When I was in college I heard my favorite author of all time, Kurt Vonnegut, give a speech that included a quaint (and wrongheaded) defense of snail mail. He went on and on about the wonderfulness of buying a stamp and putting pen to paper -- all that stuff that makes sense when you're dealing with your thirtieth Erectile Dysfunction spam of the day, but which falls apart the second you want to send a picture of your cool new scar to all of your friends at once (or similarly important things).Well, here I am at thirty about to do what Vonnegut did at my college. A silly and wrongheaded argument for something that I know in my heart we're all better without. I always knew I'd follow in Vonnegut's footsteps as a writer...
I miss the network hegemony. There, I said it.
Before you sharpen your commenting fingers, let me explain myself:
I love TV and I love how it's changed in recent years. I have approximately nine thousand channels that I barely watch (I recently discovered that I have a channel that apparently plays nothing but Westerns all day long; I'm really happy about this fact even though I'll probably never turn back to it). I have a giant HDTV attached to a TIVO that has a few library of congresses worth of space on it. I'm even planning on investing in a Slingbox so that I'll be able to watch my favorite programs in jerkily pixelated spurts anywhere in the country.
On to of all that, as soon as my son is old enough that he doesn't require any more care and feeding from me (which is what, like 4? I don't write for ParentDish so I don't know these things), I'll be building an Apple TV network in my home so I can put all my TV DVDs on a RAID server in my office. That's right, I'm willing to spend forty man hours running CAT5 cable through my home so I don't have to spend nine seconds loading a DVD into the player. That's the kind of dedicated gadget head I am.
For the most part, I've reveled in the changes I've seen to TV in my lifetime. I've embraced every new broadcast innovation like it was an older gentleman with money and I was a stripper with daddy issues. I'm looking forward to see what they're going to come up with next and I can't wait to bore my grandkids with stories about what TV was like when I was a kid.
"You actually had to wait for the networks to decide when a show was going to be aired to watch it. And if you missed it? You had to wait for a (gasp) rerun! Now please, unplug granddad's breathing machine so he can taste the sweet release of death!"
More than anything else, what the new technology has given us is choice.
With the advent of cable, we were given a broader selection of programming. I can still remember the cable box (and I mean an actual box with twenty actual buttons on it that attached to the TV like a giant, wired remote control) being installed for the first time. There was NBC, ABC, CBS... and then there was boobs and the F-Word! I imagine that my first experience with Cinemax was very similar to what religious people refer to when they speak of an "epiphany." It was amazing! Those crazy kids at Stewardess School just couldn't keep their tops on...
But beyond boobs and curses, we were allowed to see some programming that couldn't (or wouldn't) be embraced by the networks. I still rank the first time I saw Robert Klein do an hour of stand-up (an HOUR!) on HBO as one of the seminal moments of my life. Here was a guy being entertaining for an entire hour just by talking into a microphone. I wanted to do that (and if you've seen my complete hour show, you know that I'm almost there).
During the course of my life I've seen cable grow like it was a housewife with a lapsed Curves membership (zing!). And with narrowcasting, I can be assured that if I'm on a channel dedicated to my demographic, my sensibilities will be served to an unprecedented degree. Even the ads will be narrow focused (how did they know I wanted a 7 foot sticky poster of Donovan McNabb to hang on my wall!?)
But I don't have to watch the ads at all thanks to the second major innovation of my lifetime: TiVo. I've written about TiVo before, and my sentiments about the machine are clear: the second they change the silly marriage laws in this country, I'll be making TiVo my bride. Yes I already have a wife and I have a son on the way, but it's worth throwing all of that away because my TiVo understands me. It gets that I don't like advertisements. It feels in its soul that yes, I would like fourteen hours of MythBusters recorded. It knows, sometimes even before I do, that I'd be interested in seeing the 1997 World's Strongest Man competition.
TiVo gives us more choice. With one fell swoop, we're freed from both commercials and the scheduling gurus at the networks. Unless you have a DVR you can't know what a life changing device it can be. (By the way, if you call it "life changing" in front of non TV fanatics, you get a snooty "Surely, you can't mean 'life changing', it's not like it's penicillin or something." At that point, you have permission to stab them with the shrimp fork. Seriously. Just have at it, no one will miss a person like that). The days when you had to rush home to see a show are now on the ash heap of history (like bowler hats or the Hitler-style mustache).
