Have you ever noticed that if you miss the premiere of a movie that on TV that you wanted to watch you'll end up never actually watching it?
It works like this. The first time its shown, you miss it. You were working, there was no power, no cable, guests, your dog was depressed, whatever. You miss it. The next time you put on the telly, guess what you see? Yes, the same movie, a quarter of the way through. So what do you do? You start watching. But of course, you hadn't set aside time for a full feature length celluloid show so you can't finish it. There'll be things to do, calls to make, places to go. So you once again miss most of it. You may or mayn't catch the ending. More probable is that you'll get to watch the last of the credits scroll up off your screen.
Fast forward a week or so later. Once again they're screening that film. Once again you happen to catch it by chance. This time, a few minutes before or after the part you've already seen. Once again you can't finish it. So you go away, replete with the knowledge that you can make a little more sense of the story.
This continues for some more time, each time you may get to view hitherto unseen footage. At the end of it, you vow in frustration, to catch the movie the next time they screen. Of course they promptly schedule in the middle of the night or conveniently in the middle of your doctor's appointment, so that you miss it once again.
Finally, months later (perhaps when the channel decides to rebroadcast the movie as a wednesday night 'premiere'), the timing is perfect, you are free, and you can sit down to watch it comfortably in peace. But after the first 10 minutes, you reach a part you've seen umpteen times before already (during your earlier futile attempts to watch) and so you change channels, just for 5 minutes, you tell yourself. And of course, when you do remember to come back, you've missed some important part of the story and the scenes are leading towards an alarmingly similar point in the plot, one that you've seen before. With great frustration you realise that you've missed the part you hadn't seen to return to one that you had. Once again you change the channel vowing to return in time and once again you don't. This is where most people, including I, give up. As a result, the list of partially watched, but never completed Hollywood features is incremented by one. cntUnwatchedList++ anyone?
This is kinda like downloading a torrent where the seeding stops and all the peers and uploading the same stuff and you end up not having the complete file and ultimately you abandon all hope and cancel the download in despair.
Yes, this is a disturbing phenomenon. For viewers and channels alike. People end up having a fragmented memory of various stories, that seem to bleed into one and you really can't fathom the reasons for most of the paths the tales go along. And for channels who now not only have people changing channels during ads but also during the main programmed itself!
Something must be done. And for those of us that can't afford TiVo, BitTorrent is the answer! :D
It works like this. The first time its shown, you miss it. You were working, there was no power, no cable, guests, your dog was depressed, whatever. You miss it. The next time you put on the telly, guess what you see? Yes, the same movie, a quarter of the way through. So what do you do? You start watching. But of course, you hadn't set aside time for a full feature length celluloid show so you can't finish it. There'll be things to do, calls to make, places to go. So you once again miss most of it. You may or mayn't catch the ending. More probable is that you'll get to watch the last of the credits scroll up off your screen.
Fast forward a week or so later. Once again they're screening that film. Once again you happen to catch it by chance. This time, a few minutes before or after the part you've already seen. Once again you can't finish it. So you go away, replete with the knowledge that you can make a little more sense of the story.
This continues for some more time, each time you may get to view hitherto unseen footage. At the end of it, you vow in frustration, to catch the movie the next time they screen. Of course they promptly schedule in the middle of the night or conveniently in the middle of your doctor's appointment, so that you miss it once again.
Finally, months later (perhaps when the channel decides to rebroadcast the movie as a wednesday night 'premiere'), the timing is perfect, you are free, and you can sit down to watch it comfortably in peace. But after the first 10 minutes, you reach a part you've seen umpteen times before already (during your earlier futile attempts to watch) and so you change channels, just for 5 minutes, you tell yourself. And of course, when you do remember to come back, you've missed some important part of the story and the scenes are leading towards an alarmingly similar point in the plot, one that you've seen before. With great frustration you realise that you've missed the part you hadn't seen to return to one that you had. Once again you change the channel vowing to return in time and once again you don't. This is where most people, including I, give up. As a result, the list of partially watched, but never completed Hollywood features is incremented by one. cntUnwatchedList++ anyone?
This is kinda like downloading a torrent where the seeding stops and all the peers and uploading the same stuff and you end up not having the complete file and ultimately you abandon all hope and cancel the download in despair.
Yes, this is a disturbing phenomenon. For viewers and channels alike. People end up having a fragmented memory of various stories, that seem to bleed into one and you really can't fathom the reasons for most of the paths the tales go along. And for channels who now not only have people changing channels during ads but also during the main programmed itself!
Something must be done. And for those of us that can't afford TiVo, BitTorrent is the answer! :D
1 comment:
Ok...that was disturbingly mundane and everyday...I mean I know everyone writes about the war and all nowadays so that topic is somewhat cliched but "Missed TV Shows"?? Really? I enjoyed the fact that you have so much free time on your hands though :D...
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