This is so fantastic, I wish my gym would do this. Whenever I go to my chain gym, I try to find a cardio machine as far as possible from the TV's running CNN and Fox News all day. If I'm not able, I take off my glasses so I can't easily see what is happening and focus on the book or podcast I am listening to.
If and when I want to watch the train wreck that is cable news, it is very easy to do so - it would nice not to have it forced into my field of view when I'm on a treadmill.
It's a nice start, definitely. I used to use a gym that ran CNN constantly, and during the Casey Anthony trial I realized I was actually being put off working out by the thought of seeing more lurid garbage about the case.
That said, the article still offers:
> The big-screen TVs at all clubs will now air “USA, A&E, Discovery and HGTV, in addition to local stations and ESPN”
I'm delighted to have found a gym that simply doesn't have massive TV screens within every line of sight. Put optional ones in cardio machines, sure. But I don't actually want to watch anything while I'm working out, and it's strange to me that screens are so omnipresent in gyms.
> I'm delighted to have found a gym that simply doesn't have massive TV screens within every line of sight.
I like shopping at Aldi because they don't play music.
The worst are chains which don't just play pop music but also have pseudo radio jockeys which talk about gossip and try to be funny. It's insultingly stupid.
The gym I'm currently at doesn't have any TVs. Unfortunately, they play some music. The volume is very low, though.
Agreed, and I wish other types of businesses (restaurants, bars, airports) would do the same. Cable news is mostly garbage entertainment gossip or alarmist nonsense, and I would love to eliminate it from my life completely!
Now if they would only ban music. Nearly every person in a gym now has a smart phone and wearing earbuds. And for some reason gyms insist on blaring some god-awful awful generic "workout music." The net result being that customers have to compete with the gym's music in order to hear their own preferred music.
I tried to explain this to a manager at a gym last summer and he just stared at me blankly. It did not compute.
I'm an avid gym-goer and I like the music on in the background. I don't wear earbuds because I value "awareness". I like being able to hear other happenings around me without them being blocked out. Same idea for public transportation. Anyways, the employees at my gym just play Spotify Premium and are friendly enough to take requests. Maybe you can ask your gym to play some music you like?
>"Anyways, the employees at my gym just play Spotify Premium and are friendly enough to take requests. Maybe you can ask your gym to play some music you like?"
Does this strike you as a viable solution? Everyone goes to the front desk and requests that the gym play music to suit their personal taste? How does that work out for the rest of the people in the gym that have different musical tastes?
Also wearing earbuds doesn't mean someone doesn't value "awareness." I can listen to my music and not compromise my visual awareness in the least.
>Anyways, the employees at my gym just play Spotify Premium and are friendly enough to take requests.
Not a Spotify user so I don't know what I'm talking about, but it sounds like this might be a feature they could implement...some sort of "Jukebox mode," whereby anyone w/the Spotify app could make requests for the local area, given the right password (put on a whiteboard or something, the way we do for wifi).
There are many open air headphones that allow the sound through. But you can’t use them in gyms if you want to hear your own music because of what they are blasting.
My gym, the Sports Centre of Montréal's Olympic Stadium, very much has no music and has signs saying that if you want music, bring your own device. Most of the cardio machines also have access to various forms of entertainment, including YouTube and local TV stations, so you can just hook up your earbuds to them.
Counterpoint: I've been to gyms when the music system broke, and the silence instantly makes it feel lonelier and more uninviting. This was late in the evening when there were few other patrons, so it might be ok during busier times.
Agreed. Playing some low-level white noise over the speaker system would drown out the grunting, panting, or conversations almost as well, and it wouldn't interfere with people's own music choices on their headphones.
My gym has TVs with sound muted, and subtitles enabled, and the music is heavy-metal. It works just fine for me, on those rare days when I forget to pack my headphones.
I saw this in the US last summer at a filling station. They had TVs mounted on the pumps tuned into CNN at ear-splitting volume. It reminded me of Mike Judge's movie "Idocracy."
Creating a captive audience out of what would normally be two minutes of mental free time is incredibly disturbing.
