# Do you view certain TV shows from a particular direction? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [June 19, 2009, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-view-certain-tv-shows-from-a-particular-direction/500324 "2009-06-19T19:15:09Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![KneadToKnow](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kneadtoknow/32/3999_2.png) [@KneadToKnow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KneadToKnow)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2009, 9:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-view-certain-tv-shows-from-a-particular-direction/500324/21 "2009-06-20T21:23:54Z")
Add _The Bob Newhart Show_ to **Dan Norder** ’s list, though that’s an apartment, too. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2009, 9:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-view-certain-tv-shows-from-a-particular-direction/500324/22 "2009-06-20T21:32:11Z")
> [@Dan\_Norder](#): > > You mentioned “multi-camera” earlier, but I don’t know why that’d make the difference. I don’t watch a lot of sitcoms, but just off the top of my head (and going from memory, it’s possible I have some turned around) there’s Happy Days, I Love Lucy, The Dick Van Dyke Show, Growing Pains, Who’s the Boss, Step By Step, Full House, Charles in Charge, The Facts of Life (at least until that moved focus, not sure afterwards), How I Met Your Mother and The Big Bang Theory (both apartments, granted), King of Queens, According to Jim (I think – only saw one episode), and many others I vaguely remember but can’t recall the names of. I Love Lucy is a particularly good example of where enalzi’s rule (about the living room always being to the right of the kitchen) is not accurate, given this show _invented_ the three-camera setup. (And in case you’re thinking it’s an apartment, remember that the kitchen was also to the right in the Westport house they moved to later in the show’s run.) ---
**Author:** ![Ximenean](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/aca169/32.png) [@Ximenean](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ximenean)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2009, 9:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-view-certain-tv-shows-from-a-particular-direction/500324/23 "2009-06-20T21:41:54Z")
> [@Jihi](#): > > I can honestly say I’ve never done this when watching anything. The idea of trying to determine cardinal directions on a TV show’s set just seems bizarre to me. I have to confess, even when there are visual cues, (such as a sunset), it never occurs to me that the characters must be facing to the west. It just doesn’t seem that important. This only applies to a certain extent of course. If someone is driving from New York to California and they happen to travel through Florida that’s going to raise some red flags. > > This makes me wonder if there’s some sort of innate trait involved with this. I can’t do it personally, but I can certainly believe that some people might have an ability to orient themselves to true north. Maybe it’s like having perfect pitch or being ambidextrous? Or maybe it’s an example of synesthesia. I’m trying to get way from the notion that those of us who have this sensation are consciously assigning compass directions such as “east” to our mental picture of the setting of the TV programme. It’s not like that. It’s more that, in watching any TV programme, you mentally picture the events as happening in some imagined location. And to me, a fundamental aspect of any location, real or imagined, is which way it is oriented. Not having any feeling for which way things are oriented is, to me, almost as incomprehensible as not knowing which way is up or down. ---
**Author:** ![Hampshire](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hampshire/32/4887_2.png) [@Hampshire](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hampshire)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2009, 9:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-view-certain-tv-shows-from-a-particular-direction/500324/24 "2009-06-20T21:44:45Z")
Interesting responses from a lot of people about my strange OP. Similar to reactions when I bring it up to friends and family. Most think it’s absurd and don’t give their own cognitive maps much thought. Very few I have met have this “sense of north” direction when buiding a cognitive map around a new location whether in real life or on a TV show, video game, etc. Some of my own personal cognitive maps are “wrong”. For instance, I’ve visited Vegas a few times but have it oriented East-West in my mind and that’s how it feels to me when I visit (downtown on the west end). When I visit a Target store even though they are all oriented differently (front doors facing north-south-east-west and everywhere inbetween) once I’m inside my mind immediately re-orients (or dis-orients) them so the front of the store faces west. That way I know where everything is. Internet searches on the subject have led to dead ends for me. The only thing I’ve found on the subject was a little book called [Inner Navigation](http://www.amazon.com/Inner-Navigation-Lost-World-Find/dp/0743222067/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1245534074&sr=1-2) which is extremely interesting (to me at least) and led me to seeking out the author. I eventually got a hold of his home number and talked to his wife (who was thrilled someone read his book) but unfortunately informed me he had passed away in early 2008. ---
**Author:** ![DfrntBreign](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/f6c823/32.png) [@DfrntBreign](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DfrntBreign)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2009, 10:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-view-certain-tv-shows-from-a-particular-direction/500324/25 "2009-06-20T22:17:48Z")
So tell me, which direction are the people on Star Trek facing? 🙂 I’ve run across this concept a few times in science fiction. Some people are very spatially oriented (for lack of a better term), and consequentially have a harder time adjusting to weightlessness (okay, okay, micro-gravity environments). I wonder if this is some sort of real world equivalent? ---
