Television Watching Etiquette

Is it proper for a guest to request a specific show or none at all? When is it all right for TV to be the focus of a social situation? May the television be on during dinner? What about the place of the remote control? What about the volume? —1983 Advertisement for televisions with their sale prices. 

Social propriety of television

MISS MANNERS — IS THERE SUCH a thing as television etiquette? My specific questions relate to TV watching and guests, visiting relatives and the role of the host. When is it proper for a host to ask for quiet from the visitors when watching TV? Does this depend on whether the visitors are relatives or other guests? Does it matter if the situation involves dinner, a casual visit or a transactional situation?

Is it proper for a guest to request a specific show or none at all? When is it all right for TV to be the focus of a social situation? May the television be on during dinner? What about the place of the remote control? What about the volume?

If someone has made an advance call and received permission to visit, and upon arrival is offered a refreshment, is the visitor required to accommodate him/herself to the TV show in progress? Is the regular TV watcher ever expected to alter his/her habits? Or should all socializing with the TV addict take into consideration this affliction?

What about reading and telephone addicts? Is there hope for socializing among people of different TV traditions?

GENTLE READER Not while that thing is on. Please turn it off so that we can converse. Conversation is, in fact, the chief feature (nicely supplemented by food and drink) of all social engagements unless another activity has been announced in advance. You can invite people to watch television or roller skate, play whist, paint the house, spin the bottle, stuff envelopes or but only if you specify the move the piano activity, so that the guest can plead a previous engagement to attend a funeral that day.

The host should be alert to setting the volume at an agreeable level and, unless the invitation specified the program to be watched, consider suggestions on what to watch.

Communal television watching has no point if it does not include the exchange of smart remarks. You can thus only shush people to the extent of saying something like “Hey, wait a minute, I think they're about to announce the results.”

Television watching should not be even an incidental part of any other visiting, unless during a visit that is either long a weekend or more or of such a frequent nature someone who drops by often that the actual socializing is intermittent. The same goes for reading or telephoning. You need not suspend your normal activities for someone who is always there, although Miss Manners assumes here the normal household politeness of checking to see that one is not interfering with the comforts of another.

Mind you, Miss Manners is not condemning the television addicts. All they need do to watch their program uninterrupted is to refrain from inviting people or from agreeing to visits that are proposed to them. She will even forgive them for saying “Oh, I'm so sorry, 8 tonight is a bad time for me I have a firm commitment then, and won't be free until quite late” instead of explaining why they always seem to be tied up during primetime. — By Miss Manners, aka Judith Martin, 1983

🍽️Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber of The RSVP Institute of Etiquette, is the Site Editor of the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia