I spend a lot of time binge-watching TV shows on Netflix, but I also have a number of current-run TV shows that I try to follow regularly via the network web sites. Lately, though, I’m having a harder and harder time staying current with them.
It’s the commercials. But it’s not the fact that commercials are annoying, or that (online, at least) it’s the same commercials over and over. It’s the extra 12-15 minutes they add to a show. I’m starting to think that watching so much Netflix TV has conditioned my brain to expect an episode’s story to be wrapped up in 45-48 minutes, and it feels like something is wrong when it isn’t. I was recently watching an episode of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, which I think is the best show on network TV right now, and at some point it started to feel like the episode was just dragging on and on and on, and I thought to myself, “Holy crap, isn’t this over yet?” I checked the progress bar; nope, there’s still 10 minutes to go. Part of that feeling could be attributed to the fact that the show’s first season episodes were rather frenetic, while this season they seem to be taking a slower, more introspective approach. But more or less the same feeling occurred to me while watching an episode of one of the superhero shows.
So I’ve been having a more and more difficult time bringing myself to stay current with these shows. I start thinking, “Meh, I’ll get caught up when it hits Netflix”.
I have a simple rule: no “real time” T.V. I still follow many of my network and cable shows, but only by recording them on the DVR. I was commenting to someone that I will probably never see most of the Super Bowl commercials, since I didn’t watch the game, and I never see commercials anyway.
I usually end up piling up a few weeks of a show I like, and then binging on it with a quick FF through the commercials. I currently have 5 episodes of Hell’s Kitchen waiting, and only learned that the show has ended for the season because I saw that there was no new one scheduled. So there’s a binge session in my near future.
Only shows like Game of Thrones or Walking Dead that I can’t wait a few months to watch because I know they will get spoiled for me eventually. Everything else just gets recorded until the season is done.
My wife and I watch zero regular TV, only having recorded shows or streamed ones.
My kids are 8 and 6. Never seen commercials other than what Grandma has shown them when she turns on “actual” TV.
Yeah, I can’t flip over to regular TV. We have no cable or anything, but we do have an antenna. I put on tennis on TV once in a blue moon and the ads are really weird. We watched Walking Dead on TV “live” up to a couple years ago. Now, we only watch things delayed.
The internet in general ruined TV for me. I am remarkably ignorant about current TV shows. I am sure there are many famous people and shows that I have never heard of. The on-demand feature is too powerful so I just default to watching what I pick whether it is from 2005 or 1945. I often forget that my TV is not just a giant computer monitor and can play shows in current time (not that I would know what most of them are in the first place). I am not some anti-TV hipster. I just got conditioned to know that my deliberate picks are more consistently satisfying than whatever someone else put in a given time slot.
I still watch plenty of network TV. I don’t have the time to waste bingeing a show; once a week works just fine.
Also, there are some excellent shows on network TV – The Good Place, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, Lucifer, iZombie, Victoria, Mercy Street. And, of course, it’s no big deal to mute the commercials.
This. If for example I want to watch a sporting event and it is starting right now, I’ll wander off to do something else for an hour or two so I can safely watch it later by fast-forwarding through the commercials. It is very, very rare I watch anything in “real time” anymore
The only time I get tripped up is if I get into a series late and have to catch up using On Demand and the bastards have disabled FF for the replay. But that is thankfully a rare occurrence these days.
Rarely will I watch a show “live.” Almost everything has been recorded on the DVR so I can fast forward through commercials. An exception would be any event actually happening live, like sports or award shows. That I will watch live.
I don’t care about sports or anything else that needs to be watched live. DVR and streaming for me. I can’t remember the last actual commercial I saw. I haven’t even looked up the superbowl commercials on YouTube yet.
I hate watching regular TV. Hate waiting a week to see the next ep. Hate commercials.
That being said, we did recently sign up for Sling, which lets us have HGTV or Food Network on in the background on lazy Sunday afternoons, and we can watch SNL and Tonight Shows on-demand, and will give us access to Detroit Tigers games live for the first time in years.
