Ofcom: Blighty has devolved into a nation of unwashed binge-streaming mole people Online streaming has freed consumers from the tyranny of gawping at the crap telly other family members insist on watching, with one-third regularly sitting together in the same room to watch different programmes – according to a major report by Ofcom. Of the 2,356 surveyed, only 30 per cent said they sit together with family …
Sometimes it even improves the experience. Me and my wife have just recently finished re-watching all of Buffy, having not seen any since it finished running on TV. I distinctly remember the last few seasons being a real drag, and yet I really enjoyed them this time. I think it's because, yes, some episodes are a bit of a slog, but you just have to watch one more and the whole thing picks up again. In the good old days you'd be stuck with the memory of that one crap episode all week, and if the next one wasn't great, you'd quickly lose interest.
'Surely:
"THROW DOWN YOUR SPONGE PUDDINGS AND COME OUT WITH YOUR HANDS UP!
"YOU WILL BE TAKEN INTO CUSTARDY!"'
Possibly - but what I wrote is word for word what I actually said many years ago, when I wanted to say something completely random to test something. I didn't stop to consider the potential puns, and just said what came to mind.
I didn't think I could do it, but last September I ditched the BBC completely as a result of the iPlayer catch up change. I thought I'd miss it, haven't missed it one bit. I do have the coast on my doorstep though, which helps.
Ditch the BBC. It can be done.
The BBC has two much hidden dirty laundry and it's so called values just seem mirror the same injustices in society today, obscene payments for Talent, while young single mothers get criminal records for licence fee evasion, even though its avoidable (just).
Make it subscription, de-criminalise evasion. I then might think about supporting the BBC again, it's about time the BBC stood on their own two feet with a Netflix style worldwide subscription. In the meantime I'll just avoid it.
Alas it's still the best source of Science, natural and historical documentaries anywhere on the internet. If you're like me and despise vacuous "I'm a celebrity-xfactor-enders street" type shite, you're only good source of entertainment is something factually based.
Unfortunately, my experience with Netflix, NowTV et al has been less than great. What documentries they DO have are poorly made and lower budget.
<2 cents>
Neglecting chores skilfully is a fine art and an absolutely indispensable survival skill in the modern world. Noobs often make the glaring mistake of trying to complete them - a futile attempt, as the list of chores is eternal and knows of no such mundane things as "an end". Wise ones ignore them all for as long as possible instead, doing just enough just before the last moment to avoid any of them blowing up in your face too badly. Ignored for long enough, some of them even resolve themselves all on their own - one would clearly feel chagrined to have wasted precious, precious time on something that turned out to be self-solving after all. The world offers no leisure time when asked nicely. You only get what you manage to take by force.
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I've been using the term for donkey's years now - I started using it on a usenet group, I *think* in the very late 1990s or early 2000s. I've used it so often, so much, that when I'm writing something a little more formal than comments on a forum or whatever, I often write Overpuddle / Overpuddlian and then have to go back and correct it. :)
Not that I'm suggesting the term predates steamed pudding and custard. I think that definitely goes back a couple of years further ;)
If you want to binge watch an old series, fine, but binge watching a current series is a) an insult to the craft of writing episodic tv, which is designed to leave you an a cliffhanger you can talk about with your mates for a week*, and b) turns binge watchers into annoying 'aaargh how could you spoil that for me i''m wating for the end of the series to watch them all' whining gits.
For me, you get until the next episode, i'll avoid spoiling for a week but still chat about it with people who have seen it, after that, you can either catch up, or avoid human contact for 26 weeks until you have.
*this is how lost managed to keep it's audience for so long, lots of things might have been about to happen. just because none ever did, didn't stop people speculating and not noticing nothing happed because there were new things to speculate about.
I suppose the downside of series for the likes of Netflix, where it can be assumed that the audience will binge watch, is that there's no longer the need to make each episode stand on its own. Usually an episode would further the plot of the season somewhat (or sometimes not at all), but also represented a complete story in its own right. That doesn't seem to be the case for some more recent stuff, such as the Marvel series. Of those I think Luke Cage was the worst offender, with hardly anything happening in each episode.
"Usually an episode would further the plot of the season somewhat (or sometimes not at all), but also represented a complete story in its own right."
One of the advantages of the Netflix/Amazon model is that unlike traditional TV, the episodes don't have to be fitted into a timeslot - they can therefore be made the length required for a chapter of the story, rather than either rushing through a part of the plot, or padding it out to fill the slot. Episodes of The OA, for example, were quite different lengths.
In episodic tv, you never rush part of the plot, you either have a bit of the arc embedded in a sub story, or you spread the story over more than one episode like a mid season double feature... The skill in writing this type of tv is being able to fit the plot together with the sub stories and make every episode watchable to someone who has just turned on and knows nothing of the plot arc or the previous seasons... the writers of Buffy were really good at that, the big reveal or major change episodes were often ones that could be watched stand alone without much background, 'the body' and 'once more with feeling' are two I can still remember the titles of :) X files (the first run) was also excellent at this, the overarching plot sneaks it's way in to an otherwise 'monster of the week' show slowly, with initially incidental characters that crop up unexpectedly. Boston Legal had many arcs following different characters, all running at the same time, but still managing a proper stand alone episode every week.
