Recently there has been a DVD debate brewing around the world today. It’s like the Civil War. Brothers, sisters, fathers, sons, mothers, daughters, friends, enemies are getting ripped apart by this debate. It has divided nations as one group thinks they are right, while the other thinks they are right. Fortunately, this debate has not killed anyone yet. No, I’m not talking about the battle between the next generation of DVDs, Blu-ray vs. HD-DVD. The DVD debate I’m referring to here is the “TV on DVD debate”. Should television viewers watch their favorite shows as they air on TV or should they wait for the DVD to come out for the current season of their favorite shows?
On paper this looks like a simple debate. Obviously the DVDs won’t come out until the current season is over. So you will be waiting at least nine months to one year before you can get your hands on the DVD and watch the current season airing right now. That sounds like a no-brainer. Why wait for something when you can have it now? Well, usually a standard season of a “hit” show is at least 20 episodes long and can have as many as 27 episodes. The average is about 24 episodes per season. Most shows debut their new seasons in September of each year and each season runs through May. That’s 9 months for each season. There are roughly 39 weeks in 9 months. So that means if there are only 24 episodes per season, then for at least 15 weeks your favorite shows won’t be on the air or maybe even worse, there will be “reruns” of your favorite shows. Some fans understand that and deal with it, while others get frustrated by the scheduling of their favorite shows on network television. The latter group of TV viewers is where you will find the “Wait for the DVD” supporters. Yes, the debate looks simple on paper, but “that’s why they play the game”.
The major networks have attempted to shift things for some shows over the recent years to help reduce the frustration of their audience. They have at least started to recognize that fans don’t like to watch a new episode one week or a couple of weeks, and then have to sit through a “rerun” or two before they can get another new episode. Their thinking is if they wanted to watch a new episode over again, they would have recorded it to begin with. This disappoints and disenfranchises a lot of viewers. Some decide to rebel and stop watching their favorite shows all together. Why? They know the DVD will get released eventually.
TV on DVD has become a big business over the last few years. People not only buy these DVD sets to watch their favorite shows again over the summer or other parts of the year, but they also enjoy checking out the special features that are usually loaded onto a DVD release. There are things like cast and crew commentaries for select episodes, extra interviews from cast and crew, deleted scenes, audition tapes, and many other things that add to the overall value of these DVD sets. Sure, they are expensive, but any fan of the show would surely hand over the money to collect all of the episodes of their favorite shows.
Some traditional TV viewers may be asking themselves what they would watch, if they decided to wait for the DVD to come out. Well, there are good options on cable channels with original programming. You are bound to get caught up on those shows over a weekend marathon that they always seem to air. If your favorite show is lucky enough to get past its first year on the air and you have the earlier seasons on DVD, you could watch them again or for the first time if you just now got the chance to buy those DVD sets. You could easily wait for the first season of a successful show to end and watch something else for 9 months, and then buy the DVD of that season. Once the new season of the show begins, they could watch the DVD of the season that they missed. They seems quite logical in today’s technological age. If you went that route, you could watch the show as fast or slow as you wanted to. Basically, you would schedule how you wanted to watch the show. Sure, you could blow through a season over a couple of days if you wanted to, but that would be your choice. At least then, you would be less likely to get frustrated by the odd scheduling of your favorite shows. You would also be more likely to stay a fan of that show from season to season.
Some shows like 24 run without any repeats, but that’s only because the show runs from January through May. FOX decided it would be better to have one of their top shows for only half of a year than to alienate the fans of that show and air “reruns” during the regular season. Of course, they will run “reruns” of 24 during the summer but that’s expected. Other shows like Prison Break, Jericho, and the highly successful Heroes have decided to have an extended “winter break” to solve the “rerun” problem. They air the first part of the season from September through November and then take 2 months or more off for the Holiday season. This works best when they have a cliffhanger that ends the first half of the season that viewers know will get answered in a couple of months. That’s what usually happens from the season finale to the next season’s premiere anyways. Viewers have accepted that. It seems to have worked for Heroes and Prison Break as they got picked up for more seasons. Not so much for Jericho, though, which proves that there are no easy solutions to this problem.
