I watch a lot of TV during the holiday season, a season that makes me nostalgic enough to even watch the commercials. You have to be in a pretty regressive state to watch a film you know by heart interspersed with ads, even though you have multiple platforms. But what do you want, it reminds me of my childhood, when we couldn’t avoid them.
Posted at 8:15 a.m.
The viewer’s mind has long been structured by the way advertising sectioned television content. Which creates suspense with each “back-after-the-break” segment. Now, we accept this mainly during event broadcasts, like the Bye bye or a Stanley Cup final.
Or with dailies like STAT et Indefensible who revealed the old couple side of us, and how much we are from the “children of TV” generation, the one who loved Saturday morning cartoons.
The lover and I never fail STAT et Indefensible. Dinner is organized to be ready at 7 p.m., in order to watch STAT live and Indefensible delayed, since both are broadcast at the same time. Ads allow us to swallow a few pieces between speechless mouths, and shout things like “WELL LET’S SEE”. We were served when we returned from January, with two deaths at Saint-Vincent hospital and an hour of hostage-taking in court.
PHOTO PROVIDED BY -
A scene taken from STAT
I never thought that the lover was going to get involved in these daily routines, but he got caught up in the game and as he has a little obsessive-compulsive side, he takes this television program integrated into his punctuality freak schedule very seriously. – he has never arrived late for any appointment in 25 years of married life. So he takes the announcement of the change in format very badly. STATwhich will become weekly this fall, and he is waiting for Luc Dionne with a brick and a lantern.
Read the column “We lift the medical confidentiality of the new STAT »
At home, it’s me nerd of technology. The person responsible for subscriptions and applications (which gives me remote control privileges), over which I always end up losing control. The month of January is that of financial recovery. I have to check if we’re really watching all these specialist channels, if we’re still subscribing to Netflix, Prime Video, Disney, AppleTV, Schudder or Tou.tv, which infuriates me because I always forget my passwords. I don’t dare imagine the bills of my colleague Hugo Dumas.
Without forgetting that we now have a smart television, which updates like a computer often at the wrong time, when you want something hot for example. Irritants that didn’t exist before and that make me whine about technology – as if I want to go back to the days of televisions with rabbit ears. But it took me a while and a lot of swearing before I found the peg on the remote to change the image filter that makes it seem like, no matter what you’re watching, it looks like a video game.
When I subscribed to Netflix in 2013, it was to watch the series House of Cards which everyone was talking about, but the main selling point was to have a big catalog like in the video store, without advertisements. Slowly but surely, Netflix introduced a cheaper subscription with ads, and it made me laugh.
When we see advertising arriving discreetly on these platforms, in addition to flooding our social networks, we understand very well where local television advertising revenue has gone.
All for that, ultimately. Moreover, on the remote control of my “smart” television, there is no shortcut to Tou.tv, only buttons for American applications. The best thing I’ve found is to shout “Tou.tv!!! » in the voice command of my illico remote control.
I know, there are fewer and fewer people subscribing to traditional TV. I know some, especially young people, who no longer have a TV, and who watch pay-per-view shows on their tablet or computer. Television viewing is now segmented, digital, and it is not local cultures who gain from this.
When I talk to my mother, who remains hooked on traditional TV, we are often out of step. I have to avoid revealing to her the punches of the series premiered on Tou.tv which will be broadcast later, while she is not aware of many things that I watch on platforms to which she is not subscribed – for example the third season of LOL: Who laughs last ? sur Prime Video.
I sometimes miss those days when everyone had the same references in discussions around the coffee machine.
Today, no one is at the same level or in the same position, we no longer understand each other between those who have devoured episodes of a new series in one weekend and others who do not yet know that Nadine is died in District 31. Twenty years ago, when the golden age of series arrived, it was still possible, it was even a new cultural focal point that overshadowed cinema, but today? We operate in silos each in our subscriptions, while all the platforms fiercely compete for market share with exclusivities.
The offer has never been so abundant and so dispersed, it can take me an hour just to browse the new releases on my different platforms, or to check if the film I want to rent is in fact included in one of my subscriptions, the algorithms of which are often screwed up by my boyfriend as soon as I’m gone for a few days. A big waste of time when I fall asleep halfway through the movie, if you think about it.
In summary, I feel more and more stupid, not to say ridiculous, in front of my smart TV, don’t you?
