AntiFastForwardSucks

This is a simple concept that smart/experienced TV watchers understand that flies over the heads of unintelligent/no concept of efficiency people. I don’t like having to wait or be forced to do something when I watch TV. This is why the number 1 way to watch TV is to DVR your show and 5x through the commercials. HBO and Showtime give a mini preview in the beginning (which 2xing through isn’t that bad) and then you can watch the rest uninterrupted. Completely acceptable. The major culprits of this thought are FX, AMC, and other cable channels that don’t individually collect for service. What happens? They have introduced a fast forward block on their programs in OnDemand. This ruins the viewing experience and I actually stopped watching The Walking Dead because it was unbearable to sit through commercials. Allow me to explain.

Sam and I both agree that we don’t like watching DVD’s or BluRay because it commits you to that program. We’d rather watch 15 minutes of a movie we already have seen on TV than go through the trouble of DVD. The process of getting up, grabbing the DVD, inputting it into the player, and then waiting is overbearing. This was the same with The Walking Dead that I described earlier. I started it up and it’s 1 hour long. When the 1st commercial break was on I couldn’t fast forward or change the channel. The not changing the channel is the key here because when I watch it live I don’t have to watch commercials and can skip through other programs. Being forced to sit through AMC commercials, any commercials really, isn’t right. It’s unfair. Unfortunately it’s how out world works and the populations smartest minds are being put to work on how to make people watch commercials.

Morons watch commercials. It’s the epitome of being brain washed and not doing anything but allowing yourself to fall under corporate s(p)ell. Avoiding commercials at all costs is the sign of someone who watches too much TV and understands this reasoning. It’s fairly simple to pick up on how well versed someone is when they watch TV. Just off on the tangent, when people don’t fly through channels with the guide, I feel it’s my place to point it out and take over remote control duties. Not watching in HD is another sure sign of a rookie. Back on topic, I ended up turning off the Walking Dead (a program I really wanted to watch nonetheless) and put on Eastbound and Down, Season 4 Episode 1, and it was phenomenal. 30 minutes of uninterrupted watching was exactly what I was looking for and I ended up DVR’ing Walking Dead on a later time slot so I wouldn’t have to put up with the commercial nonsense.

This brings me to what should be concluded from the whole experience? Most people watching TV won’t reason like me and do what I did. They’ll sit through the hour long OnDemand version of the Walking Dead and watch the 20+ minutes of commercials. In that time, they could be watching an entire episode of something else. People don’t hold this time as valuable though because in their minds they are relaxing even when they are watching commercials. We all know advertising works and it works because people are too stupid to not notice it. I understand this won’t relate to many people, hardly any people most likely, but to someone who watches a lot of TV, these cable networks and the OnDemand are blowing it. Let the consumer watch your show. We’ll like you more for it. It reminded me of the article Brookes showed me on David Byrne of Talking Heads and how he was complaining the musicians aren’t making their fair share off of Spotify and it was killing creativity. My answer to him and the networks would be that they’re not creative enough in problem solving. The consumer wants to be treated fairly and will pay for products they want/need. Making us watch 20 minutes of commercials isn’t one of those answers. Create something that I want to pay for. I read some guy wanted to release 6 minutes segments of new Breaking Bad’s (before it concluded) that you had to pay a buck for. I would do this because I want to. I don’t like watching commercials because they want me to. MONUMENTAL DIFFERENCE.