Dropping alot of Shows this Year (1 Viewer)

[Dave Scarpa]

this is the year i start dropping alot of long time shows that i'm simply growing bored with many are spinning their creative wheels, all the CW super hero shows are going, Z nation has grown tiresome and over the edge, anyone else losing alot of shows this year?

 

[Matt Hough]

I dropped The Flash and Designated Survivor which I watched last season, but I'm still hanging in there with some marginal shows: MacGyver, Scorpion, How to Get Away with Murder. Those last three are really iffy at the moment, however. I may not get to the ends of their seasons with them.

 

[Clinton McClure]

I got bored with NCIS after Ziva left and stopped watching it. I’m pretty close to dropping Big Bang Theory because it’s strayed so far from its original clever premise and is just a boring sitcom now that doesn’t bring anything new or fresh to the table.

 

[Hanson]

Is anyone dropping The Deuce? It can be slow sometimes, but I pushed through it. I'm okay that season one appears to be all set up and prologue.

 

[Tony Bensley]

Is anyone dropping The Deuce? It can be slow sometimes, but I pushed through it. I'm okay that season one appears to be all set up and prologue.

It's a good job that you included that last line in your description, Hanson!

CHEERS!

 

[jcroy]

I dropped The Flash and Designated Survivor which I watched last season, but I'm still hanging in there with some marginal shows: MacGyver, Scorpion, How to Get Away with Murder. Those last three are really iffy at the moment, however. I may not get to the ends of their seasons with them.

The primary reason I'm still watching MacGyver and Hawaii Five-0, is largely because they're on Friday evenings one after another. If they were on different evenings than Friday, I might have dropped one or both shows already.

More generally, sometimes the particular evening is a determining factor as to whether I continue watching a particular show. Especially if I watch that particular show live or semi-live. In the case of MacGyver and Hawaii Five-0, I watch both shows live in their designated time slots on Friday evenings.

 

[Greg_S_H]

I dropped SHIELD last year. I don’t know about actively dropping anything else, but I only watch a few shows now.

 

[jcroy]

My main criteria for dropping shows which I don't watch live or semi-live, is whether I end up "stockpiling" episodes of a particular show.

If I find I'm stockpiling episodes with very little to no motivation to watch them immediately, then most likely I'll never end up watching them at all. (ie. They eventually get deleted without ever being watched).

 

[Carabimero]

Yes, my wife and I dropped so many shows because they were all so freaking intense, with human anatomy graphically shown without warning. We just want to watch something relatively peacefully engaging and go to bed. We're hanging in with MADAM SECRETARY, BLUE BLOODS, STAR TREK DISCOVERY, BULL and our long-time guilty pleasure SURVIVOR.

This is the first year since we've been married (nearly 30 years) that we haven't tried any unknown new shows. Star Trek is new but it doesn't count as it is a known quality.

We drop a show when it piles up in our DVR. Seems to happen more and more (with shows we never thought we'd drop!).

 

[Josh Steinberg]

Intentionally or not, I pretty much dropped everything a couple years ago -- the only show that I watched during the Fall 2015-Spring 2016 and Fall 2016-Spring 2017 seasons were Agents Of SHIELD and Doctor Who, which I both watch with my wife and which I had previously been committed to. And Star Wars Rebels. Everything else I had enjoyed had been canceled or finished it up its run naturally, and I didn't replace anything. I got bored with Walking Dead in 2013 and haven't seen it since, and got bored with Better Call Saul in its second season and haven't seen it since.

I'm really not so good with the DVR beyond a day. I like to DVR shows to skip the commercials, but I also like to watch them the night that they're on. When I watch a show on the night it airs, I can then participate on HTF threads about the show, and read news coverage about it the next day, talk to friends and coworkers about it, etc. I like having a show to look forward to on specific days of the week. But once they hit the DVR, it just starts seeming like an obligation, and if it piles up, I start losing interest. That's what happened with Better Call Saul. I missed a few episodes the weeks they aired, and looked at my DVR one day and had about six episodes there. The season had ended by that point, so the show was off the pop culture radar - there didn't seem any pressing need to watch them since watercooler conversation and internet conversation was over. And I realized when the next season began that I just hadn't missed it and didn't care. So I never resumed it. And I'm finding that's happening more and more.

Actually, I watched Westworld last year, but that clearly had slipped from my mind. I think taking two years to return for a second season is unacceptable. It won't happen, but I wish HBO was punished with ratings so low for doing that, with such a giant fall from S1 to S2, that no network would ever attempt one of those stunts again.

Right now, I'm watching the most shows I've watched live in years - Star Trek Discovery, The Orville, Star Wars Rebels, Inhumans (which is absolutely terrible but only a few episodes and airs in the familiar SHIELD slot, so it seems like a manageable commitment). I watched Twin Peaks over the summer. Will continue with Agents Of SHIELD when it returns.

