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The original was posted on /r/television by /u/Inovox on 2023-06-27 14:51:15+00:00.

Alright, so here’s why I actually prefer the new system of watching shows. I think now I have more appreciation for shows in general than I used to, because what TV used to be for me was a lot more casual. Kinda what YouTube shorts are for me now. Like, I spend the average night now just going scrolling through YouTube shorts, you know, for maybe an hour, 30 minutes to an hour. It’s a daily thing for me at this point because the algorithm knows me so fucking well. I don’t spend a lot of time doing it, not as much as some people, but I still spend a lot of time doing it haha, and that’s the time I used to spend watching tv.

I used to just sit there, turn my brain off and watch tv. It was a very mindless way of watching things, you know? And now I feel like I’m a lot more mindful when I watch something on streaming, because A, I have to actually pick what I’m watching, so I tend to care a lot more about what I end up viewing, and then B I get to watch it in order. On TV, you would usually just channel surf and watch shit in random order, so you could never really follow every episode unless you were super dedicated, or if it was a serialized show, basically you had to be one of the super fans if you were following every episode every week, showing up at the same time. With streaming, all you have to do is wait until the next season drops, and then you can watch it all at once and on your own time. There is no schedule for the shit.

And personally, I just like that system a lot better because it ensures that I can actually experience it, you know, like I can actually experience the whole show because something I always felt when things were airing was I could turn on a show and be like, yeah, I don’t understand what the fuck is happening, because I didn’t see the previous episodes. And then back then dude, catching up on the old episodes was a lot harder. Like basically if you weren’t watching the show from the start, you might as well not even try to catch up because gonna be going to the library trying to find DVDs, scouring for those fucking box sets. And back then that shit was a lot of money just to catch up with the show, just to know what the fuck is going on. And then on top of that, to catch the next episode, you gotta tune in every week at the specified time and record that shit, or you’re lost. I don’t miss that shit at all now.

Now if we’re talking episode shows, it was probably better then. I think the TV format worked best for those shows. In a sense, TV was a better version of YouTube shorts because it was like casual content. And I feel like it was better casual content, where you actually got characters you could get attached to for years. And I mean, you could argue you can do the same thing with a YouTuber. It’s just not quite the same thing as what we had.

There was just something about the overall experience of TV back then. I think it was less about the individual shows, and I think it was more about just the idea of “This is my channel, I turn it on and I like the average show on this channel” And I think that’s what it was about. It was more about like a whole experience created by the channel. So I think what some people miss isn’t the shows in specific (since there are still great shows made today), it was the experience of the way the shows were released and the way we could just kind of turn on the TV and we get this whole experience.

Now you have to make your own experience. It’s easier to get everything, but you have to make your own experience where back then everything was just given to you. All you had to do was sit there and watch it. But personally, for my viewing habits, I prefer the active method because I can get so much more out of each show, although in a sense the experience is lesser, where back then, even though you were watching random episodes of the shows, you’re getting more of a rich experience on the overall channel. So I think it’s a trade off. And overall, personally, I kind of prefer what we have now.

I mean, let’s take Breaking Bad. I would never have been able to watch all the episodes of Breaking Bad in order without Netflix. So I would never have the best experience of my favorite show. And back then, I mean, you would’ve had to watch it week by week. It’s just so much better to watch Breaking Bad on Netflix or watch a whole anime on Netflix. Like, how the fuck, were you gonna catch a whole anime on Cartoon Network, like trying to catch every episode on Toonami? You just couldn’t, and for the type of viewer I am, I’m the type of person that likes to see every episode. I like to experience the entire show. Now back when I was just an episodic or casual person where I just turned on the tv, watched my cartoons, enjoyed myself, then turned off the TV and went to bed, I probably probably preferred the old system. It’s just that I want more out of TV now. So I prefer being able to watch an entire show in order. That’s just me.

That’s all I gotta say. It’s, it’s a trade off. And personally, I’m happier with, I think we gained a lot more than we lost. We lost the channel experience, but we gained a much more passionate, comprehensive, and rich experience with our shows. Alright. I’ll stop it here. Let me know your own thoughts on this. Thanks for reading.