TV nation
The idiot box: not just for idiots
By Lisa Whittington-Hill
Photograph Courtesy of Bravo! Canada
I’ve never been ashamed to admit that I like television. I don’t hide the fact that my cable package boasts over 100 channels, that I can recall with ease who won last season’s America’s Next Top Model or that I almost missed a friend’s recent birthday party because I was stuck in the throes of a Laguna Beach marathon. I’ve accepted, however, that not everyone in progressive circles is as open about their love of the idiot box—until now, that is.
With the release of pretty much every television show on DVD (Alf, anyone?), television has come out of the closet, and TV shows have become a popular conversation topic in the least expected places, like, say, the editorial board meeting of an alternative magazine. The increasing popularity of television shows on DVD has made it okay in progressive circles to admit that you watch television, that you maybe even, in fact, like it.
TV on DVD has transformed television watching from that thing you do at the end of the day to turn your brain off, to an activity of choice—closer to renting a movie or picking up a book. We’re not talking about the simple mindless escapism of watching whatever’s on. Five consecutive episodes of Friends (you brave soul you) may make you forget the day, but it’s not the most scintillating conversation topic.
With TV on DVD, people can watch television on their own terms, with more control over what they’re viewing and without the commercials. It’s not like you’re sucking away hours watching Wife Swap in real-time, you’re watching smart intelligent HBO original programming. C’mon, this is The Sopranos, people!
And viewers aren’t the only ones benefiting. Television shows on DVD are big business. In 2006, TV-DVD sales grew by 10 percent over the previous year, while movie sales grew by just one percent. And it’s not just current shows such as Lost, Entourage, and 24 contributing to the $3.9 billion projected to be spent on TV-DVD sales in 2008. Nostalgia is lucrative, and studios are digging deep into the vaults to release classics from I Love Lucy to Knight Rider.
A friend who’s never been loyal to television recently confessed to me that, lately, she’s juggling several different shows and several casts of complicated characters. She spends weekends binge-watching entire seasons of Nip/Tuck, developing a personal connection with the show and adopting the characters as surrogate friends. It’s a bond you just can’t form when you have to wait a week between episodes, or remember to avoid Thursday night plans so you can hear whatever it is Meredith Grey is whining about on Grey’s Anatomy.
TV on DVD also allows you to share the gift of Meredith’s whining with a friend. It creates a sense of community, something lost with the increasing popularity of personal video recorders and TiVO. TV on DVD allows us to bond with others who are watching the same show, even if we’re all at different points in the plot. We get excited when we find out there is another human being out there also enjoying season one of Family Ties. We lend each other seasons and we try really hard not to ruin the endings.
We’ve certainly come a long way since 2000 when the first television show packaged on DVD was released—season one of The X-Files, released seven years after the first 24 episodes originally aired. Studios are quicker now, with shows released as soon as the season ends. That’s still not quick enough for some viewers, and who knows what effect technology will have on the popularity of TV on DVD. In the U.S., iTunes allows you to “be a water cooler hero” by downloading, for a small fee, the latest episodes of your favourite shows the day after they air. If your water cooler is located in Canada, sadly, you can’t be a hero, not legally anyway. Our version of iTunes doesn’t offer TV, so I’ll have to wait my turn for Battlestar Galactica at my local video store. Finally, I can figure out what all the fuss is about. T Lisa Whittington-Hill is This Magazine’s publisher. While she likes television, she doesn’t think you should choose it over other activities, like, say, reading fine quality independent Canadian magazines.