Gas station 'news' has rapidly become one of my least favorite things. It usually comes with a mute button, but frankly if it's going to exist I want a little readout telling me exactly how much money I'm saving by being turned into a captive ad audience. (I'm betting it's "0.00", but...)
I hate gas station telescreens, and in my experience they never have STFU buttons. I wonder if a high-power electromagnet could damage the speakers from outside the pump housing? :)
Most of my local stations have replaced their pumps with these things. Fortunately, one station at least has the sense to TURN THE DAMN SOUND DOWN to where it's easy for me to ignore, and (even better) it's also the last station in town to raise prices when the local price mysteriously jumps 25¢/gallon because Reasons.
> I wouldn't be surprised if they got a kickback from the channel.
Outcome Health was a startup that put ad-loop TVs in doctor's offices. They definitely got paid by the ad runners, and were either placing the TVs for free or were actually paying for right to place them.
(They were apparently also faking their numbers, hence my past tense.)
Honestly, most of the time I tend to agree and can't fathom what reading the news does for me. Small outlets like HN sometimes contain things that affect me directly and I can do something about, but general politics is completely out of my reach, especially politics about a country I'm not a member of.
TV news mis-informs by making people think that extremely rare events are likely to happen to them. For example, it's extremely rare for children to be abducted by strangers, but it happens almost every day on cable and TV.
It doesn't take a ton of time to be way better-informed than most people on current events. Background reading of big ol' books is a lot more valuable than keeping up with the headlines every day. You can catch up on the need-to-know current events with one monthly paper you scan on a lazy Sunday morning, and maybe a weekly or monthly newsletter or two. Reading about the stuff daily is 100% not necessary.
Similarly, and especially given our two-party system in the US, following every twist and turn in a political race is pure entertainment, of exactly no more value to you or anyone else than watching soap operas. You can make an as-informed-as-it-needs-to-be decision by spending that time on building up foundational knowledge instead, then catching up on the happenings of the race and the candidates' positions an hour before you go vote.
The news makes you more poorly informed: by encouraging you to see everything in the light of whatever narrative they've invented, it makes the information you gain from other channels less useful than it would otherwise be.
I sort of chuckle at this, but the truth be told .. I can't even watch the news anymore and I grew up on it.
However, my conservative nature is less about news itself, than the extreme requirements to meet revenue streams of yesteryear by legitimate news organizations (namely the ones that actually HIRE journalists). By contrasting example, my local Buffalo WGRZ news organization works closely with Investigativepost.org and they seem to be very bipartisan by all accounts. Maybe that's just my region of the country demographically speaking ... but I do enjoy the quality of news.
My point is really the de-valuation of industry on the whole because of information availability to the masses and the microphone passing to everyone on the street. As they say, the meek shall inherit the earth and as a technologist ... this is just one of the unintended consequences. I do believe in the sharing of information, ideas, and software (noting opensource seems to have done a great job, and if we could only KEEP Net Neutrality .. we'd be better off to the alternative I think).
It creeps into everyone's space of sanity, and for me ... eating chicken wings and watching the news .. has lead to the same as gym rats lifting then seeing some stuff that makes their blood boil .. you can die from that.
Stay safe my gym rats .. we will both make it through this. :)
Because it's distracting, it's generally awful pap, the sound quality sucks, it's usually at a different tempo and mood than I want for the phase of workout I'm in...
I suspect music is pretty lucrative for gyms so I think they will keep it.
At LA Fitness they play "Zoom Media", which is a station which seems entirely payola-based to promote whatever new artist the labels are interested in. (Payola is illegal for stations on the public airwaves, but since this is in-house at a private business I assume it's fine) It's even worse than Top 40; it's more like Top 7, over and over, all day.
Can we ban them from doctor's offices and the airports too? Let's go back to reading magazines and books.
I felt like more brain cells died having Fox News shouting at me for two hours at a time while waiting at various doctor's appointments with my mom back in the South than any drinking I've done.
Readit News
If and when I want to watch the train wreck that is cable news, it is very easy to do so - it would nice not to have it forced into my field of view when I'm on a treadmill.