We're currently in a third major revolution: place shifting. It's not quite perfected yet. It's still in that gadgety phase where only people who have the time and tenacity, not to mention a copious collection of ill-fitting science-fiction inspired tee shirts, actually bother to attempt it on any kind of regular basis. Video on iPods and cellphones still isn't quite there yet, either. But I have faith that we're only one or two Steve Jobs and Jonathan Ive hash-brownie late night jam session away from solving placeshifting once and for all. Pretty soon, we'll be able to watch what we want where we want to.
So, let's recap:
Instead of 3 shows on any given night, we now have something approaching forty million.
Instead of watching these shows when they're scheduled to air, we can watch them whenever we want to watch them (and without commercials).
Very soon, instead of watching in front of our (increasingly larger) TV sets, we'll be able to watch our shows wherever we feel like it.
All of those are good things. So why the hell am I writing this column?
Because under this avalanche of choice, something special is being buried. It's something that, once gone, will never return and our society will be the worse for it. It's something that's meaningful enough to me that I've decided to write 2000 words about it for a blog paycheck that couldn't cover the co-pay on the carpal tunnel syndrome that I've incurred by writing it in the first place.
I'm talking about this: Shared Experience.
We're losing the one thing, outside of mindless entertainment and shallow education, that TV does best: providing us with a cultural shorthand that binds us together as a country.
Think about it. When shows were popular in the 1950s and 60s, they weren't drawing eight or nine million people (about what a show has to do to qualify as a "summer hit" nowadays), they were drawing 60% of the TVs in America. Like the empty soulless relationship that I have with most of my family, if you had no connection with someone, you at least had TV in common. And because there was no choice about what or when to watch, you had very specific TV to talk about. "Hey, did you catch Lucy last night?"
Talking TV with someone today is kind of like two boxers dancing around each other.
"Do you watch Rescue Me?"
"No, I never got into it. I could never get past the whole 'Denis Leary stole Bill Hicks's persona thing.' What about the Sopranos? Did you see that finale?"
"I don't have HBO."
"Oh."
"Ooh, what about Top Chef? You ever watch that?"
"No, I'm a heterosexual."
"Oh yeah, I keep forgetting. Hm. Maybe we should just stop being friends."
"Yeah, lets just sit here on the couch and sink into a deep existential depression."
The apex of TV's power to bring people together is probably the M*A*S*H finale. M*A*S*H was late enough in the development of TV to evolve the art of the sitcom a bit beyond three cameras and a boss that's coming over unexpectedly to dinner, but early enough in the modern development of entertainment that it didn't have much competition for viewer's attention. Thus, in 1983 every single person in America had something to talk about the next day at work. That's something special. What do we have now? An email forward of a monkey peeing in its own mouth? Call me old-fashioned, but I'll take Alan Alda over a peeing monkey any day of the week (which, incidentally, is the first time in the history of the world, those particular words were laid in that particular order).
We're running out of those communal experiences. I suppose we still have the Super Bowl. American Idol still has a little heat clinging to Simon's too-tight sweaters. But beyond that...? We're becoming a fractured culture of narrowcasted demographics. The great unifier that was the promise of our new technology has instead become a divider hell bent on slicing up society into increasingly specific advertising labels (I'm a Male, 30-32 that enjoys scatological cartoons and bare midriffs).
Silly as it sounds, TV is our cultural touchstone in a way that movies (too much effort and cost to see all the dreck out there) and books (reading! ha!) have ceased to be. With its demise, I don't see anything rising up to take its place. If you have a suggestion, please leave it in the comments, but don't say the internet. The internet, by its very nature, is not about unification. It's about crazy people writing 2000 word manifestos and people copulating in front of a webcam.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to download my TiVo-ed episode of PTI from last Thursday onto my iPod and watch it on a bus so I don't have to make eye contact with anybody.
TV Squad Ten: Cartoon women who should have Playboy centerfolds
Six Mad Men characters who are in limbo after the finale
Fact or Fiction: Big Bang, Brothers & Sisters and CSI
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
7-09-2007 @ 10:43AM
Chris Wyant said...
Always like reading your columns, Jay. You're very insightful.
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7-09-2007 @ 10:50AM
ral said...
Okay...I actually found myself thinking yesterday "we don't really watch the same type of shows. maybe i WON'T ask her out."
And then you wrote this article. Jeez, way to hit me over the head.
