I have found it very difficult to find things to watch on TV of late. Despite having Sky, with both the Films and Sports channels, there never seems to be anything on.
However, the problem is not that there aren't any good shows out there. Rather, the problem is finding the ones I want to watch, when I want to watch them, and making the commitment necessary to actually sit down and watch them.
Most dramas these days feature long-running arcs. This is something that I finrst really noticed with Babylon 5 (although Star Trek flirted with some light arcs before then, and X-Files looked like it had an arc, although it really didn't - which was why I lost interest after that became so painfully apparent). The idea of an arc is that you can't really watch the episodes in isolation. Events carry on from one episode to the next (like a soap), with various clues being shown, character development occurring, and so forth.
These are all good things, but it means that you can't easily jump into a show beyond the first few episodes. Moreover, you have to be able to make a commitment to a show, generally for the 22 weeks of the typical season (24 has 24 episodes per season, of course, and Enterprise had 26, but 22 is most common in US dramas. I don't know why).
The problem is that I can't easily make that commitment. The new series of Battlestar Galactica started the week before last, and despite the episodes being on on Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday and Monday, I failed to actually watch that first episode. Since I can't record my digital programming (probably due to a faulty SCART socket on my VCR, but I don't know for sure), I missed that first episode. And, consequently, the second episode just seemed wierd.
Will I be able to watch all the rest of the episodes in that series? Doubtful. And, if I miss more than a couple of the upcoming episodes, I'm just going to give up.
Frankly, I'm considering abandonning the show entirely, and instead waiting for the DVDs. That way, I can't miss episodes, I can watch them at my leisure, and things seem generally better. Also, no adverts, and no need to wait for a week between episodes. That's just better.
I'm gradually working towards a point here, and it's this: the traditional medium of broadcast TV seems to have broken down for me. I want to watch particular shows, and might well try others, but they have to be available when I want them. Otherwise, I see little reason not to abandon TV, and switch to pure DVD watching - for the price of my Sky subscription, I could buy a season of a TV show per month, and I don't watch them that fast any more.
There is, actually, a better answer, and it's one that they've talked about for quite some time: TV-on-demand. The idea is that instead of providing a set number of channels, the providers offer a number of shows. New episodes would become available for viewing at some appropriate interval - perhaps simply one new episode per week. However, instead of giving fixed start times, they instead allow the user to choose what to watch, and when to watch it. The user then downloads the show to his TV, and watches at his leisure.
It's worth noting that this mechanism already almost exists. It is possible, through a variety of download sites, to get episodes of just about any show at any time, downloaded straight to your PC. There are two reasons why I don't consider this a very good solution: 1) It's illegal. 2) It would mean viewing the show on my PC, rather than my TV, which is a vastly inferior medium.
