It’s Saturday and Helaine and I have lots of time to spend together. The weather outside is frightful with lots and lots of (correctly forecast) rain. This is a big day in front of the TV.
Here’s what I’ve rediscovered. Outside of primetime, we almost exclusively watch different TV channels.
I say rediscovered because I noticed this earlier with Steffie.
Helaine likes QVC and FoodTV with scattered sojourns to HGTV the ESPNs.. I mostly hit the news channels, documentary niche channels (all the Discovery digital services) and old movies (is Steven Segal on tonight?).
How will this affect the future of TV? We’ve already seen the disappearance of “specials” and variety shows. There’s not enough audience to justify the high cost.
Luckily there are still some shows we can watch together. Still, if TV gets sliced and diced too much, production values and content will follow. Yes, a thousand channels, but of what?
Next thing you know, everyone will have their own video blog, and instead of having 13 channels, 100 channels, or a thousand channels, with each one having about fifteen viewers.