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7-09-2007 @ 11:20AM
Thomas said...
My problem with TV is that there's no real differentiation between new and old stuff. It's hard to find new things amongst all the repeats. Also you have channels showing things you wouldn't think they would which you miss as a result. The National Geographic has a film scheduled recently and it was something like The Firm, something they should not have on. I didn't want to watch it but I might have but would never have known had I not been scanning the tv guide waiting for the kettle to boil.
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7-09-2007 @ 11:05AM
Bukster said...
One point you missed was quality. As the medium expands and more and more shows are on the air, high-quality shows are often cancelled because of low viewership while the dreck stays on top. And the reason for low viewers isn't because the shows are bad, they sometimes just don't have a high enough profile for people to find them. Unlike the writer, i still need a few more channels than 3, but would be perfectly happy with:NBC, ABC, CBS, FOX, PBS, CNN, ESPN, Comedy Central, HBO, TBS, USA, A&E and Discovery. Oh, look at that, the same channels from when cable came to my town 25 years ago.
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7-09-2007 @ 12:02PM
khamel said...
i've been giving this same speech to friends for years and just like the veronica mars audience, i have less and less every year. i really miss the shared experience and have had to make it up with sports, more specifically fantasy sports. theres something special about everyone having the same set of information and being able to discuss it. now all we can talk about is the weather (and even that is an argument these days). everyone should just have to watch what i watch. that seems easier than going back to three channels right?
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7-09-2007 @ 12:12PM
Jen said...
I'm fortunate that my best friend watches about 90% of the same shows I do. We may not watch them all at the same time, but by week's end...we've seen them all. So we usually have a weekend discussion about our favorite TV shows. (What's amusing is six or so years ago, neither of us watched much television at all. Now we may watch too much. When one of us gets hooked onto a new show, we do our damndest to hook the other. :p)
Very amusing blog. I agree and disagree with it (all of it, at the same time? Is that possible?)
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7-09-2007 @ 12:16PM
Victor said...
I agree with every single thing written in the article. However, I want to add a couple of things.
Because of DVR's and DVD's (and DVR's that can record to DVD's--thanks Panasonic!), I find myself watching LESS actual TV now than I did before. I know from watching some series on DVD that I enjoy the all-at-once experience far greater than watching it week to week (that is, unless it's one of the two or three shows that are in the must-see-now category like Lost and Heroes and once-upon-a-time, Battlestar Galactica). However, here I am, three years after getting my first DVR and I have maybe fifteen to twenty entire seasons of TV shows just waiting for me to find 20-something consecutive free hours to sit down and watch it. Of course, when season two or three comes on, I can't watch those until I've watched season one, so additional seasons build up. One day, I keep telling myself, I'm going to tackle finally watching the Sopranos (what? It ends with ten seconds of black and then no actual resolution? Maybe I can wait a bit longer to start watching that).
The stuff I find myself actually watching are 30 minute or hour long History Channel shows or "Bands Reunited" or something else that only requires a mere pittance of my time. (Or Sportscenter. Lots of Sportscenter. And here in Houston, we just switched from Time Warner to Comcast, so that means the NFL Network is finally here. Goodbye every other channel!)
The only things I watch Live are sporting events. My brother watches golf on his DVR. That's crazy! The best part about watching golf on DVR is that you can skip past not just the commercials, but you can skip past the GOLF. (Who won? Tiger Woods? No? Then why do we care about this tournament?)
The other point I want to add is something almost alluded to in the article. Back in 1984, (still the Dark Ages of TV), you only had ONE shot at watching an episode of a TV show (two if it was re-run). You knew what you were going to be watching at 8pm on Thursday, and you knew it days in advance. It was going to be one of three programs. And that was it.
But now, you not only have the networks and what they try to force-feed us at 8pm on Thursday, but the eleventy-billion other channels and their fare. But thanks to DVD's and the internet, I can now watch ANY episode from ANY time in TV history. I can go back and watch the same program I watched on Thursday at 8pm in 1984. I can also go back and watch what was on the other two networks at the same time. Or maybe I want to watch what was on Saturday at 9:30 in 1965.
And lets not even start on the availability of feature films on DVD.
At any given moment, I can watch anything from the entirety of TV or Film history. And much of that, I can watch a second time with commentary from someone that was involved in the production of it.
