The leading man discussion got me to thinking......how did a heavy TV addict of the 90's go to being a dry non watcher in the 21st century.
Interestingly enough, however it happened, I don't think rational thought had much to do with it except perhaps in hindsight. I mean, there I was, feeding perhaps a six pack of tapes into my machines a week. I was taping, say, Party of Five, week after week, never really getting around to watching it, but never really stopping and asking myself if I am not watching it, why am I doing it?
Changing show formats, changing network formats, changing channel formats probably covers a lot. Couple that with changing media formats and then it all happening in a rapid sequence and it probably became too much, too complicated, to keep up with it.
On show formats, take Charmed or Crossing Jordan for example. In the former case, they went from being single to getting married, starting families. Well, despite that being the normal way of life (and course of a TV series), it's not for me, so the interest drops. As to the latter, the show becomes boring when the namesake character isn't in the show for a year.
Somewhere along the line, I got tired of shows where people were just mean and bad and they got away with hurting others. Granted, in the 90's, I was hooked on nighttime soaps and it was like that....and maybe it was because in the early days of the NET, there were many of us discussing each episode, support group if you want, but at least there, some of us were questioning when Kimberly would get caught for framing Sydney (or was it Jane?) for attempted murder. Maybe, without that support group, just seeing it myself without anyone to talk to, it finally got to me. Admittedly, I have become rather critical of TV and music that says it is okay to take the law into your hands or the heck with it entirely. Or perhaps it was because of the LE research that I was doing that I finally realized the hypocrisy of it.
Changing network formats as in good bye drama, hello reality.......NOT ON YOUR LIFE! Changing channel formats? Well, two examples. Dumbing down of educational channels like History, Discovery, A&E, and eventually Nat'l G. Sci Fi going from a familiar feeling of the college sci fi club to show anything that we have made and if you go for it, we make money. Plus, there was something else with Sci Fi. It went 'Nanny'. All its commercial sessions were telling me that each night of the week was the most important night of television and I just had to watch it. Between that and every session telling me that I had to watch Stargate, which before I just didn't like but now HATE, in my face, all the time, and I really grew not liking to tune into that channel at all.
Then the world went from VHS to home DVR and then, those suddenly vanished. As someone who used the tuner on their VHS to watch TV, who left those cable boxes with their separate controls on the top of grandmother's TV long ago, who wouldn't get around for weeks to what was recorded, none of that was encouraging.......it didn't help, either, that my power company likes throwing the switch for a second or two and that clears out stored unit programming. Why, back in my addict days, I was considering for a while having UPS batteries around my machines.
Of course, it wasn't just the change in TV format, either. The estimated number of VHS tapes, of TV taping, is around 2000, last time I counted. Twenty years of recording. That's a lot of storage to provide for, a lot of cataloging.
Once upon a time, things like this
were easy, cheap to get. They came in VHS, CD, tape cassette, and DVD versions. I was buying them frequently, mostly in the VHS versions but also the CD and cassette types. And then, suddenly, they vanished. They did reappear but at twice the price, the stock probably bought up.
Storage for media is very fluid, both in styles and availability. Someone may have a design, perhaps where you can hook units together, but then, suddenly, they are gone, perhaps the company bought out, and the units bought before now have to mesh with what's out there. Further, what is out there now may be of poorer design than what was before. Once I could get stackable drawers for my CD/DVD's; now about the only thing is boxes which means if I want something in the bottom box, everything on top of it has to come down first.
My cataloging system is a Borland C++ 4.5* program I wrote long ago. I think the basic thing that, in this fast paced world, it just became too much to keep up with though that is probably a mute point considering the compulsion for it, doesn't exist anymore. As such, the program, if it will work on a modern system, can be used for cataloging my DVD library.....if that is even needed, considering the power of word processors today.
Change of TV Guides. Once upon a time, one got the guide on Saturday or Sunday, and it was loaded with detail. It told you what was on, all hours of the day, all days of the week. It gave you something about every movie.
