azi,
I did grow up with a television (no cable though) in the house, and my experience was similar to yours. My parents barely watched it (except for the news); they spent much more time reading and of course my father spent most of his spare time learning. So I didn’t watch much television growing up and neither did my siblings. Most of my high school classmates did not have television; many of them watched television at their grandparents’ or at the families where they babysat. In general, my classmates who didn’t have televisions at home seemed to spend more time thinking about it than those who didn’t.
That said, I don’t have a television now. I think that television is less appropriate for children today than it was, and the frum community has changed a lot too. Most of my children’s classmates don’t have television so my children don’t really have access to one at all.