This is the most amazing thing. But I want it to stop. I can't take it anymore. My brain needs fewer choices. I want the comfort of only having three things to choose from.
While my brain tries to deal with the overload, I'll go watch a YouTube video of a monkey sniffing his finger after sticking it on his butt. That sure is a funny video.
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7-09-2007 @ 12:30PM
Joseph Land said...
I can't say that I agree with everything you said, Jay. But damn if that was not an entertaining article to read.
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7-09-2007 @ 12:45PM
Elf said...
I think people may be remembering the past with rose-colored glasses. Yes, there were fewer offerings on TV, but that only meant a show had to command an even larger audience. The third-place show in a given time slot may have commanded 10 million viewers, a veritable bonanzo by today's standards, but if the competition was pulling in 15 or 20 million then your show was on thin ice. Because television wasn't the cutthroat competitive immediate-result driven industry it is today, networks could afford to let slow-starters like Cheers and Hill Street Blues grow and spread by word of mouth. (Well, to be fair, NBC didn't have anything better to put on in place of those shows either. Today a network exec would just go to his dartboard, randomly hit 'Wayne Brady' and 'Song Lyrics' and voila, a show is born.)
Though I agree completely about the loss of the shared experience. The last time I recall anything resembling a 'water-cooler buzz moment' (excluding any reality crap or sports) was the first airing of 'The Contest' episode of Seinfeld. Not many people actually saw it the first time but those who did see it could not stop talking about it. Word spread so quickly that NBC quickly scheduled a repeat of that episode a few days later and promoted the crap out of it.
(BTW, confidential to RAL: I know you. If you keep waiting for a woman to come along who is even an 80% match to your taste in viewing you may end up very lonely.)
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7-09-2007 @ 1:04PM
Cody said...
I'm just waiting for placeshifting to become more ubiquitous so that I don't feel so foolish being the only person watching Entourage on my PSP on the train.
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7-09-2007 @ 3:02PM
MegaZone said...
Even before TiVo (and I run TiVoLovers.com) I was an 'outsider' with the shared experiences anyway. I haven't been able to stand most network TV for a decade or more. The last pre-TiVo show I made a point of trying to watch was The X-Files, and I gave up on that long before it ended.
I just refused to bend my schedule around the networks. I tried a fancy VCR with cable box control powers, but it was half-baked at best. And most of the shows I watched were 'geek' shows - instead of the network TV everyone else was watching, I'd watch things on The History Channel, Discovery Channel, A&E, TLC, etc. Shows like Modern Marvels, which I still TiVo.
I can't stand American Idol - or, frankly, any 'reality' show. They either bore me or annoy me, or both. The only network programs I really watch are the Law & Order franchise, and some cable shows - I love Rescue Me, and I'm enjoying Burn Notice so far. (Which I TiVo'd originally solely because Bruce Campbell is in it.)
I do get some of the shared experience within my circle of friends - because we all tend to TiVo similar shows, like Mythbusters. I'm also a member of an online community that is into disaster shows - Air Emergency, Seconds from Disaster, Decoding Disaster, etc. And that largely exists *because* of TiVo, and DVRs in general, allowing us to grab these shows when they air.
I will take my TiVo and the ability to watch the programs I enjoy on my schedule over any supposed shared experience any day. Frankly I think the people who have DVRs yet still insist on watching some shows 'live' to get that experience are damned fools.
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7-09-2007 @ 3:18PM
Ryan said...
I know I can't say the internet, but the thing about that is it makes it easier for us to communicate with people from anywhere and everywhere who DO share our TV interests/experiences. So even if we don't share it with our next door neighbor so we can't have a conversation with him the next day while picking up your mail, you can still find someone from Alaska who totally saw last night's 4400 and there you go, a connection through shared experience. It's different, but that doesn't make it less good.
Great post though.
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7-09-2007 @ 4:58PM
Jaymez said...
Dude, you need to get out more. Seriously. I mean, you need help. I'm talking Intervention help.
I have cable TV today for one reason, and one reason only. I don't want a DSL Internet connection. I would gladly give up the TV and just keep my Internet connection, but, my roommate disagrees.
I read this blog for the same reason I scan headlines on the tabloids in the supermarket. Morbid curiosity. There's way too much crap on TV. I keep waiting for some new, scripted show, to come along and peak my interests. The little time I do spend watching TV now is filled with cartoons and documentaries.
Put the History Channel on Sirius and I won't miss TV one bit as I move back towards radio.