Then they whittled away. What was on during the day on the week day was listed on a one day, one size fits all, schedule with "various programming". Then they only listed from 6 PM to 2 AM. Then to midnight. Then only from 7 PM to 10 or 11. Then they only bothered to tell you something about movies that had more than a certain number of stars.
And then, finally, we come to being tired of being jerked around over the years. Networks suddenly canceling shows, changing their scheduling without notice or even lying about it, the constant editing, trimming down of shows for more commercial time. I stopped watching new shows on FOX after what they did to Briscoe County and Sliders. I tried and liked Wonderfalls to see if FOX had changed but with that ax, I turned FOX off completely. NBC had bugged me since the early 90's with their anti gun agenda so they had always been on thin ice. Sci Fi giving encore presentations of Battlestar Galactica and then are the season end, they aren't there?
Or the trimming of shows. As ER was in its final years and it went from the entrance it had to a few second blip, what a LOSS with its changing cast members. Before, each week, you were given a picture who they were, what they did. Then the show went to their blip, the cast members names listed as the show opened up, but you didn't know who was who, didn't know what they did. Probably a contributing factor to why, after Maura Tierney left, I stopped watching.....because who was left was just too weak to carry the show. It didn't help that the show was also developing in the path of you can do wrong and get away with it.
Or compare a 50 minute show of the past with a 40-42 minute show now. The story development, running difference between the two is so clearly different, of how the longer running one is superior. Or the trimming of reruns. A snip here, a snip there, things might be seen as not contributing to the telling of the story.....but certainly do contribute to the watching of it. They take out the elements that build to the suspense of it.
Year after years, I had finally had enough.
So, do I want to go back? While every so often, I wonder what I am missing, I think not. I rather like not having my evenings tied to a TV screen, one way or another. That I am free to sleep or dance or whatever as I wish.
Granted, I am vastly out of touch with the popular world, sometime to a disadvantage. I came across "Hirokin: The Last Samurai" tonight on the Spanish channel and will soon have it on order. I wonder what have I been missing, what else is out there with Julian Sands should I be checking out.
Still, though, it is quite a thing to look back to how I was only a few short years ago and see what brought on such a change.
Interestingly enough, however it happened, I don't think rational thought had much to do with it except perhaps in hindsight. I mean, there I was, feeding perhaps a six pack of tapes into my machines a week. I was taping, say, Party of Five, week after week, never really getting around to watching it, but never really stopping and asking myself if I am not watching it, why am I doing it?
Changing show formats, changing network formats, changing channel formats probably covers a lot. Couple that with changing media formats and then it all happening in a rapid sequence and it probably became too much, too complicated, to keep up with it.
On show formats, take Charmed or Crossing Jordan for example. In the former case, they went from being single to getting married, starting families. Well, despite that being the normal way of life (and course of a TV series), it's not for me, so the interest drops. As to the latter, the show becomes boring when the namesake character isn't in the show for a year.
Somewhere along the line, I got tired of shows where people were just mean and bad and they got away with hurting others. Granted, in the 90's, I was hooked on nighttime soaps and it was like that....and maybe it was because in the early days of the NET, there were many of us discussing each episode, support group if you want, but at least there, some of us were questioning when Kimberly would get caught for framing Sydney (or was it Jane?) for attempted murder. Maybe, without that support group, just seeing it myself without anyone to talk to, it finally got to me. Admittedly, I have become rather critical of TV and music that says it is okay to take the law into your hands or the heck with it entirely. Or perhaps it was because of the LE research that I was doing that I finally realized the hypocrisy of it.
Changing network formats as in good bye drama, hello reality.......NOT ON YOUR LIFE! Changing channel formats? Well, two examples. Dumbing down of educational channels like History, Discovery, A&E, and eventually Nat'l G. Sci Fi going from a familiar feeling of the college sci fi club to show anything that we have made and if you go for it, we make money. Plus, there was something else with Sci Fi. It went 'Nanny'. All its commercial sessions were telling me that each night of the week was the most important night of television and I just had to watch it. Between that and every session telling me that I had to watch Stargate, which before I just didn't like but now HATE, in my face, all the time, and I really grew not liking to tune into that channel at all.
