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“I hear it all the time,” said Michael Lombardo, the president of programming at HBO. “People going, ‘I can’t commit to another show, and I don’t have the time
by soylentcola 11y ago
“I hear it all the time,” said Michael Lombardo, the president of programming at HBO. “People going, ‘I can’t commit to another show, and I don’t have the time to emotionally commit to another show.’ I hear that, and I’m aware of it, and I get it.”
That doesn't really happen to me at least. I've come to love serial television (mostly drama/scifi/adventure/etc) and I'm often hunting for something to watch because I've watched everything of interest. I think this is mainly because a) There are a lot of shows that hold no interest for me and b) the stuff I do like will be binge-watched over the course of a week or a month.
I treat these serial, scripted programs like novels almost. When I find a novel that looks interesting, I read several chapters most nights before bed until I finish it and then look for a new novel. With TV, I can skim HBO Go, Netflix, etc. for something that looks good and then spend the next week or more just watching an episode or three every night when I'm at home and not working on something.
There really does come a point where you exhaust just about everything you might want to watch and it sucks because I've gotten spoiled. It's as if I finished all the entertaining novels out there have to wait a year for one or two more to trickle out one chapter at a time.
- chimeracoder 11y ago> ‘I can’t commit to another show, and I don’t have the time to emotionally commit to another show.' I don't have this problem at all. There are shows that are too intense of a commitment for me (e.g., there are only so many Breaking Bad or Game of Thrones that you can watch at a time), but I always find myself at a loss for the lower-key shows. I end up watching reruns of shows that I know I like, but there are only so many of those on Netflix, so either I end up watching the same ones over and over, or I turn to my non-Netflix collection. > It's as if I finished all the entertaining novels out there have to wait a year for one or two more to trickle out one chapter at a time. This is why I love Netflix originals. Aside from being consistently high-quality and high production value (comparable to HBO/Showtime), they're perfect for binge-watching. I actually don't binge-watch so much, but I do appreciate being able to choose my own pace, which Netflix is perfectly optimized for.
- fluidcruft 11y agoMy anecdote: I've never been a cable subscriber and have been OTA only. There was a season 2008 or 2009-ish, I can't remember exactly, where literally every single scripted show that seemed promising was canceled by the networks after one or at most three episodes. Since then I stopped caring about live TV at all.
- DanBC 11y agoWasn't 2007/2008 the year of the writer's strike? That's obviously going to cause a bit of disruption. I agree that US tv doesn't seem to give shows a chance to get established. There are some potentially great shows that got cancelled too soon. (Space above and beyond; jericho; firefly; etc etc).
- fluidcruft 11y agoI don't remember any shows being canceled while on air due to the writers strike. IIRC the programmers seemed to understand the challenge and were more lenient that year anyway. A huge draw for me with Netflix's "dump the whole season" approach is that the entire work unit has proof of life before I commit any time to watching it.
- saturdaysaint 11y agoReally? I feel like everyone I talk to has some show that they "have to get around to watching". The front page at http://www.avclub.com/tv/ http://www.avclub.com/tv/ probably shows around 20 shows I've either not watched or barely scratched the surface of and likely never will, barring early retirement.