If TV sound and picture go away in February, is that a bad thing?

Raise your hand if you don't know that in February of next year your television will just show gibberish if you don't have cable TV, a satellite dish or have purchased a special box to attach to your set to receive signals through your set's antenna.

Actually, a little more clarification is in order.

What will happen Feb. 19 is that the gibberish you ordinarily get on your TV will be replaced with new gibberish - in the form of the picture and sound being replaced by a sort of black-and-white fuzz, which will be a signal to you that the set is not receiving the new signal.

If you don't know what's happening next February, it probably means that you watch so little television that you won't even notice if "Dancing with the C List Celebrities" disappears into the void.

For this monumental change, caused by the federal government's desire to sell off the public airways for billions of dollars, has been being explained on television about every two minutes or so for some time now.

Most of us in Naperville will not be affected by this, because we primarily are served by one of the two cable TV companies or have a satellite dish.

Even I, one of the last of the technology dinosaurs, switched over to cable TV years ago after many years of vowing fervently I would never pay for television.

In doing so, I went from a half-dozen channels with nothing good to watch to more than 60 channels with nothing good to watch.

Now that the only over-the-air network show that I view regularly, "House, M.D." has been switched from Tuesday to Monday nights, the absolute best thing on television Tuesday is the Naperville City Council meetings. The plots aren't always that compelling, but the acting is superb.

Still, I shell out 50 bucks a month for the pleasure of watching Larry King lob softball questions at one of the aforementioned C list celebrities, or golf from Dubai, or enthusiastic yuppies spend a measly $2,000 to renovate a house, or a knockoff of "Law & Order" everywhere I look.

Not that TV is without its moments.

Who would have thought that a cooking show would have its own band, but the one on "Emeril Live" provides a really neat segue between "bams" and several minutes of commercials in each of its many breaks.

And as for the City Council, if that were the only thing I'd be watching on TV - and sometimes it seems as if it is - I'd be spending close to the same to watch the council meetings than on the portion of my tax bill that goes to fund city services. Obviously, if one had to choose, the excellent police, fire, public utilities, and other services provided for that money is far and away more valuable to our quality of life than anything TV has to offer.

It was not long after cable TV became, supposedly, one of life's necessities, that I began to think "What's next, pay radio?"

Sure enough, satellite radio came along a number of years later in the form of XM and Sirius.

The other day, as I was pushing the satellite radio station buttons in the car, I was thinking "200 channels and nothing to listen to."

Contact Tim West at west@scn1.com or 630-416-5290.