Visit a doctor’s office or lab. I don’t know why this late in the 21st century they think they still need to provide televisions in waiting rooms, and at such loud volumes. But you’ll see commercials there. Strictly speaking, though, I don’t remember what was being advertised, but I know there were commercials.
We’ve been using DVRs for several years so streaming hasn’t ruined “regular” TV for us yet but it’s well on its way to taking over. The urge to watch a whole series/season one episode a night is strong and growing.
As to commercials, I zip thru them very nearly 100% of the time. Mrs. FtG is far less aggressive about them (but I’m not in the room when she’s watching her shows).
We recorded the Big Game and started watching after it had been on a while*. Watching commercials and the big plays. (Went up to halftime and came back to real time early in the third quarter when it was clear the Falcons had won it. Never came back. Atlanta must be so happy.)
So the first exposure to a lot of commercials in some time for me. Errr. And these are the “good” ones? The US TV ad industry has to be torn down and rebuilt from the ground up or else commercial TV is doomed.
My mother’s TV is broken, so she’s been watching her favorite shows on her tablet, courtesy of TVE’s very own app.
At first she was a bit miffed by all that extra time she was getting from the lack of ads, but she’s already found ways to fill it. Also, she’s happy that she doesn’t have to watch them back-to-back and that if she happens to have guests when they’re on it doesn’t matter: she’ll just watch them later.
I want to see what happens once she gets a working TV again: will she go back to using it as the primary source, or will she stay with the tablet? Mini sociology studies FTW
I was thinking about this the other day, and I realized that one thing that has been lost through the concept of “binge” watching is the connection that you used to develop with TV show characters.
I watched almost every episode of MASH* as it aired. MASH* lasted 11 seasons, from the fall of 1972 (when I was 12) to the spring of 1983 (when I was 22 and married). For those 11 years, I invited those characters into my home once a week. I grew to like the characters, to identify with their problems, to root for them. And MASH* wasn’t unique in this regard. I did the same with the characters in Star Trek: The Next Generation over the course of seven years in the late '80s and early '90s. Good television shows do that; they pull you in, develop the characters, and get you attached to them.
I binge watched House of Cards after the third season. It was a very good show in many ways. But I found that I was missing an essential element of the television experience. I wasn’t attaching to any of the characters. It was more of a “what happens next?” fix I needed, not a “oh, my, how will Claire deal with this issue?” I stopped watching after a bit because I stopped caring what happened next, and didn’t care what happened to the characters.
Yes, it’s annoying watching commercials in on-air broadcasts, though since they follow an identifiable pattern (one that’s existed for something like 50+ years now!), I don’t mind it that much (I hate them in movies, however, a change that goes back to Blockbuster!). But I really, really dislike watching TV in binges, because it’s just not the same. Imagine not living with the antics of “Half-pint” for eight years. Wouldn’t you just want to smack her, instead of loving her?
I use a DVR, so watching network shows is no problem (especially with Tivo’s “Skip” feature). I find that having a once a week show a better experience, IMO. Because with the once a week shows, even if I watch it one or two days later, I can have conversations about the show every week, whether online or in person - because folks are all (generally) on the same page. I miss that with bingable shows.
I agree with a lot of other folks here… Netflix didn’t ruin me, but Tivo did. I can’t stand to watch any show “real time” anymore because I have to 4x through all of the commercials (or anything that moves too slowly for my tastes! lol)
Netflix has had no impact on how I consume “regular” television. I have had a “no real time” rule for everything except basketball (which I watch in real time because I enjoy the experience of interacting with other people watching the game online) for several years before I had a Netflix subscription, so that has no effect.
Curiously enough, though, Netflix has “ruined” my consumption of fanfiction. I didn’t realize until after binge-watching Luke Cage how much it annoys me to be reading something that stops in the middle, and having no hope of knowing when it’s going to pick back up again.