The thing I'm really wary about as a viewer, and I'm pretty sure I've brought this up before, is that I like consistency with television. I make a commitment to give you an hour of my time each week at a set time and day of the week, you make a commitment to give me a show on a regular schedule. For the past few years, it seems that the networks are far less interested in honoring that commitment as I see it. You've got networks like HBO that immediately renew a show after a premiere, but decide to wait two years to actually produce and air new episodes, on top of doing too short seasons to begin with. I'll probably be back for more Westworld, but my enthusiasm for that show is totally gone from all of the waiting. You've got networks like AMC that commission short seasons, and then break those seasons up into comically short mini-seasons, so viewers never get more than a few weeks in a row without a lengthy break. ("Part 1 of Season Two", "the mid-season finale", etc.) Then you've got the broadcast networks, which still order proper 22 episode seasons (that number already down from 26, down again from 30, down further from 35), but take tons of time off between episodes instead of running them week to week. (I think SHIELD took not one but two breaks last season, each break lasting a couple months. Other shows aren't as bad, but will run one or two new episodes followed by one or two weeks off, with that happening all of the time.)

It just feels like no one wants to make a commitment to me as a viewer. Which makes it harder for me to want to commit back.

I'm watching Star Trek Discovery now, and they have the worst possible roll-out in my view. Nevermind that the show debuted a year later than promised, nevermind that it's hidden behind a paywall on an inefficient and overpriced service... they're doing a short season of only 15 episodes, and are taking a two month break in the middle of it. How is the storytelling enhanced by taking two months off? How is the experience better for viewers with that kind of a break? How does two months off, without new subscriptions and revenue brought in from the show streaming, help the company? This doesn't seem in anyone's best interest, but that's apparently the way things are done now. I don't see how Marvel can produce two to three giant superhero movies per year, that all interconnect and share casts and crews, but that it somehow takes HBO two to three years to make a six episode final season of Game Of Thrones.

At it's best, TV has almost limitless potential brought on by the combination of being a visual medium that intimately appears in your living room or bedroom, where the return engagement allows for long form storytelling and character development that's just not possible in theatrical films, and yet, I can get the new Iron Man movie appearances with more regularity than I can get HBO to make a second season of Westworld. I can see Wonder Woman on the big screen on a more predictable timetable than I can get CBS to complete a single season of Star Trek Discovery in.

In an era when Netflix will dump ten or twenty episodes of a season on everyone all at once, there really doesn't seem to be an excuse for these punishing delays.

edit: HBO has a new show out now called The Deuce. I saw the trailers for it and it looks interesting, like the kind of thing that I might enjoy. But I have no interest in even starting it at this time, because who knows when it'll come back. I don't want to watch Season One of a show, fall in love with it, and then have to wait two years to see more of it. Since this is HBO's apparent M.O., get an audience to like a show and then take two years or longer to bring it back, I'm not interested in even trying another show that could fall into that pattern.

 

[Blimpoy06]

We have a lot in common Josh. The new shows I watch have all but disappeared for me as well. I am really starting to dislike serialized storytelling on television. I was excited about it when the trend started, but now it seems like the show runners have a good beginning but can't continue it over a season. It feels like there are so many "placeholder" shows where nothing happens in the main story that week. The characters have petty differences or some estranged relative that pops up from the past. I get the felling that re-watching TV shows is becoming old fashioned. Thus, the new shows only need to attract viewers once, since syndication and physical media sales are no longer a chief concern. In the past, if you didn't like an episode of your favorite show you knew next week would be different. Not anymore. Now a story continues the entire year. That's why I give up on so many new shows. I'm bored a month in in most cases. Maybe that's why The Orville works for me now. It's fresh by being retro. Make sense?

 

[Clinton McClure]

The only shows I watch anymore are:

• The Big Bang Theory (which I will most likely stop watching during or after this season; see my previous post)
• Mom
• Family Guy
• The Orville (I hated the first episode and stopped watching about 15-20 minutes in, but eventually gave it a 2nd chance because I have been off work for two weeks and was caught up on everything else - it has gotten better... not much, but enough that I’m willing to give them a few more episodes of my time)
• American Horror Story (this is probably my last season because the writing last season and this one is just confusing and uninteresting now)
• America’s Got Talent
• Live PD (I don’t bother DVRing and watching this later - if I miss it on Friday or Saturday nights, I just miss it since I can’t devote a 3-hour block of time on other days)
• Stranger Things (Netflix show: I loved the first season and am excited about the second season releasing in a couple of days.)
• The Grand Tour (Amazon show: I watched Top Gear on BBC for years but stopped watching it when Jeremy Clarkson was fired and James and Richard both decided not to renew their contracts. The new BBC Top Gear is abysmal so I’m really glad Jeremy, James, and Richard were given the green light for a second season of The Grand Tour.)

*Edited to add entries for Stranger Things and The Grand Tour.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

Darin, a lot of that does make sense, though I think I'm more of a fan of serialized storytelling than you are. (But your reasons for not liking it are pretty solid.)