**Author:** ![The\_Shroud](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/439d5e/32.png) [@The\_Shroud](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Shroud)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2009, 11:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-view-certain-tv-shows-from-a-particular-direction/500324/26 "2009-06-20T23:12:01Z")
I’ll admit I found the OP a little odd, but I can think of one example from my own experience; for years, I pictured the marquee of David Letterman’s Ed Sullivan Theater to be facing West; turns out it faces East, and now that I live in NY I often find myself momentarily disoriented when I pass by the theater! ---
**Author:** ![Driver8](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b5a626/32.png) [@Driver8](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Driver8)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2009, 11:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-view-certain-tv-shows-from-a-particular-direction/500324/27 "2009-06-20T23:21:55Z")
I don’t even think of the things I see in real life this way! More often then not, I have no idea which way North is. ---
**Author:** ![notfrommensa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/f14d63/32.png) [@notfrommensa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/notfrommensa)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2009, 11:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-view-certain-tv-shows-from-a-particular-direction/500324/28 "2009-06-20T23:23:55Z")
> [@Ximenean](#): > > For me, any kind of sporting event taking place in a stadium, such as football or the Olympics, feels like the field is oriented east-west and the camera is pointing south, IME, every football field goes North-South, at least in stadiums that that don’t do double duty as baseball fields. Every high school football field that I have been to goes North/South As most day football games are played in the afternoon, they don’t want any team having to face the setting the sun at the end of games. ---
**Author:** ![Walloon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/fbc32d/32.png) [@Walloon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walloon)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2009, 6:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-view-certain-tv-shows-from-a-particular-direction/500324/29 "2009-06-21T06:15:36Z")
> [@Dewey\_Finn](#): > > I Love Lucy is a particularly good example of where enalzi’s rule (about the living room always being to the right of the kitchen) is not accurate, given this show _invented_ the three-camera setup. Not quite. Television had been using three-camera setups since at least the [early 1940s](http://www.earlytelevision.org/staging_tv_show.html). The first network sitcom, _[Mary Kay and Johnny](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Kay_and_Johnny)_ (1947–1950), used a three-camera setup. Wikipedia: > [@](#): > > Although it is often claimed that the film version of the multiple-camera setup was pioneered for television by Desi Arnaz and cinematographer Karl Freund on _I Love Lucy_ in 1951, other filmed television shows had already used it, including another comedy on CBS, _The Amos 'n Andy Show_, which was filmed at the Hal Roach Studios and was on the air four months earlier. The technique was developed for television by Hollywood short-subject veteran Jerry Fairbanks, assisted by producer-director Frank Telford, and first seen on the anthology series _The Silver Theater_, another CBS program, in February 1950. Desilu’s innovation was to film with a multiple-camera setup before a live studio audience. ---
**Author:** ![Walloon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/fbc32d/32.png) [@Walloon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walloon)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2009, 6:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-view-certain-tv-shows-from-a-particular-direction/500324/30 "2009-06-21T06:33:55Z")
Error post. ---
**Author:** ![commasense](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/commasense/32/3017_2.png) [@commasense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/commasense)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2009, 12:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-view-certain-tv-shows-from-a-particular-direction/500324/31 "2009-06-22T00:56:18Z")
> [@Hampshire](#): > > For me the main late-night talk shows (Letterman, Carson, Conan, Leno) all are viewed with the audience facing west and the hosts desk facing east. Don’t know if this is the case in real life but it’s how my mind orients them when I watch. I don’t know about the others, but you’re right about Letterman’s orientation. The doors on the stage-right side of the house exit to 53rd Street, which runs east-west, and the stage is on the west end of the house. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2009, 7:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-view-certain-tv-shows-from-a-particular-direction/500324/32 "2009-06-22T07:11:55Z")
I orient all television shows to be facing the exact direction the TV set actually is facing. For example, at my house, the TV is on the east wall, so, since everything is happening in front of me, I assume it is to the east of me. Of course, that’s only when I stop and think about which direction is which. It is not automatic for me like it is the OP. But knowing which way is which is sometimes useful. As for the phenomenon mentioned by the OP: If I were to blindfold you, and spin you until you are dizzy, would you still have any clue which direction you were facing. If not, would taking off the blindfold help, if you were in a room you’d never been in before (with multiple doorways so you don’t know which one you came in)? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-view-certain-tv-shows-from-a-particular-direction/500324.md?page=1)