Living in South America, one of the only ways to watch my tv shows from home was to use torrents. This meant illegally downloading my favorite shows to watch them. Without downloading torrents illegaly to watch tv, I would simply not be able to watch these shows at all.

More legal alternatives to torrents while traveling in places where you can´t watch tv shows do include a slingbox, or using a proxy to access Hulu, but even still, torrents are sometimes just the easiest way to gain access to that show you might have missed.

So Why Do We Use Torrents to Download TV Illegaly?
For some it might be the only way to gain access to a show. For others it might be just the fact that it doens´t feel like stealing when nothing physical has been taken. Like me, I like to have a backup copy of my movies and tv shows without needing to convert them.