As part of our recent trip, we’ve been staying at a new hotel every day. Each morning, when our “horde” of 8 people descend on the hotel breakfast area, we encounter the interesting dilemma of what to do with the hotel breakfast TV.
Typically, the hotel breakfast TV is turned to a news channel such as Fox News, CNN, MSNBC or the like. Not only is this not entertaining for our kids, the subject matter is usually not one I’d choose for them. For example, the main story this morning was “Charleston SC shooting of 9 people ruled a hate crime“. But, because of the power of “the glowing box”, there’s not really any way to get away from it (and stay in the hotel breakfast area)
Changing the hotel breakfast TV channel?
So what to do with the hotel breakfast TV? If there is nobody else in the room, I’ll change the hotel breakfast TV to something more kid-friendly (typically Disney).
Of course, that ends up with a different “glowing box” problem – the problem of not eating their breakfast because they’re in “zombie mode” 🙂
What if there are other people in the room?
It’s been my observation that typically most of the people in the hotel breakfast room are not really watching what’s on the TV either (adults are not immune to “glowing box syndrome”!!). So people are just watching the hotel breakfast TV just because it’s what is on.
So I tend to think that if I were to ask if it was okay to change the channel, most people would be okay with it. That might work fine if there’s just 1 person / group in the room, but I’m not super excited about making a large announcement about it!
Typically though, I don’t ask, because I want to be sensitive to other people, if they REALLY are watching whatever is on the hotel breakfast TV. I think people might feel pressured to agree to my changing it, even if they don’t really want it to change.
What I do with the hotel breakfast TV remote
So what do I do? I usually wait until everyone else has left, and then I change the channel, and then hog the remote :-P. There’s a lot of inertia in the hotel breakfast TV channel – whatever happens to be on just gets left on because (almost) nobody cares enough to get up and change it.
I’m sure there are plenty of people who are not super excited to watch kids TV, but I know of very people that go down to hotel breakfast to watch TV!
So what do you do in that situation? If you have kids, do you proactively ask to change the channel? If you’re traveling without kids, would you mind if a parent asked to change the channel to something kid-friendly?
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Dan Miller travels with his wife and 6 (SIX!) children. He loves to help families travel for free / cheap, especially larger families. If you are looking for help, drop him an email at 
There was a time when I took my kids with me to get the oil changed in our van and there was some daytime trashy TV show on in the waiting room. There were already 3 adult men in there sort of watching it, because it was on. But it quickly became apparent that this was NOT
Sorry, hit the wrong button and posted before I was ready. As I was saying, this was NOT the sort of show I wanted my kids to see. At that point, my mama bear mode kicked in and I didn’t even give the other men in the room the option. I just stood up and said, “I don’t know if you guys are watching this, but I’m changing the channel because this is not a good show for kids.” That was that. After I changed it, one guy leaned over and said something like, “That wasn’t even a good show for adults!” I guess he felt uncomfortable with it on as well, but didn’t feel comfortable enough to get up and change it.
Usually the tv is tuned to ESPN or cnn because the hotel, lounge or airport has a contract to show those or they “think” that’s what people want to watch. I would rather watch the local news to see the weather since breakfast doesn’t take long and we know the weather channel doesn’t show it anymore.
I agree with you about changing it. We were waiting in an airport one time right after the Sandy Hook tragedy. Luckily, the sound was off and neither of my kids could read. Everyone else was glued to the TV, but I can safely say my kids are still blissfully ignorant of such things.
I’ll watch TV shows that aren’t hypersexualized, overly politicized, or just plain stupid.
Here’s my list:
…
LOL that’s how I feel some (most of the) time