I know I sound like an old fart. I'm only 25, though.
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7-09-2007 @ 5:15PM
Oscar Gordon said...
Remember Sturgeon's Law: 90% of everything is crap. In the old days there were maybe 80 shows on in a week, only 6-10 of which were worth watching. Maybe we had fewer choices and thus less stress, but a "shared culture" discussing "My Mother the Car" is not much of a culture.
There is more good stuff on TV today than there has ever been - you just have to look for it. To me, it's worth it.
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7-09-2007 @ 6:22PM
Karen said...
Funny, I've got a similar rant about radio. When I was a kid, in the '60s, there were top 40 stations and there were fuddy-duddy stations (my mom listened to Arthur Godfrey on one) and I think there were classical music stations. But all the kids listened to the same Top 40 station in their area. And on that station you'd hear, on any given day, the Beatles, the Monkees, the Doors, Johnny Cash, Stevie Wonder...you name it. ALL kinds of music. You got a chance to develop your taste in interesting and integrated ways.
Now, radio is completely Balkanized. There's the rap/hip-hop, the pop, the classic rock, the country, the whatever. And if you listen to one station, you never hear a whole wide range of music--music that everyone you knew was also listening to.
I kinda miss that.
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7-10-2007 @ 2:52AM
Michelle said...
Thoroughly entertaining post, and I agree. And I also think that the multitude of choice means that shows that are good get cut -- Veronica Mars, Traveler, Studio 60, Drive, etc. -- while terrible shows are kept on the air, and keep getting created and green-lighted -- ABC and Cavemen, I'm looking at you!!!! It's terrible! But I do think you might be wrong about TV being the only thing that can give a sense of shared experience. Just look at what Harry Potter has done, both the books and the movies! Talk about shared experience!!! But all in all, an excellent post!
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7-10-2007 @ 3:38PM
Mel said...
I'll admit it -- one of the biggest things I look for in new friends is how many shows we have in common. Or if they'd be willing to have me convert them to my shows. Yes, I know, I'm sad.
Being only 16, I wasn't able to experience the age of minimal channels and watercooler TV talks, but I'm liking the way things are now. The Shared Experience is still out there, maybe not in workplaces, neighborhoods, and schools like it was in the old days, but people obsessing over the same shows can flock together on the internet. Forums and blogs are rallying points for discussions, theories, and the fan phenomena known as squee. I may not know anyone at my school that watches Supernatural, for example, but once I get home to my laptop, I know exactly where on the Internet to go to read other's thoughts and share my own. It may be happening on a smaller scale for me, but the Shared Experience is something I revel in: seeing the reactions on the internet the next day, weekly calls to my brother to discuss our shows. The Shared Experience is still there, I just think that it's evolved.
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7-10-2007 @ 6:43PM
Al said...
Jay, I'm glad you like Kurt Vonnegut. He hails my alma mater, the University of Iowa. I think he is a great writer.
Two things
* I want to let you know that you could probably do the whole Apple entertainment center without running wires (wireless)
* And to add that in addition to the 9,000 cable channels, as you already know, programming on the Internet is going to become huge. I'm producing a new Interactive Dating Game show that is going straight to the Internet. The fantastic thing about this show is that people can participate in the game from their homes and win dates. I'd like your feed back on the site.
http://www.InternetDatingGame.net
Thanks, Al
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7-11-2007 @ 6:40AM
Alicia said...
I'm torn - I love having all my TV options. I've got the TiVo with dual tuners and I'm seriously considering buying another unit so I can record four shows simultaneously. But so many options means some great shows slip through without finding their audiences. And, with viewers having so many other choices, networks are too quick with the axe.
Consider your example of M*A*S*H. One of (if not the) greatest shows ever. The network would never have greenlit it today. If it had made it through, it never would have made it past the first season. The show had pretty low ratings out of the gate and didn't find its audience until summer repeats. When viewers had less options - and so did advertisers - networks could afford to give a show time to breathe. Now, some really good shows get canceled immediately because the people who would watch them can't find them immediately (Wonderfalls and Firefly spring to mind as shows that might have been pretty successful if they'd had a greater chance to find their people.)
In the end, I'll keep all my options - I won't give up my horrid Lifetime movies, my Monk or my M*A*S*H reruns, even for the promise of a few great shows. Plus, I already paid for that dual tuner TiVo.
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