I don’t write about TV much for one simple reason: the little I watch, I don’t usually see in real-time. Depending on the show, I could be a week to a couple of months behind, though I tend to stay current with the news. By the time I see it, much of it is an old story. Which begs the question, how long should one wait until writing about “spoilers”? After all, many people timeshift their viewing with the TiVO or VCR or, in my case, DVR. As of this writing, I STILL haven’t seen the season finale of Grey’s Anatomy, which aired two weeks ago, but I read, in a passing message on a blog, a major plot point that I wish I didn’t know. Whereas my wife still doesn’t know who won Dancing with the Stars, at least until she sees her hairdresser Wednesday, though, in fact, I do. It’s not a show I watch, so I’m not upset about that.
When I came back from my trip at the beginning of May, our DVR was 90% full. But with seasons finally ending, first Parenthood, and the The Good Wife in April, then the rest of my shows in May, the list slowly but clearly is on a downward plane, running anywhere from 48-52% full. I’m hoping that by the fall preview season, it’ll be close to zero.
It helps that there are so many reality shows in the summer that I’m not interested in. The only thing on the recording list is the final season of The Closer. And at least so far, I’m not likely to add a show to record in the fall; in fact, I haven’t added a show in a couple of seasons.
And the shows everyone tells me I SHOULD be watching, such as Mad Men, I’ll have to get the DVDs of the previous seasons first. But I never do – I STILL haven’t watched The Wire, and it’s been off the air about half a decade. Instead, I’ll watch baseball or something I already own on DVD, such as an old Dick van Dyke Show.
I have to figure out which national news broadcast I should watch. I had been viewing ABC News, more out of habit. I thought the late Peter Jennings was excellent, but through the reigns of Charles Gibson and now Diane Sawyer, the news has gotten softer and mushier. The final straw was Friday when the SpaceX rocket docked on the International Space Station. The LA Times thought it warranted a special notice, which I Facebooked. The NBC News teased about it. But ABC News had not a word one about it. It’s become almost as bad as ABC’s Good Morning America and NBC’s the Today show, full of personal dramas and puff pieces; the CBS morning news is CLEARLY better, and on those rare occasions I view morning TV, I watch that.
Our Pay TV comes with a DVR that’s always running perilously close to full, so we often have to delete shows unwatched to record something new. This has become more of a problem since the free-to-air channels switched to HD, which takes up more room.
Because of time differences, and the fact that the New Zealand broadcast of a US TV show can be weeks behind the US, I often can’t help but see spoilers. On the day of the American Idol final, there was big news in New Zealand that crowded my Twitter feed. A day or so later, I accidentally saw something on a US news site about the winner—not that I really cared about that, even though it didn’t air here for another day still. If it had ben a show I really cared about, I might have been upset.
As an aside, I’ve apparently earned a reputation in the family for correcting them when they talk about their DVR and say they’re going to “tape” a programme. “Record,” I apparently always say quietly. I’ll take their word for it, but I do recall mentioning to one family member that no tapes are involved.
True, there is no taping involved. But ever since I realized that to CC someone meant “carbon copy”, and we haven’t used carbon paper to copy in decades, I stopped worrying as much about the changing technology terms.
There was a debate about this on Warming Glow, the television blog I read, and they decided (if I recall correctly) that for “regular” programs, you get 2-3 days, for season finales, you get a week, and for series finales, you get 2 weeks without spoilers. After that, it’s on you. They were laying down the law!!!!
I still have the last three episodes of Homeland to watch which ironically aired in the UK while I was in the US. And I’ve got the media and my daughter pushing me to watch The Bridge (apparently the best tv drama since the last one) and I don’t know where I’m going to find the time.
Turn off your TV, Roger. You won’t miss a thing, I guarantee it.
Streming is where the web and networks are going into deeper and deeper.All of my friends and i we wait for HBO streming go live.