It's not so simple - TV and Sprawl may be contributing factors to the generational divide, but even controlling for those factors statistically you still get a lot of variation that you can't explain. For instance if you look even at people who live in a small town and watch about the same about of TV as the past generation did in 1960, they still participate a lot less.

Sure... But it's not just a question of how many hours a week you watch TV - it's about what you watch. There's a big difference between the likes of"I Love Lucy" and "Little House on the Prairie" and the modern fare of "CSI" and "24". The interesting question is why has the general tone of TV programming changed so much... Personnally, I suspect that paranoia-inducing programming makes for a much better advertising vehicle.