So who actually watches TV anymore?

I watch Game of Thrones and that's it for now. I'll watch the shit out of The Muppets when it comes out.

I'll watch a show about Charlie Booker talking about pretty much anything... when it inevitably gets put on YouTube.

I'm a cheapskate and you can't beat free. Cable/satellite and internet are all overpriced, and living outside a city/town leaves you with few options (internet out here isn't good enough for streaming anyway). I use an antenna to watch free over-the-air tv channels from Toronto and Buffalo (better picture quality than cable/satellite too). Plenty of shows, movies and sports to keep me busy (plus the Canadian channels show uncensored stuff). I have the tv on pretty much whenever I'm home, mostly multi-tasking by watching/listening to the tv and doing stuff on the computer (tv and computer are next to each other). Sometimes I'll pay full attention to the tv for certain shows/movies/sports/etc.

joe-ilya said:

my dad watches baby shows

Like father, like son?

The only time I've watched TV in recent years was on my boss's television working Summerstock. If I had the TV alone for myself, I'd be watching Turner Classic Movies.

These days I either go for netflix or some other website where I can watch a show on demand.

The only thing worth watching on my country are weekend movies and the simpsons (and they cut some parts, mostly involving religion or homosexuals)

Gothic said:

The only thing worth watching on my country are weekend movies and the simpsons (and they cut some parts, mostly involving religion or homosexuals)

Chile is one of the last places I thought would censor such subjects.

RUSH said:

Like father, like son?

There are : Baby shows, Kid shows, Girl shows, Adult/teen shows.
I watch : Adult/teen shows and a single girl show.
My dad watches : All.

Seriously, my dad watches anything there is, he doesn't care, he's getting entertained. After all. Even when my baby sister isn't around he's watching these.

joe-ilya said:

There are : Baby shows, Kid shows, Girl shows, Adult/teen shows.
I watch : Adult/teen shows and a single girl show.
My dad watches : All.

Seriously, my dad watches anything there is, he doesn't care, he's getting entertained. After all. Even when my baby sister isn't around he's watching these.

I get my dad saying "oh this was on last night, you would have liked that" - even after explaining youtube, he doesn't get that *you* get to choose what's on, instead of being spoon-fed and forced, I'm sure he'd like to be able to watch stuff on whatever topic he wants, I guess when that hasn't been the case all your life...

I dunno, I kind of miss having to learn to appreciate whatever you get on TV. And it had that fun roulette type of feeling where you never knew what to expect (we didn't always have TV listings). Well, I tend to idealize the past.

@invictius You guessed it.

@Memfis I liked waiting to the new spongebob episodes back in the 2000's and watching them whenever they're aired.

Yeah, the majority of what is on Cable is shit. Of course, you can thank channel drift for that. Examples:

-MTV(you'd have to be living under a rock not to know about this one), which only airs shitty reality programming, Fresh Prince reruns and a million hours of douchebag Rob Dyrdek. Same arguments can be made about MTV2, VH1, etc.

-TV Land no longer airs classic tv shows, cause they figure that the people that remember these shows are either dead or have them on DVD. If that's the case, then I wonder why over-the-air subchannels like Me-TV and Antenna TV have stayed afloat for so long? And as for the few series that they do still air, they air them with 7 and 8 min. (!) long commercial breaks for every ten mins of program.

-The Sci-Fi Channel, which changed it's name to sound less dorky (Aren't geeks and dorks supposed to be a loyal, shut up and take my money kind of audience though?) and replaced it's lineup of decent first-run and second-run programming (must all be on DVD, right?) with reruns of shitty z-grade movies all the time, with the exception of airing an occasional Star Trek or Terminator movie to try and retain their "street cred" (They even had the Doom movie on a few nights ago if you needed an example that hits close to home).

Of course, the list goes on and on, just look at any basic cable channel lineup and fire away.

As for me, I generally can't watch anything live on TV anymore, it all gets recorded on the DVR with commercials fast-forwarded through. And for what I do watch live, my attention shifts over to the internet for the duration of the commercial break.

