What wasn't discussed is the stressful process of scheduling the unscheduled. I'm old and I'm used to the network channels offering up their nightly schedules. For over 60 years that process meant even in the DVR era watching TV series more or less within a few days after episodes air.
Yes, choices regarding what shows to watch had to be made, but at the beginning of the Fall Season, the Winter Season, and the Summer Season.
Netflix changed that. They will release all 10 episodes of a series season on a Friday. A few weeks later they might release 8 episodes of another series on a Friday. Next month the same kind of thing occurs. Amazon joined them, although they don't release as many shows, so far. (Acorn TV tends to release two episodes a week of a new series, but will will release three seasons of an older Australian series all at once.)
Apparently Millennials, and others, binge watch these series, meaning they might watch anything from 3 episodes to a whole "season" in a day. In our learning process we've tried this.
Two things about binge watching. The weekly episodes of network TV pile up. It leaves one with an empty feeling when...
- you finish a "season" of a good show in two days,
- you know next season has been ordered, and
- you know it might be 8 months or 18 months before the next season is released.
Fortunately, Hulu, CBS All Access, PBS, HBO, and Showtime continue to provide weekly episodes of the shows we've been watching on "regular" TV, some shows for over a decade like "NCIS." And they release for streaming each episode of these shows the day after it airs. This allows one to schedule those shows in an orderly manner pretty much as we did in 1998.
There are some "problems" with this when you have ingrained viewing habits. As I mentioned in a previous post, "CBS Sunday Morning" has been a Sunday breakfast companion since 1979. CBS All Access does provide it to us but late at 10:30 am. Even though that is more generous than if they had waited until Monday morning, it makes it late for Sunday breakfast. And HBO holds the Friday night episode of "Real Time" until Saturday. Still, one can schedule around these "problems."
But once those weekly shows are listed in a schedule, a new "problem" appears - the amount of viewing time remaining in which to watch shows from streaming-only sources like Acorn TV, Amazon, and Netflix is inadequate.
The solution is to treat all these viewing sources as "channels" and intersperse that programming into the viewing schedule. The channel Hulu replaces the listings for ABC, Fox, and NBC. CBS All Access replaces the listings for CBS.
It becomes obvious that if we want to start watching new episodes of "Bosch" when they are released by Amazon we have to reduce by one series the broadcast network programming we watch. And because many shows, particularly those from other countries, have a "season" of six episodes, we need to know in advance when event programming like March Madness college basketball preempts a significant amount CBS programming for at least a couple of weeks. And we need to be ready to intersperse episodes from Acorn TV or Netflix shows for those weeks in which broadcast network shows are either not on or in reruns.
The other reality is when we sit down to watch TV, we cannot grab this week's TV Guide magazine like we did in olden days like in 1960:
Click on image to see a larger version!
As I noted in my last post, I have hopes that some of the cable channels will find a way to transition their programs conveniently into the streaming world without blowing up the streaming economic model. Right now they are locked into costly streaming packages that are equivalent to cable packages.
What I'm considering and testing is what it would feel like to not watch cable channel original programming, replacing it with that from streaming sources. It's difficult to just drop shows we've watched for several years. But streaming-only sources for original programming like Netflix do adequately provide replacements for the relatively few cable series we view.
Still, it's tough at any age to break old habits. When you're a TV viewer who remembers watching TV in 1951, it is difficult.
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