The other night I switched on the shortwave about an hour before the band would open, to a frequency I knew would be populated as soon as the band was up. It was fun hearing the first tentative calls; usually I'd tune around the band(s) looking for 'action' -- this time was more like casting a fishing line prior to the good fishing hour, going about other things, and noting when the line got active.

I don't actually fish so not sure that analogy is quite right.

By the way one of the regulars on that frequency (it's a ham band) had, apparently, fallen asleep with a push-to-talk bar locked down, for quite a while. I wasn't listening at the time but they were all giving it to him about that, later on, when I was listening. One said 'yeah -- you ought to have a mercury switch rigged so when you nod off it shuts off your transmitter'. It was pretty funny. I don't remember him not taking the chiding with a bit of humor of his own, but I don't remember what he did say either.

The AM (MW) broadcast band hasn't interested me much, so I've slowly tried to incorporate some AM shortwave frequencies into my repertoire -- I don't have the time or inclination to do a big frequency hunt, though. That's one nice thing about listening to the ham bands (esp. AM subbands) -- they'll tell each-other (and therefore, you) what's open and what isn't.

For a couple of years I used to keep the television set behind the CRT display for the computer, perhaps 6-8 feet behind it on another table, aimed at the operator's position, and listen absently to favorite television programs. If I needed my eyes too much to follow the show, I'd tend to either watch intently or switch it off entirely -- I don't remember which. Was several years ago (been without active TV habits for some five years now). I've never been much for keeping a radio on when not actively listening, except for ritual 'shows' that had predictable schedules -- those could be on as long as two hours without really giving it my attention. In those cases, often as not I kept them on because I was hoping they'd get interesting enough to stop what I was doing with my eyes (web surfing etc.)

A backup policy, as it were (the web can get dull as well).

Other times, I was so caught up with what I was doing (probably coding, and might be something I can't script but isn't very taxing, like adding paragraph tags to un-HTML-ized text that I'm shaping into HTML, for example) .. that I didn't have enough spare attention to shut off the noise source (the AM or SW radio) since that might break the spell that kept the HTML or coding project hyper-productive (a muse blesses the event).

So it's a mixed bag.

I do use a 913 MHz wireless speaker's transmitter pretty often to monitor interesting audio sources (often AM or SW radio), and if it's getting very interesting I'll clip my scanning radio to my belt, put on headphones, and go about housework or what-have-you, and catch all the action that way. This is very effective when I want to listen to what's going on, but I don't have the time to just sit there with my hands folded to get this time into my schedule.

Generally if my eyes aren't tired they're on the LCD of the computer, if I'm doing any media at all (reading, writing, diagramming etc.). When my eyes tell me 'that's enough' (or when I finally heed them saying so for quite a while) I'll switch over to audio-only such as the shortwave. But most of the time that's short-lived; a brief experiment that says 'what you really wanted was sleep' and I do that instead.

I find it very difficult to simply listen to an audio program; that's the commercial intrusion part kicking in. I would need deliberate media -- media free from sideshows -- to give it my full (or nearly full) attention. Text-to-speech, books-on-tape, that sort of thing. I don't have time or inclination to edit /out/ what someone else put /in/ (commercial interruption, as they used to call it).

I dropped television entirely because I'd timed it with a stopwatch and was more than a little annoyed at the percentage of per-hour use that was not the scheduled program. That's essentially why I curtailed my use of commercial broadcast frequencies on radio reception. Really there isn't much else left except the ham bands and certain functional frequencies such as transoceanic air traffic control and weather and such. If I want something stimulating and engaging and 'real' I'll track weather systems using a variety of www-reachable media types (text reports and still graphic frames, mostly). That can keep me busy for hours.