But as for the internet "TV" that everyone around here seems to love, it's "ok" in my book. Put it this way, Youtube is great until something gets yanked with a copyright notice, Hulu is great until you hit a 120 sec. 5 ad break right in the middle of your movie and/or TV show (Which admittly isn't as bad as most regular TV anyways), and Netflix is great until you get that little note under something waiting on your queue that says "available until", which might as well be the digital equivalent of having an idiotic friend come over and "borrow" a few of your movies, never to see them again.

So to answer the original question, yes, I do "STILL" watch TV. A few new shows like Walking Dead, Turn (VERY underrated), and The Blacklist, but I find myself mostly watching those retro subchannels that have sprouted up over the past few years.

On a bit of a side note, I find that the whole "Does anyone still actually do/watch/buy <insert unpopular media here> anymore?" question to be kind of overplayed this day in age (With no offense to the original OP of course, it's a question that is asked all the time on the internet). Just because something isn't the mainstream/up-and-coming/hip thing to do doesn't mean there is some sort of following for it. Some examples:

-Does anyone actually buy TV shows on DVD anymore? These guys do.

-Does anyone actually buy music on CD anymore? Apparently more people than you would think.

-Does anyone actually use Magnetic Tape anymore? Hmmm...

-Does anyone actually play a 20+ year old FPS called Doom anymore? Oh wait...

Mattfrie1 said:

Yeah, the majority of what is on Cable is shit. Of course, you can thank channel drift for that. Examples:

-TV Land no longer airs classic tv shows, cause they figure that the people that remember these shows are either dead or have them on DVD. If that's the case, then I wonder why over-the-air subchannels like Me-TV and Antenna TV have stayed afloat for so long? And as for the few series that they do still air, they air them with 7 and 8 min. (!) long commercial breaks for every ten mins of program.

-The Sci-Fi Channel, which changed it's name to sound less dorky (Aren't geeks and dorks supposed to be a loyal, shut up and take my money kind of audience though?) and replaced it's lineup of decent first-run and second-run programming (must all be on DVD, right?) with reruns of shitty z-grade movies all the time, with the exception of airing an occasional Star Trek or Terminator movie to try and retain their "street cred" (They even had the Doom movie on a few nights ago if you needed an example that hits close to home).

I was upset when this happened to the History Channel. Back in the day, it was all awesome historical documentaries; the kind you would see in high schools, or lower-level college history classes. Nowadays, its all stupid shit, that tries to appeal to rednecks.

I use a cheap homemade hd antenna to pick up the free channels. Mostly to watch the news. Screw paying for cable. Everything else is Netflix.

Nothing on cable but cringey formulaic dramas, uninspired comedies, and the plague known as reality television. Only channel I miss is the Food network. Even it was a shitty reality show, you can usually ignore the drama and watch how they prepare dishes.

EDIT:

Kontra Kommando said:

I was upset when this happened to the History Channel. Back in the day, it was all awesome historical documentaries; the kind you would see in high schools, or lower-level college history classes. Nowadays, its all stupid shit, that tries to appeal to rednecks.

Same with A & E. They had biographies and cold case files. Now it's like "psychic ghost hunter kids dur dur dur dur"

I'll occasionally get interested in something and watch an episode or two a day. Other than that, not really. I canceled my satellite service sometime last year, I think. It was to the point that, outside of a handful of channels, I couldn't even stand to watch it anymore.

I have not owned a tv since I moved into my first place. I just didn't feel the need to have one. Also, it was around that time that I really started to realize just how toxic the influence of the mainstream media is. So I felt the need to completely disconnect myself from it.

I signed up for a trial membership for Netflix a few months ago and didn't use it enough to justify a membership. On top of that, Mad Max: Fury Road will be the first movie it what seems like ages that I well see at the theater. The only reason I'm seeing it is because my date wants to see it with me. If it was not for that, I probably would skip it all together.

Any more it seems like movies or tv shows simply do not hold my interest. When ever I try to watch something, I quickly find myself doing something else.

