It's a running joke in our house that one of my husband's genes is the TV watching one -- if there is a TV in the room, he is glued to it. Also, that our kids obviously all inherited that gene from him.
I grew up in a house where the tv was on nearly 24 hours a day -- my dad would love nothing better than to just sit and watch tv all day and he has never been much of a reader. My tv is on all the time too, and we have a DVD player in our family car, with a selection of DVDs.
I do not know if my kids have ever seen me read -- I usually read out of their sight, and now that I have an ebook reader, I've stopped buying physical books.
My kids do prefer tv over books, but I also believe they will grow up to be readers. We have a very large selection of children's books at their fingertips, as well as new ones popping up all of the time, often with their help selecting them. We often browse books when we're in the store shopping for new movies or CDs (they are usually in adjoining aisles), go to bookstores whenever we pass one (often at their request) including (or maybe especially) when we are on vacation. (That's how my oldest discovered first the Michigan Chiller and then the American Chiller books -- on vacation and browsing at a bookstore in Mackinaw City.)
I think we spend just as much money on books for the kids as we do DVDs for them to watch.
I believe that having so many books available to them, as well as a willingness to read to them, encouraging them to read, and helping them find books that they want to read is what will hold their interest, despite the lure of the shiny tv. Books are more accessible too, since TV watching is limited to the availability of a single resource; no matter how many shows you have, only one can be "used" at a time.
I will accept that if I was not a reader, the story might be completely different. Even my husband not only read a book for fun for the first time in his life after we married, but he has also purchased a complete series on his own without any input or suggestions from me. (I had no idea he had picked it up until the second or third volume showed up. He was at Target by himself buying a CD when the latest book caught his eye, and seeing that it was part of a series, bought the first book along with his CD. I wouldn't call him a reader yet, but I'm encouraged that he was open to the idea and didn't just ignore it since it was a book.)