck with when its convergence with the Web is fully consummated and the term "television" is retired to the same place as "the wireless" and "gramophone."