It's mostly just rubbish unfortunately. Being in the UK the only worthwhile channel is Dave, and that is constant repeats Top Gear, Red Dwarf and BlackAdder. Sometimes there might be a good documentary on the BBC, and Channel 4 has good comedy too. When there are series worth following such as Game of Thrones, it's just so easy to find them online (both legitimately and otherwise) that there really is no reason to watch them on the TV (no way I would pay for Sky!). I used to be a big Simpsons fan but the latest series have been cringingly bad. I doubt TV will ever go away, I mean we still have radio.

On a related note I have been recording movies using a USB TV receiver and Windows Media Center though, but when I try and convert them to another format they don't play. Probably DRM at work.

GoatLord said:

Watching regular broadcast TV or even cable TV seems...pointless.

Yeah, i even forgot i have a TV .

Captain Toenail said:

Being in the UK the only worthwhile channel is Dave, and that is constant repeats Top Gear, Red Dwarf and BlackAdder.

...I could live with this.

I can't even remember the last time I watched actual TV. I've never had cable myself, and even without cable, I've got Netflix, youtube, and blip.tv for all my entertainment needs. Even when I was living at my parents' home, about the only things I'd watch on TV were The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, and even then, I'd usually just go online to watch them because I don't like having a set time when the show gets aired.

Mattfrie1 said:

-Does anyone actually buy music on CD anymore? Apparently more people than you would think.

Let's not forget vinyl LPs. I recently bought a re-press of Supertramp's Crime of the Century.

Mattfrie1 said:

but I find myself mostly watching those retro subchannels that have sprouted up over the past few years.

The subchannel/multicasting idea really is great. Those subchannels are all over the US, but the Canadian broadcasters still haven't even bothered to try it. I get several of them from Buffalo and my fav is the movie channel ThisTV. They also recently picked up Escape as a subchannel and I got see the movie Lost Highway again for the first time in years.

SYS said:

I use a cheap homemade hd antenna to pick up the free channels.

That's cool. I recently made a simple one for my sister and tested it out at my dad's place. He's on a hill with a great line of sight over all the trees and it picked up Buffalo at 90 miles away.

I still watch TV because it's conveniently placed in the room where I eat. I mostly watch news with it. I also watch Cartoon Network, the few shows which are still interesting there (otherwise bombarded by badly drawn low-quality schoolboy humour crap), since they're short enough. Otherwise, it's not much worth it:
- Mainstream TV channels mostly broadcast entertainment shows of utter crap.
- Movies are now quite few and uninteresting (police procedurals, boring dramas, overly rerun Seagal-style fighting movies) or chopped down by advertisements. I don't have enough patience to wait through commercials, so I just quit the TV. There are also the ad-free paid channels, but I still have to sift through the uninteresting movies. Furthermore, they're still too long, no time for me.
- Documentaries seem too mundane (nobody cares about your truck driver or hotel accomodation jobs), or about things I already know. Also too long.

All in all the passive nature of watching TV just makes me feel unhappy at the end of the day, so I only watch it while having to do something else (like eating). And the only things which are "fresh" are the news, because everything else seems to be rerun and/or bad.

Mattfrie1 said:

-Does anyone actually buy TV shows on DVD anymore? These guys do.

-Does anyone actually buy music on CD anymore? Apparently more people than you would think.

-Does anyone actually use Magnetic Tape anymore? Hmmm...

-Does anyone actually play a 20+ year old FPS called Doom anymore? Oh wait...

You are aware that none of these have any meaning in the context of TV, right?

The big difference here is that all these are physical media that can be played at choice by the user. Broadcast TV can not.

Nobody would suggest that TV *programming* will die, but I have no long term hopes for the rigid and inflexible means of distribution that's being employed here.

I used to watch just The Simpsons when I came home after school and some MTV. Now when I eat it's usually turned on but I dont pay so much attention to it. The major and national channels here in Italy are filled with stupid talk/reality/quiz shows, and about the movies they broadcast pretty much the same every year. The smaller local or regional channels are much more interesting with their crap movies, weird commercials and 24/7 talk shows mostly about soccer.

