Most of the people I’ve known over the years have had the habit of having a television on from the moment they get up or the moment they get home from work. My wife always does, but when asked why, she only ever said, “It’s background noise.”

I find the chatter of television utterly distracting and irritating. Never mind that the actual content is usually insulting to our intelligence, the side-chatter it produces when you are not watching it is almost unbearable.

One of the real evils of television is the way advertising it produced and presented to be louder and more attention-getting than content. In the broadcast world, this is equivalent to having a huge red banner flapping in the breeze above a car dealer’s lot, or a brightly-flashing sign by the highway at the casino.

The result, for me, is distraction driven close to madness. I hate that chatter.

I also know tons of people who keep broadcast radio on at all times in their cars, regardless of content, usually at levels too low to actually hear and enjoy the content, but too loud to converse over. I despise that as well.

But I’m not necessarily pure. There is one form of chatter that I enjoy and appreciate, though many, like my wife, hate it.

American 689, level at two five zero, light chop.

I’m 10-8, 10-19.

2224 is 1 and 2 to Mercy.

Engine 680 is on the scene. 501 is command.

KC5TFZ monitoring.

Even if none of this chatter yields a news story or other amazing tale, I still find myself digesting and processing all the things I hear on my boxes: crimes, flights, fires, cures, lives saved, persons jailed, information traded; people touched in one way or another.

I have storm-spotted, both as an emergency operations volunteer, and as an amateur radio operator. I have had many discussions with air traffic controllers about this altitude and that waypoint. So once in a while, if you are lucky, you might hear my voice in the chatter.