Despite Hazelnut's (perfectly valid!) observations, I have to say that the presence of TV or the amount you watch has absolutely, positively NOTHING AT ALL to do with how much you read.
I grew up in a TV family--and it's something we still enjoy--watching together, talking about shows we watch, etc. I know it's practically sagrilege to admit this *here,* but I'd have an easier time giving up books than TV (I seriously think this has something to do with my ability to MAKE MORE BOOKS, though. I'm not capable of replacing the TV all on my own!). My TV goes on at 5 am, and goes off at midnight (or later). It's not as if I WATCH all that time, please note! It's primarily for background noise for our animals (so they can't hear the idiots behind us putting up new siding, etc.).
HOWEVER... my parents were journalists. EVERYONE in my house read. We had magazine subscriptions, three newspaper subscriptions, made weekly pilgrimages (on foot!) to the Bookmobile, and spent all our mall time and money at Waldenbooks.
I grew up reading a lot of what my big brother read, although our tastes have diverged in recent years (this is a source of sadness to me). My brother would get in trouble for reading instead of doing his schoolwork. He did so poorly in third grade math, my parents had to
take away his books as a penalty. In their defense, he grew up to be a mathematician... so things worked out in the end.
Our grandparents' Christmas and birthday gifts were always books, or money to buy books. Someone in our house was always reading something (quite often AS we were watching TV!).
But I'm probably the only one who limited her reading to almost exclusively novels. I find magazines poorly (or incompletely) written, the newspaper exhausts me... and though I read a goodly share of non-fiction, it's seldom for pure pleasure (but for research for a novel).
My husband's experience was pretty similar--his family watched a lot of TV growing up, too... but their house, like ours, is FULL of books. His mom is one of my best book-buddies--we swap great reads all the time, and always have a stack to trade whenever we get together. His father is a voracious reader of non-fiction, on a few very specific interests. I should also point out that my parents have advanced academic degrees, while neither of DH's parents went to college, and his father has his GED. So in our case, it has nothing to do with how much formal education was received, either. DH's tastes in reading are "typically male." He'll read his own share of fiction... but he'll read a lot of non-fiction, magazines, comics, and big long things he's printed off the internet. What he reads is usually very closely related to whatever he's "into" at a particular moment. He's on a "Star Trek" kick right now, so he's got a lot of "making of 'Star Trek'" books, the recent Christie's auction catalogue, etc.
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My background is in anthropology, and I'll put that hat on now. I think females tend to read a lot for the pure pleasure of it--reading for the sake of reading-- but males read to "get" something out of it--knowledge, education, how to do something, etc. When I was growing up, my father *never* read fiction
unless it was in Spanish, a language he spoke fluently. Reading fiction in Spanish was like a mental workout for him. One of his favorite leisure reads (which I'd see him crack open on countless Saturday mornings growing up) was an Arabic language primer! And I've already described DH's reading habits--lots of stuff to inform whatever his current interest is.
Judging from the TV tastes of my family, it has little to do with empathy or caring about the characters in a story--my dad loves "The Dead Zone" just as much as I do, and has been asking me lately what I think will happen now that a love interest has developed between two characters! Which I could, um, kinda care less about
. Because if males can care about imaginary characters on a TV screen, there's no reason they can't do it on a page.
But reading is just a wee bit more *active* than watching TV... and as one of the men here pointed out, men are programmed to DO... so reading should be an activity that ACCOMPLISHES something.