Raise your hand if you consider yourself a television watcher.

My guess is not a lot of hands went up. The first reason is probably that raising your hand because of something you’re reading might look weird to the passerby. The second reason might just be that you, like a large number of others (particularly in college), don’t watch much television these days. By watch television, I mean sit in front of a TV and watch shows.

Now, I know that making the argument that TV watching is a dying art might be somewhat controversial, especially since there have been surveys done that show watching TV shows is growing in popularity. But watching them in front of TVs seems to be rapidly declining. In one survey taken in 2009, the popularity of watching live TV dropped 10 percent from the year before.

You remember those scenes in “Back to the Future” where Marty’s family and Marty’s mother’s family are all sitting at the table watching television shows, eating dinner? In the days of “Leave It to Beaver” and “I Love Lucy,” watching television seemed to be a family affair, a time of togetherness. What changed?

Well, over the years, for whatever reason, it seems like TV has tried focusing on the younger crowd, abandoning most attempts to create television for family affairs. Television became edgier, more violent and sexually charged, alienating many of the older “Moral Majority” crowd. But get them while they’re young and keep them around and your audience will grow, right?

But video games are ruining that. Video games, for whatever reason, seem to be doing well snagging the younger and younger audiences. Because of this, it seems the golden age of Saturday morning cartoons, like “Batman,” “Spiderman,” “Darkwing Duck” and “Recess,” has disappeared. I remember almost missing the school bus as a kid just to watch “Mighty Ducks” or “X-Men.” These days, it seems far less prevalent.

Still, television has managed to come out with some good, solid, attractive shows. And yet, in spite of those successes, viewers are slowly losing faith. When the quality of shows like “24” or “Heroes” suddenly drops and becomes hokey, or when the season finales of beloved shows like “LOST” disappoint (seriously, ask a LOST fan how they feel about polar bears), when shows like “House” become too formulaic for those not already invested in the characters to jump in, and when networks start killing off great, well-loved programs like “Conan O’Brien,” “Firefly” and “Futurama,” the audience’s faith starts to waver. Gone are the days of shows like “M*A*S*H,” “Seinfeld” and “Friends.”

And yet, people do still watch TV. It’s just become far simpler to watch it on the Internet, via Hulu or other websites, or to get series from Netflix. Talking to many friends of college age and beyond, and pulling from my own experiences, watching television tends to only happen with sports or boredom. And even with the boredom, often one will just turn it to a favored network, like the Food Network or USA, and let the TV cure their temporary boredom/insomnia.

Especially because of the Internet, watching TV just doesn’t have as much a draw as it did in years past. Too many repetitive, boring commercials and too much of nothing, and sometimes expensive nothing if you’re paying for cable, makes the Internet a far bigger draw. No need to buy a television or cable. No need to channel surf, looking for something you’ll enjoy. And you can watch any show any time, pretty much. If you can’t, you can buy DVDs or get them on Netflix.

Television shows will live on as time continues, but it seems, despite the gimmicks of 3D TVs and huge screens, DVDs, film, video games and the Internet may one day choke the last bit of life out of live TV unless something changes. Maybe more wardrobe malfunctions at Super Bowls? Nah, YouTube will be around to cover that.