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A Gym Chain Is Banning Cable News
- danielecook 9y agoI'd prefer if gyms would refrain from playing music as well.
- wafflesraccoon 9y agoWhy? Sometimes I forget my headphones at home and I'm always thankful there is music on.
- JenBarb 9y agoGoing to the gym is equivalent to meditation for a lot of people and silence can be helpful for that kind of practice (it's less distracting)
- bryanlarsen 9y agoBecause 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...
- maxxxxx 9y agoI hate listening to music while working out. You can easily get music by taking your headphones but I can't opt out of music if I want silence.
- gknoy 9y agoYou can easily get access to non-music with earplugs, though, and those are both cheaper and waterproof. ;)
- maxxxxx 9y agoI hope you are kidding! If you have problems with my bad breath and constant farting, gas masks are cheap and waterproof.
- gknoy 9y agoI'm only partly kidding. The parent complained that they don't like hearing music while they work out, and advocated for _every other gym user_ to provide their own music, presumably by ensuring they have a music player + headphones on at all times. An alternative option is for some (probably most) people to listen to the available music (or their own if they prefer), and those (presumably few) who want silence to do so by putting earplugs in to block the sound. (I think most gyms play music because they've found that doing so keeps more customers happy, but that may be a mistaken assumption.) From an economic standpoint, the choice is between N people buying/using headphones + a media player, or M people putting in (cheap, waterproof) earplugs. The latter solution is substantially more efficient, and has the added benefit that _most people_ in the gym are probably going to have headphones-off, and more aware of their surroundings, and be easier to talk to or ask questions of. One way gyms might cater to both views is to have set times/days where they play music, and times that they don't, so that you can adjust your workout schedule to meet your preferences. If it matters, my personal preferences are to listen to (nice music) > (annoying music) > silence > (personal music), because I'd rather be unencumbered.
- rifung 9y agoIs it weird that I really don't like wearing headphones while working out? I get sweaty and find it gross to put something I can't easily wash in or on my ears.
- QAPereo 9y agoIs it ever something you want to hear/doesn’t make you want to cut off your ears?
- Analemma_ 9y agoI 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.
- socalnate1 9y agoThis 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.
- Bartweiss 9y agoIt'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.
- tomatsu 9y ago> 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.
- duskwuff 9y agoYou know what's even worse? Gas station TV (GSTV.com). Utterly awful content that nobody ever wanted, spewed at you by the pump while you're filling up your car.
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- maxxxxx 9y agoGood! I don't understand why it's OK to blast us with mindless TV in gyms, at the dentist, gas stations and work cafeteria. Turn them all off!
- r00fus 9y agoThere has to be some support for it either in the company or their clients. I wouldn't be surprised if they got a kickback from the channel.
- Bartweiss 9y ago> 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.)
- monktastic1 9y agoJesus, $600m in funding and a valuation of $5.6b. "The largest single funding round since Groupon in 2011." All to put (presumably) pharma ads in our faces.
- Bartweiss 9y agoI'm used to BS mission statements about "making the world a better place", but that one honestly made me a bit sick. With all the issues in American healthcare, the hot new $600m startup added nothing but more advertisements - and had to fake even that. It might actually have been better for the world to pay all the employees to not build that company.
- r00fus 9y ago> It might actually have been better for the world to pay all the employees to not build that company. The way you do this is to promote government regulation of the funding parties (banks, pharma, etc). Right now they can do what they want and essentially pay to have people lie for them. That kind of stuff would not pass muster in the EU or China.
- JohnStudio 9y agoI 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. :)
- bogomipz 9y agoNow 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.
- hsod 9y agoIt's probably because the sound of a hundred people grunting and panting in a silent room would be weird
- 0942v8653 9y agoWhat about using white noise?
- grogenaut 9y agoThat would open them up to hundreds of copyright infringement claims!!!
- kinkrtyavimoodh 9y agoEven 4'33" of silence might!
- stordoff 9y agoWere I a member of staff, or even a frequent user who doesn't want his own music, I'd hate having to listen to white noise for extended periods.
- chimmy_chonga 9y agoThey play white noise in my building at work and, your first week you really notice it but, once you get used to it being there you don't notice it all. Except maybe when something happens and it turns off and then it's so loud that you wish it was on again.
