I had a black and white one when I lived at my parent's place, 20 some years ago.
 
My ex-wife had one - that's back in the 90s. 
 
And today, my wife and I just received our first TV for the bedroom. 
 
Apparently, and according to the box, TV's are now smart - which is kind of funny me considering how dumb the stuff on TV is.
 
Things sure have changed. That thing hooks up to the internet, it downloads software and updates itself. Connexions used to have no secrets for me - it was all so intuitive. Now those things have so many different formats of connexions available, I almost feel like my dad when he tried to use an ATM for the first time...
 
We have no intention of getting regular cable TV - we plan on using this thing to watch stuff on Netflix and such and/or to hook it up to a computer to act as a glorified monitor to watch series and movies.
 
40 inches will be quite a move up from the MacBook's 13 inches screen.  :)

"Sorry base, it looks like we've lost him..."

Too bad we've just finished Dexter and the Walking Dead last week... :/

Just get yourself a digital antenna. I dropped TV about 2 years ago and spent $45 on an antenna. I get 13 channels in HD and in the summer I've latched on to upward of 50. Kind of fun scanning the late night airwaves for oddball channels. I pay the $7.99 per month for Netflix and everything else is free. I had to make a choice between hi bandwidth internet of TV. In 2013 the internet has to win.
 
Funny thing, the antenna signal is way better than the cable signal, and about 8 seconds ahead of the local cable company.

The thing is, we never sit down in front of the screen just to watch random stuff - it's usually either movies we rent on iTunes or series, and pretty much always stuff we've planned on listening. That's something we usually do only one night a week, when my wife is off.
 
And we like to wait until the end of the season or the half season and watch the whole thing in one sitting. I don't think regular TV would work for us. 
 
 

I do basically what you do, except I like to watch the news every day. It's some sort of sick fascination with world events.

I watch sports live, but I have the DirecTV Genie record all episodes of several shows (like House and NCIS) then I sit and watch several whenever I can - forwarding through all those damn commercials!  Of course, this means I can finish an hour show in 40 minutes too.

I used to watch hockey way back before they changed everything to make it more appealing to folks in the US. Besides that, I've always hated sports on TV.
 
When the Olympics started I always felt depressed because it was sport all over the place.
 
So it's Netflix and iTunes or DVDs for us.
 
Even the cats are happy w/ the new telly. Here's Syd watching Too Cute (Animal Planet) with us last night.  He stayed focused for almost 3 episodes. I think he wants a dog... :P