Graf Zahl said:

You are aware that none of these have any meaning in the context of TV, right?

The big difference here is that all these are physical media that can be played at choice by the user. Broadcast TV can not.

True, but I'm just sick of people nowadays that go on trumpeting that any media/technology that is over 20 years old will just shrivel up and die as soon as the "next big thing" comes along. Admittedly I kind of went off on a rant there, but the point I was trying to make is that there is a niche audience for pretty much anything nowadays, even for the things that the mainstream has passed by. A better comparison perhaps would have been to FM/AM radio, which here in the US shows no signs of slowing down in terms of use by the masses, despite other technologies (Satellite radio, Streaming) that have come along that effectively do the same thing.

EDIT: I was also using those examples as a bit of a side topic that was addressing the nature of the question of the thread title, not the actual topic of Television.

It's just that the whole "I don't do this anymore so no one else must either" argument/question is a bit of a pet peeve of mine. I'm not trying to change anyone's mind here, just give another point of view.

TimeOfDeath said:

They also recently picked up Escape as a subchannel and I got see the movie Lost Highway again for the first time in years.

I watched it too, the first time I personally have ever seen any David Lynch movie on television. Great film overall, but after seeing the DVD of it several times the editing for content and pan-and-scan print definitely took some of the atmosphere out of the movie.

Mattfrie1 said:

-Does anyone actually buy music on CD anymore? Apparently more people than you would think.

I actually buy a shit load of music on CDs still. I just like having the disc, and I like using them in my car. In fact, getting my licencse and having a car with a Six CD Capacity player is what got me more into music in general.

I also occasionally buy Vinyl if it's good enough to display on a wall, or if I just like it. Like I found Night Ranger's Midnight Madness at a Goodwill, and go the reissues of MCR's Three Cheers and Black Parade. I'm still looking for a good copy of Bat Out of Hell though. I love that artwork. Really, drawn artwork for anything back then was cool, and vinyl sleeves just make cool posters for it. More expensive than just buying a normal poster and maybe framing it? Yah... Maybe... But, eh... At least the Vinyl can still serve a function, if you have a working a player. I have four, I think. But three are shot and I don't know what's wrong with the fourth but I haven't been arsed enough to look into it.

Mattfrie1 said:

True, but I'm just sick of people nowadays that go on trumpeting that any media/technology that is over 20 years old will just shrivel up and die as soon as the "next big thing" comes along.

Broadcast TV won't have any future once on demand viewing can be had for the same cost. It's just too inflexible and unfocussed.

This has nothing to do with the 'next best thing'. I don't expect the content to die, what I expect is more efficient and more flexible means to get the stuff to the customer. In other words: You no longer watch stuff when the schedule demands it to be shown, but when you have time.

Graf Zahl said:

Broadcast TV won't have any future once on demand viewing can be had for the same cost. It's just too inflexible and unfocussed.

People said the same thing about radio when television started taking off back in the 50s. Yet there is still all sorts of radio programming out there that caters to many audiences. Is it as popular as it once was? No, but there is enough of a dedicated audience out there to keep it going with various talk shows and music programs.

Put it this way, I think the future of Cable TV is pretty bleak. People are sick and tired of paying a lot of money for programming and channels that they either aren't interested in or that they remember being a lot better in years past. But as for saying Broadcast TV (Which I assume you mean networks like NBC, CBS, ABC and FOX) having no future, I think you are wrong. These networks have integrated themselves too deeply into the public's consciousness and the "system" (aka FCC, local affiliates throughout the country) just to dry up and blow away at the expense of on-demand. Will their programming be available on those services? Yes, but I think they will always have a regular channel to operate the "old-fashioned" way.

Apparently cable tv subscriptions are going down but over-the-air viewers have been growing since the analog signals transitioned to digital hd signals. You get what you pay for, except for over-the-air broadcast tv where you get more than what you pay for (nothing).