Like many of the more savvy and dedicated (or just busy) television watchers out there, I tend to time shift a good half to two thirds of what I watch.
That’s mostly because bunches of it is on major networks during prime time.
As anyone who knows me is surely aware, I love my TV shows. Watching TV with my brain turned on has been a hobby of mine for at least two and half decades now.
Lately, though, I’ve noticed that some of those time shifted shows have been lingering on the DVR longer and longer. Some never get watched before they get erased to make room for something else. Right now I’ve got nearly a whole season of three different shows awaiting me in time shifted, digitial format. These are shows I was all about watching, really… some of the better ones from last season that I just couldn’t catch for one reason or another this season.
So why do they sit unwatched? Mostly because there’s no imperitive to watch them. Since the writer’s strike the viewing habits of a whole lot of people around me have changed considerably. (And most people I know didn’t watch all that much TV to begin with.) They either catch things sporadically, have been sucked into reality shows or time shift most of their own viewing.
It’s that last caveat that really gets me.
Once upon a time, a show would be on and, if you wanted to see it, you had to watch it right then. Chances are if the show was a big enough deal, by the next time you ran into friends with similar tastes, they’d have all seen it at the same time.
This simply isn’t the case any more.
Now it can be anywhere from that night to when the season comes out on DVD that people watch that one episode you so want to talk about. Now there’s always the fear of spoilers and leaked “secrets” and surprises.
Thankfully, there are still a few “go to” shows that are still event TV. Battlestar Galactica, Heroes and a few others have managed to hold on to their status as water cooler chat fodder. Chances are good that if you talk about them the next day, people will have seen them.
But half the stuff on my DVR right now? Nope. Not event TV. Even worse, in my circle of friends, there aren’t a whole lot of people watching those particular shows. If I bring them up in conversation, forget being able to talk about a recent episode, I’m lucky if people have even heard of them.
By far this is the biggest problem that time shifting and the introduction of new viewing venues (online and DVD among others) has caused. There’s no doubt that the networks have been veyr slow to adapt to this change. So far, their main course of action has been to attempt to promote everything as “event TV”… and we all know that most of it simply isn’t. Well, that and adding more cheap reality shows to the schedule.
People like me, who devour TV shows, are left a bit adrift unless we want to put in the legwork to pop into very specific fan communities to discuss our latest viewings–and that can even run into trouble when you’ve let a few episode back up and really want to discuss the first of the bunch while eveyrone else is on the last.
So this is the time shifting dillemma: how do you do it and still make it feel worthwhile? That’s what I’ve been struggling with for months now.
Because if I don’t talk about these shows–if I don’t exercise my brain–they feel like the waste of time other people purport them to be.
(Of course, if you watch TV with your brain turned off like most people out there, this isn’t a problem at all.)
In the coming weeks and months, I’ll be attempting to solve this problem and others by writing more here.
Hopefully, you’ll be along for the ride and work your brains, too.
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