According to one statistic I have seen the average US citizen watches 4 and ½ hours of television a day. I don't. I rarely watch television and couldn't tell you what television shows are on tonight if I wanted to. I'm not interested in most of the shows on television anyways. I don't like game shows, soap operas, reality television, sports (I rather play than watch), get my news through the Internet, and I can only stand watching so much crime dramas before I tire of them. I don't even have cable.
Even though I don't watch much television I do watch what I consider to be a large number of movies. My brother doesn't consider it to be a lot but he watches movies much more frequently than I do. Movies are generally better than television shows. Not always, Some movies are terrible and some television shows are very good.
The reason I watch so many movies is because the local library has a very good selection. I can get free rentals occasionally from Hollywood Video and Red box (little red boxes in front of a grocery store I occasionally go to). There are also a few cheap movie theaters in the area. One of the theaters show older movies for 50 cents on Monday's if three or more people, though it isn't that close to me. Another one also has a Monday deal in which for five dollars you can see a new film and get a free bag of popcorn.
I do not watch as much anime as I would like to. The local video stores and libraries do not carry a very good selection of anime and the local non cable television channels don't even carry US cartoons anymore. The local video stores also mislabel the few anime they do have for instance they rated Ranma ½ NC-17 when in Japan it was shown to children.
I used to trade anime fan subs in the mail but with the increasing number of anime being released in the US, more people having access to high speed Internet, and the price increase in sending stuff through the mail less people are willing to trade them that way. Back then they were all cd trades and now most people have dvd burners and find it easier to just copy movies then send them through the mail. Personally I like fan subs since I dislike purchasing movies and especially anime prior to seeing them (anime because some series are very expensive until recently Ranma ½ season one for instance sold for more than a hundred and twenty dollars). I also like comparing the various translations. The US companies translate them for the common viewers where as the fan subbers translate for fans. Basically the fan subbers are generally more literal and will leave in some Japanese words or concepts that the professionals will change. The professionals are also more likely to censor the released stuff.
I've considered getting movies and anime through an online service such as netflix but haven't done so yet. Many of the the foreign films I'm interested in seeing are not on it or are available through request from the library. Also returning the discs will be a pain since at the beginning of this year they got rid of most of the mail boxes. There used to be a mail box at the end of my street. The nearest mailbox is now more than a mile away. My sister used to get movies through netflix but had trouble with them which is another thing deterring me from using that service.
Source of statistic: http://www.dtg.org.uk/news/news.php?id=1950
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