That said, the article still offers:
> The big-screen TVs at all clubs will now air “USA, A&E, Discovery and HGTV, in addition to local stations and ESPN”
I'm delighted to have found a gym that simply doesn't have massive TV screens within every line of sight. Put optional ones in cardio machines, sure. But I don't actually want to watch anything while I'm working out, and it's strange to me that screens are so omnipresent in gyms.
I like shopping at Aldi because they don't play music.
The worst are chains which don't just play pop music but also have pseudo radio jockeys which talk about gossip and try to be funny. It's insultingly stupid.
The gym I'm currently at doesn't have any TVs. Unfortunately, they play some music. The volume is very low, though.
Same with bars. I want to go have a drink and chat with people. I just don't understand the need for TV in places like these.
I tried to explain this to a manager at a gym last summer and he just stared at me blankly. It did not compute.
Does this strike you as a viable solution? Everyone goes to the front desk and requests that the gym play music to suit their personal taste? How does that work out for the rest of the people in the gym that have different musical tastes?
Also wearing earbuds doesn't mean someone doesn't value "awareness." I can listen to my music and not compromise my visual awareness in the least.
Not a Spotify user so I don't know what I'm talking about, but it sounds like this might be a feature they could implement...some sort of "Jukebox mode," whereby anyone w/the Spotify app could make requests for the local area, given the right password (put on a whiteboard or something, the way we do for wifi).
I really love that gym.
Number one would be fans. Number two would be a noise-masking solution.
Creating a captive audience out of what would normally be two minutes of mental free time is incredibly disturbing.
Deleted Comment
Most of my local stations have replaced their pumps with these things. Fortunately, one station at least has the sense to TURN THE DAMN SOUND DOWN to where it's easy for me to ignore, and (even better) it's also the last station in town to raise prices when the local price mysteriously jumps 25¢/gallon because Reasons.
I wouldn't be surprised if they got a kickback from the channel.
Outcome Health was a startup that put ad-loop TVs in doctor's offices. They definitely got paid by the ad runners, and were either placing the TVs for free or were actually paying for right to place them.
(They were apparently also faking their numbers, hence my past tense.)
http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews
Honestly, most of the time I tend to agree and can't fathom what reading the news does for me. Small outlets like HN sometimes contain things that affect me directly and I can do something about, but general politics is completely out of my reach, especially politics about a country I'm not a member of.
Similarly, and especially given our two-party system in the US, following every twist and turn in a political race is pure entertainment, of exactly no more value to you or anyone else than watching soap operas. You can make an as-informed-as-it-needs-to-be decision by spending that time on building up foundational knowledge instead, then catching up on the happenings of the race and the candidates' positions an hour before you go vote.
However, my conservative nature is less about news itself, than the extreme requirements to meet revenue streams of yesteryear by legitimate news organizations (namely the ones that actually HIRE journalists). By contrasting example, my local Buffalo WGRZ news organization works closely with Investigativepost.org and they seem to be very bipartisan by all accounts. Maybe that's just my region of the country demographically speaking ... but I do enjoy the quality of news.
My point is really the de-valuation of industry on the whole because of information availability to the masses and the microphone passing to everyone on the street. As they say, the meek shall inherit the earth and as a technologist ... this is just one of the unintended consequences. I do believe in the sharing of information, ideas, and software (noting opensource seems to have done a great job, and if we could only KEEP Net Neutrality .. we'd be better off to the alternative I think).
It creeps into everyone's space of sanity, and for me ... eating chicken wings and watching the news .. has lead to the same as gym rats lifting then seeing some stuff that makes their blood boil .. you can die from that.
Stay safe my gym rats .. we will both make it through this. :)
At LA Fitness they play "Zoom Media", which is a station which seems entirely payola-based to promote whatever new artist the labels are interested in. (Payola is illegal for stations on the public airwaves, but since this is in-house at a private business I assume it's fine) It's even worse than Top 40; it's more like Top 7, over and over, all day.
I felt like more brain cells died having Fox News shouting at me for two hours at a time while waiting at various doctor's appointments with my mom back in the South than any drinking I've done.