Hypnosis is probably the closest metaphor as a state but I don't know if I could equate it [with television watching]. Hypnosis is a state where you destabilize the ordinary state and then eventually get people into an altered state where they will follow a particular stimulus input much more strongly and with much less critical reflection than they would normally; there is certainly a lot of comparability there.
— Charles Tart
ClosestEquateHypnosis