Most shows continue to go with the standard September – May schedule, and they also risk the chance of alienating their fans. Obviously, fans of comedies like How I Met Your Mother and The Office and My Name is Earl are more willing to put up with “reruns” since they are more interested in the comedy during each episode and not the continuing storylines that may carry over from one episode to the next. The shows that can be the easiest to alienate its fans when it show “reruns” is serial television dramas. Shows like Grey’s Anatomy, Desperate Housewives, 24, Prison Break, Heroes, Veronica Mars, Friday Night Lights, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, and of course, Lost.
Lost is perhaps the best example of a serial drama to explore this DVD debate with. Why? No other show on TV in the last 5 years has demanded so much from its viewing audience. When I say that, I mean Lost came onto the scene in 2004 and hooked viewers in. They opened up so many questions that needed to be answered. The creators of Lost had a plan, though. Their plan was to answer all of the questions that they created, but only in due time. They were in no hurry. So after each episode each week, fans of the show wanted to know what would happen next? In addition to wanting to know what would happen next, Lost is also a show that demands an audience’s attention during each episode. There are lots of things happening on that island. There are also “flashbacks” to events in people’s lives before they were stuck on that island that need to be watched very closely. You could legitimately watch a single episode of Lost two or three times before you could catch everything you saw on the screen. Even then, you still may not see everything. That’s what sucked viewers in and what helped it through its first season.
Season two of Lost is where the problems set in. The show was still equal with the first season, in terms of quality. But ABC scheduled it very weirdly. Literally, they would air one new episode and then show the same episode again next week. Or they would do two weeks of new episodes and then the next week a “rerun”, followed by a new epiosde, followed by a “rerun”. That gets frustrating to fans as more questions were created and few were getting answered. It was around this time last year, where I heard some fans of the show not watching the show at all anymore. They were going to wait for the DVD to come out. As Daniels pointed out in his article, there was even websites popping up called “Is Lost a Rerun This Week?” That’s pretty bad.
Then, the third and current season began to air. ABC made the decision to try something different. They heard the complaints from the Lost fans about season two. They decided to air the first 6 episodes first and then take a 13 week break, and finish up the season without any “reruns”. That looked good on paper, but as I said before “that’s why they play the game!” The problem with that is no one really wants that long of a break in the middle of the season. I mentioned before that Prison Break and Heroes had extended “winter breaks”. But they took their break after airing nearly half of the current season. Not a quarter of the season like Lost. And of course, that doesn’t always work anyways as Jericho proves.
To add to the troubles this season, ABC also decided to switch the timeslot for Lost when it came back. They simply moved it back one hour to 10 p.m. ET/PT on Wednesday nights. Again, on paper that looked like a good move. Why? There is a show on FOX called American Idol that dominates Tuesday and Wednesday nights. They figured that less viewers would watch Lost in its current 9 p.m. timeslot. When Lost came back, though, they found out that they actually “LOST” viewers with the move. Since the return of Lost in this new timeslot, the ratings have been the lowest they have ever been. That’s not the show’s fault. The writing has still been top-notch. The quality of this season’s episodes has been right up there towards the top. Some of the best the entire season. The problem is that ABC didn’t fully evaluate their competition. Shows like CSI: NY are equally as strong in their current timeslot and ABC underestimated that. Also, if you look at the numbers, you will see that more people watch television during the 8 p.m. ET/PT and 9 p.m. ET/PT than they do for the 10 p.m. ET/PT. Why? People have to work early in the morning and need to go to bed. And of course, they could always watch the show later on TiVo or DVD.
There is hope for Lost, though, as ABC has finally learned its lesson it seems. It announced a few weeks ago that Lost would go on for three more seasons. Each season would have 16 episodes and each episode will run one after another. No “reruns” during the regular season. I’m sure there will be “reruns” over the summer, but people expect that. Yes, it looks like ABC is following the American Idol and 24 route with this show. They listened to the fans and are going with the show for only 4 months. There have also been rumors that they hope to return the show to an earlier timeslot. Another good thing in my opinion. Forget about the competition with American Idol. If people want to watch Lost, they will watch it even if it does goes up against the juggernaut of television. Will these moves help the ratings of Lost? Only time will tell, but one way or another the show will end on its own terms, even if there is no one around to watch it. Of course, you could just solve everything by waiting for the DVD. The choice is up to you.
– Lost airs on ABC on Wednesday nights at 10 p.m. ET/PT with the third season finale airing on May 23.
– Lost airs on the CTV network in Canada on Wednesday nights….
