TV and Time Shifting...

Let me start by saying I watch tv. A lot of tv. More than I should I know. I am old enough to remember having to watch shows when they were first shown. If you missed it you were out of luck unless you were able to catch the repeat during the off season. Then the vcr came along. And those stacks and stacks of videotapes that piled up next to the tv of shows I planned on watching.

Now we have the dvr. Which I love to put it mildly. We tape a lot of shows. And have to debate which ones to delete when we need more room on the dvr. There is something great about being able to watch shows when I want to and to be able to fast forward through the annoying commercials. Instead of taking an hour to watch a show I can watch it in about 41-42 minutes without commercials. A nice time saver.

But are all shows worth taping? As we delete ones we have previously recorded without watching I am starting to wonder. A show like the new Hawaii 5-O for example. It is not a bad show. But after seeing so many episodes back up on the dvr waiting for us to watch I have decided it is not one worth time shifting. It is one of those shows that if you happen to be home that night, there is nothing else on, and you don't feel like doing anything else, then it is ok to put on and watch. Record though? No, I don't think it is worth waiting for. Definitely not water cooler fodder. Just one of those forgettable shows that are time fillers. Like a lot of tv these days...

cable tv and commericals

I ended up watching a fair amount of tv this weekend. I always thought there were too many commercials before, but I have to say things have got a lot worse. It seemed that every time I changed the channel I found another commercial. And then another and then another. It is one thing for network tv to show all these commercials, but cable? I pay for cable. It is not cheap either. So why do I have to watch all these commercials? And they have no relevancy to what channel they are on either. I have no idea how advertising works on cable, but shouldn't the commercials have something to do with the audience that is watching a particular channel or show? If advertisers are going to just throw away their money than can't they just give it to the cable companies and spare us from watching their lame commercials? For example the Fuse music video network is always showing commercials for getting out of paying the IRS tax bills. Does Roni Deutch really think that the people who watch music videos are going to have huge IRS bills? Next time you are watching cable pay attention to the commercials and think about what channel you are watching. Are advertisers that stupid? So between totally mismatched commercials and the excessive numbers of them I can see why more and more people are not watching tv. I do record a lot of shows and it is not just because I am not home to watch. I record to fast forward through all the commercials. And I know I am not the only one that does this. Thankfully there are not that many shows worth watching on network or cable anymore. And I don't know what I would do without my DVR...