- MollyR 9y agoI like that idea. Honestly I see so many ipads or tablets on the cardio equipment anyways, I never saw the point of having news at the gym.
- fourstar 9y agoWhy does HN allow nytimes articles? They are always paywalled and I'll bet most people don't even read them.
- rory096 9y agoAre paywalls ok? It's ok to post stories from sites with paywalls that have workarounds. In comments, it's ok to ask how to read an article and to help other users do so. But please don't post complaints about paywalls. Those are off topic. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- Momquist 9y agohttp://archive.li/AtE7T http://archive.li/AtE7T
- jordigh 9y agoReminds me of Aaron Swartz's I Hate The News: http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews 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.
- tw1010 9y agoJudging by how well-informed he was later in life, I think he reversed his opinion on the subject a lot later on.
- whatshisface 9y agoThe 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.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- tw1010 9y ago"If you don't read the newspaper, you're uninformed. If you read the newspaper, you're mis-informed."
- ashark 9y agoIt 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.
- jdtang13 9y agoSo good. We need more silence and less distraction. It's not like it's a bad thing to have an empty wall here and there.
- andrew_ 9y agoI specifically sought out a gym that doesn't have -any- televisions. We're too connected wherever we go, and a respite is both healthy and enjoyable. I guess some folks aren't content with the nonstop barrage of hyperbole that we're inundated by on a regular basis.
- matte_black 9y agoThis is not a scalable solution. Learn to ignore distracting stimuli and you can be free anywhere you go.
- jeena 9y agoWhy don't they just remove the TVs? You can watch TV at home, you don't need to do it at the gym.
- jkelsey 9y agoI'm going to forward this article to my gym. Cable news really isn't news anyways. CNN is entertainment masquerading as news, and Fox is just a 24-7 confirmation bias funnel for conservatives.
- JBlue42 9y agoCan 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.
- BeetleB 9y agoThis is good. I never understood why we have news channels wherever we go. Airports, cafeterias, etc. Why not just put on entertainment channels? Most people treat news as entertainment anyway, and the entertainment channels do a better job of it. Just passed by a TV with CNN running. They were in "Breaking News" mode. The breaking news? Trump is touting his 2017 achievements. This is breaking news? Doesn't he do something like this every other week or so?
- JohnBooty 9y agoThis is great. Staying informed about current events is great, but cable news (a bunch of fearmongering and talking heads yelling at each other) is not the way to do it and being forcefully bombarded with cable news in a public space is definitely not the way to do it. I really hate the fact that gyms and other spaces like this think it's a good idea to plaster TVs all over the walls and bombard you with video. Why? Who enjoys that?
- olivermarks 9y agohttp://www.tvbgone.com http://www.tvbgone.com
- maerF0x0 9y agoI always turn off CNN from my gyms tvs. I call it the Constant Negativity Network. This is not against CNN specific, they're all like that. Workout is supposed to be my safe space to build myself up, destress, work out _my_ kinks. With the news on it distracts and detracts from those aims.
- Beamer92 9y agoI think its a great idea. If you're lifting weights you're probably not watching TV. I get that people on the treadmills probably wanna watch TV. That's cool. There's rows of TVs at my gyms for the rows of cardio machines. The TV provides something to distract and look at. However, the news is stressful. I was on the treadmill last night and I'm just bombarded with MSNBC, CNN and Fox from all angles and I just could not focus on working out. It was stressful to look at, none of it was anything but politicized garbage. If I could've turned them all to cartoon network I'd have done it. Put on local news, then put entertainment on the rest. I'm not at the gym to be more immersed in the ever-present war of buzzwords between political parties.
- shahbaby 9y agoFuck the gym, workout at home
- RickJWag 9y agoGreat idea! I agree it's a good holistic-health measure.
- RickJWag 9y agoTalk about noise in the gym, there is one sound that's missing lately. My gym recently went to these 8-sided, plastic coated weight plates. They're easy to handle, they have holes to put your hand through. But I miss the old 'ching-a-ling' sound of heavy metal when you're putting a heavy load on the bar. Probably a sound that's gone forever.
- DrScump 9y agoUnlike the Gold's Gyms in the area (same ownership) the "discount" gym I go to now gets all the sports channels. So, if I want to catch a game, I can do cardio at the same time. Otherwise, the most requested channel? HGTV!