Then the world went from VHS to home DVR and then, those suddenly vanished. As someone who used the tuner on their VHS to watch TV, who left those cable boxes with their separate controls on the top of grandmother's TV long ago, who wouldn't get around for weeks to what was recorded, none of that was encouraging.......it didn't help, either, that my power company likes throwing the switch for a second or two and that clears out stored unit programming. Why, back in my addict days, I was considering for a while having UPS batteries around my machines.
Of course, it wasn't just the change in TV format, either. The estimated number of VHS tapes, of TV taping, is around 2000, last time I counted. Twenty years of recording. That's a lot of storage to provide for, a lot of cataloging.
Once upon a time, things like this
were easy, cheap to get. They came in VHS, CD, tape cassette, and DVD versions. I was buying them frequently, mostly in the VHS versions but also the CD and cassette types. And then, suddenly, they vanished. They did reappear but at twice the price, the stock probably bought up.
Storage for media is very fluid, both in styles and availability. Someone may have a design, perhaps where you can hook units together, but then, suddenly, they are gone, perhaps the company bought out, and the units bought before now have to mesh with what's out there. Further, what is out there now may be of poorer design than what was before. Once I could get stackable drawers for my CD/DVD's; now about the only thing is boxes which means if I want something in the bottom box, everything on top of it has to come down first.
My cataloging system is a Borland C++ 4.5* program I wrote long ago. I think the basic thing that, in this fast paced world, it just became too much to keep up with though that is probably a mute point considering the compulsion for it, doesn't exist anymore. As such, the program, if it will work on a modern system, can be used for cataloging my DVD library.....if that is even needed, considering the power of word processors today.
Change of TV Guides. Once upon a time, one got the guide on Saturday or Sunday, and it was loaded with detail. It told you what was on, all hours of the day, all days of the week. It gave you something about every movie.
Then they whittled away. What was on during the day on the week day was listed on a one day, one size fits all, schedule with "various programming". Then they only listed from 6 PM to 2 AM. Then to midnight. Then only from 7 PM to 10 or 11. Then they only bothered to tell you something about movies that had more than a certain number of stars.
And then, finally, we come to being tired of being jerked around over the years. Networks suddenly canceling shows, changing their scheduling without notice or even lying about it, the constant editing, trimming down of shows for more commercial time. I stopped watching new shows on FOX after what they did to Briscoe County and Sliders. I tried and liked Wonderfalls to see if FOX had changed but with that ax, I turned FOX off completely. NBC had bugged me since the early 90's with their anti gun agenda so they had always been on thin ice. Sci Fi giving encore presentations of Battlestar Galactica and then are the season end, they aren't there?
Or the trimming of shows. As ER was in its final years and it went from the entrance it had to a few second blip, what a LOSS with its changing cast members. Before, each week, you were given a picture who they were, what they did. Then the show went to their blip, the cast members names listed as the show opened up, but you didn't know who was who, didn't know what they did. Probably a contributing factor to why, after Maura Tierney left, I stopped watching.....because who was left was just too weak to carry the show. It didn't help that the show was also developing in the path of you can do wrong and get away with it.
Or compare a 50 minute show of the past with a 40-42 minute show now. The story development, running difference between the two is so clearly different, of how the longer running one is superior. Or the trimming of reruns. A snip here, a snip there, things might be seen as not contributing to the telling of the story.....but certainly do contribute to the watching of it. They take out the elements that build to the suspense of it.
Year after years, I had finally had enough.
So, do I want to go back? While every so often, I wonder what I am missing, I think not. I rather like not having my evenings tied to a TV screen, one way or another. That I am free to sleep or dance or whatever as I wish.
Granted, I am vastly out of touch with the popular world, sometime to a disadvantage. I came across "Hirokin: The Last Samurai" tonight on the Spanish channel and will soon have it on order. I wonder what have I been missing, what else is out there with Julian Sands should I be checking out.
Still, though, it is quite a thing to look back to how I was only a few short years ago and see what brought on such a change.
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