For balance, south park is shit at this type of tv, lost never really got the idea that there has to be some kind of conclusion, house made the arc plot so dull or predicatable that they may as well have just done 'disease of the week'. All shows I watched religiously.
The Magicians (which I love the books of) have done such a bad job of fitting the plot into the episodes and haven't managed to add anything interesting to each episode, that I eventually couldn't be bothered. But I will always read Elliot with the voice of Hale Appleman.
I actualy prefer binge watching, some shows make more sense that way, 2 or 3 in a day.
On S5 currently of Walking Dead, one a week would be too confusing, much easier to watch a few.
S6 is now free, not sure if to pay or wait for S7.
Now Lost, was good in the beginning, but after the hijacking I had to use TPBTV and it was not good enough for the effort to watch it. (Download, convert, copy, watch).
Stopped when people kept turning a wheel in a hole and I realised it was rubbish!
We've been watching most of our telly via recorded broadcast or sometimes via streaming service, depending on how many episodes we've missed on the recording, or it just not being available on standard broadcast. Interesting to note that we quite often don't watch recorded series until we've got several episodes or even a whole season recorded and then 'binge' them in one or 2 sittings, when it's convenient. Sometimes we even record a whole series and then delete it when we haven't watched it after six or nine months as we're clearly not that fussed and there are other things to watch, or even do that don't involve the telly. Some streaming stuff where the episodes have been released weekly have also fallen off the watch list, either because they weren't good enough to pull me back in after a week's delay or perhaps just because they don't appear on the 'saved' list on the recorder and out of sight, out of mind.
"She said: "Clearly what we see not least through streaming is that people are using services and the internet in different ways. And take-up of super-fast broadband suggests people do want faster speeds."
People use the internet is different ways, well who would have thought it.
I'm sure the take up of super-fast broadband would go up drastically if it were available in more areas. I've been waiting for over two years but still my part of the town doesn't have it. Walk five minutes down the road and they have it.
I'm sure the take up of super-fast broadband would go up drastically if it were available in more areas
That depends how you are defining 'super-fast'. If you are using the current 'official' definition in the UK (>24Mb/s) then no, it wouldn't. That's because over 90% can already get it. An extra 7% of sfb consumers isn't going to make much of an impact.
I realise that it might feel like most people can't get it from your point of view, but that really isn't the case. If you get into a discussion with someone in the industry and try to use the above argument as a reason to provide it in your area it will fail. You need a better reason if you're going to convince people to do the decent thing and finish the job.
TV only evolved the way it did because of the scarcity of VHF broadcast bandwidth. It was necessary to cram an entire nation's viewing into a small band of frequencies and a handful of channels. So there was an inevitable "rationing" of content: one (programme) for you, one for me, one for the children, one for the clever people, one for the food-fetishists, one for the sports-geeks - and so on.
Satellite TV eliminated that scarcity. In fact, with over 10,000 channels available int he UK from various satellites, the problem was more one of discovery than of rarity: which channel on which satellite is showing the football - with a commentary in my language? Which channel is showing the latest summer block-buster? Which 200-300 are showing Friends, or NCIS or whatever other american series?
But with box-sets (a piece of marketing genius: imagine being able to collect together a load of old repeats and get people to actually pay again to watch them?) and streaming and a small number of premium content providers, those problems are a thing of the past. The difficulty now is one of moderating your behaviour and having the self-discipline to put down the remote and walk away.
We should consider ourselves lucky that no channel is streaming Eastenders from end-to-end, all day every day.
from FreeSat to actually want to pay to stream something.
Yes, I'm a tightwad but even so, my 1TB FreeSat PVR needs periodic purging to get rid of stuff I recorded months earlier and never got around to watching.
As for the latest 'must watch' thing, forget it. not interested. In time, it will come to free to air tv. Then I'll watch it (or try it. If it isn't worth seeing then I'll just stop recording it)
As for Footie, I'll be going to watch my local Vanerama League team. I can walk to the ground, have a drink with some mates and get home for tea and still have change from £25.
Far better value than the Premiership 'blow on and the fall over' Actors.
We are definately turning into a nation of brain dead recluses who stare blankly into 5" screens at cat videos and irrelevant ads. It's a sad thing. Kids no longer actually go out and visit friends, so have no social skills as their 'friends' are all online. Where will we be in 20 years I wonder. Maybe 'The Matrix' isn't that far fetched.
With the world being as depressing and aggravating as it is, it's no wonder that we try to escape into an alternate reality, which, while not being nicer, has the big advantage of not being real.
Everybody is waiting for everybody else to get up and DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!
Next year is the 80 year anniversary of Kristallnacht...
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