I just don't get how and why everyone making television today seems less interested in actually MAKING television than they were ten, twenty, thirty years ago or more. It seems like they spend so much time promoting it and going to fan conventions and all of that stuff, and so little time actually working on the show. I'm a fan of Doctor Who, particularly since the revival, and they crank out 12 episodes a year -- and next year, they're cutting down to just 10. I've read interviews with the cast where they describe shooting the show as being exhausting, and saying that it takes the entire year to do it. For the life of me, I just don't understand how it takes them an entire month to shoot an episode of Doctor Who! This is the kind of thing that used to take a week to do. Seriously, a ten to twelve month shooting schedule for 10 episodes? How does this kind of thing even happen?

In about the same amount of time that it's taking these Westworld people to make a ten episode Season 2 of that show, with multiple writers and directors working on the entire season, David Lynch and Mark Frost made 18 episodes of Twin Peaks with the same two writers (themselves) and just one director (Lynch) for all eighteen hours.

I really would watch more TV if shows aired with some kind of regularity, and seasons resumed on a regular basis. Otherwise... there are too many movies I've never seen, too many classic shows I've never experienced, to waste my time getting frustrated at the TV for not delivering what I want.

Serialized TV is great in theory, but if you're going to weave an intricate story where I need to remember every little detail, and where one thing is going to build on the next, it's kinda sucky to produce so few episodes and release them over such a staggered time period that there's no momentum.

 

[Blimpoy06]

It makes you appreciate how classic shows from the 50's to 70's would crank out 26 to 36 shows a year with a writing staff of three. There weren't 7 Executive Producers on Perry Mason. Mannix had two producers. Classic Doctor Who was done on a soap opera budget, and it shows. But damn it, they reached for the moon. They had some high concept stories in that three decade run. I will cut a show a lot of slack in presentation if I feel the writers are really trying to entertain and enlighten. As the saying goes, if it ain't on the page, it ain't on the stage.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

And back then, that week was less time in practice because of older techniques which took longer. Shooting on film meant you waited 24 hours to see what you shot; now you can check it instantly. Editing on film meant cutting slowly and meticulously and trying to get it right the first time; editing digitally means you can try a bunch of things in less time than it used to take try one. Simple effects could take a week or longer to come back; now they can be done in the same day. And with DVRs and streaming, you can tell a serialized story without the audience pressure of "If you miss an episode, there's no way to ever see it again"

The digital revolution should have made television production faster and higher quality and resulted in more of our favorites. While we are getting the higher quality, we're getting less episodes than ever which take longer than ever to produce.

 

[Doug Wallen]

Surprised that I am only watching six shows and only two are new.

Supergirl - if she doesn't get off her pity couch, I will soon be gone.
The Flash - may skip out after the wedding.
Major Crimes - will stick with this one til the end.
L&O:Menendez - my wife likes this one
10 Days in the Valley - actually enjoying the twists and turns in this one.
Lethal Weapon - most favored staus right now (baseball hiatus at present).
Blue Bloods - Friday night comfort food.

Thinking about SWAT - not sure how it will come across as I am generally not a fan of reboots/remakes (old enough to remember the original).

Gave up on NCIS (all versions), L&O:SVU, H50, Chicago -PD and whatevers, and Gotham a long time ago. Not enough time to try and view things that just seemed run of the mill.

 

[ScottH]

Sounds to me like a lot of you guys are just watching the wrong shows.

 

[Mike Frezon]

I’m pretty close to dropping Big Bang Theory because it’s strayed so far from its original clever premise and is just a boring sitcom now that doesn’t bring anything new or fresh to the table.

I hear ya, Clinton...but the writing is still pretty crisp and funny. Unusual for a sitcom now in its 11th season. It seems like they keep trying to explore relationships between different members of the cast who have not regularly interacted in the past (like Howard and Amy this past week).

 

[Blimpoy06]

Supergirl - if she doesn't get off her pity couch, I will soon be gone.

That was a show I breezed thru the first year. Really liked it and would try to get friends and family to watch. I am stuck in the middle of the 2nd year now and have lost all interest in continuing. Others have said this year is a little better, but what a let down from a stellar start. I agree. Woe is me. There should be no crying in baseball and superhero shows.

 

[Clinton McClure]

I hear ya, Clinton...but the writing is still pretty crisp and funny. Unusual for a sitcom now in its 11th season. It seems like they keep trying to explore relationships between different members of the cast who have not regularly interacted in the past (like Howard and Amy this past week).

I don’t think I even chuckled at any of the jokes last season and this season is more of the same. For me, the show started on a steep downhill trajectory when Leonard and Penny got engaged and it has only nose-dived into mediocrity since then. I know a lot of viewers like what has happened to the show, hence the eleven year run, but to me, the writers took away everything that made the show funny and interesting. I’ve long since stopped really paying attention to, or much less caring about, the main characters and the only thing keeping me coming back is wondering what is eventually going to happen with Stuart and to see if Barry Kripke is going to make any more appearances to antagonize Sheldon.