I have a TiVo, but because we don't pay for service, I prefer to watch my favorite shows live (rather than set a manual recording). Unfortunately, if the season premier of Lost is any indication, ABC is making the show impossible to watch live. By our count, there was a four minute commercial break every seven minutes. That's roughly 35 minutes of programming in 25 minutes of commercials.
There are two problems with such a high ratio of commercials to programming: 1) Disruption of the narrative flow and 3) Decreased content resulting from what amounts to a shorter show.
TiVo can help resolve the first issue to a certain extent by allowing us to fast forward through commercials. Incidentally, I would think this is one reason why ABC would be judicious with the number of commercials packed into an episode. Lost is a water-cooler show. The kind of show people love to talk about the next day and thus it's exactly the type of show people with DVRs are more likely to watch live. By inserting commercial breaks every seven minutes, ABC is driving away fans that would normally watch the show live.
Even a DVR, however, does not completely elevate the disruption of narrative flow. Sure, a 20 second break while you fast forward through commercials is better than four minutes, but I suspect having to fast forward every seven minutes is going to get old. It breaks up the show too much. Just when you're getting into the story, there's another break!
The second problem can't be solved by a DVR. The show was about forty minutes last year, which still isn't great, but it's better than 35-minutes. We have five minutes less story line in each episode and if you watch Lost you know that a lot can happen in five minutes,
If nothing else, I'll at least feel a little better skipping the commercials. It makes me feel like I'm sticking it to the man even if I know ABC could care less.
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3 comments:
This is why we prefer to rent shows from Netflix. Even though we're a season behind everyone else, we NEVER have to deal with commercials. Our favorites, as you probably already know, are House, MD; Grey's Anatomy; Deadwood; The Sopranos; Battlestar Gallactica; and Six Feet Under.
I am going to miss the DVDs, but I can't wait until next year. One thing I like about shows like Lost is that people talk about them the next day. The only thing worse than being out of the lopp is overhearing a spoiler. So I'm stuck :(
We don't have HBO though, so I can't wait until the next episode of Deadwood comes out.
What we haven't convinced ourselves of yet is that the law school watercooler is not quite the same as the rest of the world.
Here we talk about who got reemed during the most recent socratic attack, whose flirting with the professor, who obviously hasn't done the reading, and how the recent episode of law and order was totally not accurate. You know, the important stuff.
I haven't heard any mention of normal tv shows. And yes, his and I have started watching Law and Order. We also try and catch one of the numerous "reality" court shows whenever we are home at a reasonable hour (not recently) just so we can feel superior in our knowledge.
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