Today the couch is invariably linked to both domestic family life and television culture. It is often positioned in relation to the television set in a living room and for siesta. It has spawned social phenomena such as the couch potato, a person who spends a lot of time watching the television. The couch has also become the central prop for many TV sitcoms and soap operas.
This symbiosis, through which the couch has shifted from the private to the public sphere, has been satirically depicted in popular culture, in television series such as Married... with Children, The Simpsons the big comfy couch and Beavis and Butt-head. Tom Cruise also received a good deal of ridicule in 2005 for jumping the couch on The Oprah Winfrey Show as a way of professing his love for Katie Holmes. Recently the couch has been linked to news articles about couch-burning by the West Virginia University football and basketball squads after major victories.
