I have a new habit that may tick off Hollywood.
I have lately taken to downloading TV programs from various place on the Internet, even though the episodes are already in my DVR. Why, you ask? Because when they’re on my computer, I can control the playback speed. And lately, I’ve been watching many TV shows at 1.5 times the speed.
If you have an hour long episode of, say, CSI Miami, and you take out the commercials (dropping the length to 45 minutes) and then play that back 50% faster, you can get through them in a half hour.
If you get the chance, try it. QuickTime Pro allows for changing playback speed with no change in pitch, depending on how the file was encoded. Anywhere between 1.25 and 2 time speed, depending on the show.
You may discover a few things:
One: most shows are heavily padded. Establishing shots are getting silly– I love Vegas, but I don’t need to see a shot of the Strip at night at the beginning of every act break. I shudder to think how quickly I’ll get through an episode of Jeopardy or a World Series game.
Two: the shows hold your interest better. Most of the time when I watch conventional TV, I’m usually doing something else– writing, answering email, eating dinner, what have you. At higher speeds, I find that I spend more time paying attention, partially out of necessity, but partially because I’m not bored by lulls, and also because of the knowledge that I’ll be done quicker– besides, I can always hit pause if I need to.
(As another data point, I notice that my reading habits are beginning to follow a similar pattern. I’m reading more and more in my RSS reader, and I’m spending more time reading folks who provide full feeds to their posts (like Mark Evanier) instead of excerpts (like Talking Points Memo) because to finish an excerpt I have to click through and burn time. I’m also reading less of people who just have pointer links to other things without much description, because I have too much other stuff to get to.)
As I said, this may tick off Hollywood. On the other hand, it may allow Hollywood to sell more product, because consumers can go through it faster. The biggest drawback to the medium that Hollywood traffics in is that the speed is locked down. When I read, I do so at my own pace– and as a result, I consume more product because I need more of it. It’s possible the same thing could happen with TV. Be honest: wouldn’t you be more likely to watch the nightly news if you got all the information in half the time? Wouldn’t there be more films you would try? Heck, wouldn’t it address most of the problems you have with a lot of films and TV?
Doing this addresses the zero-sum game problem inherent with Hollywood: there’s only so many hours in the day, so there’s only so much time to watch TV. If you’re trying to keep up with a dozen TV dramas, that’s 1/14th of your week gone.
This is why I love “news channels”. I can listen to the anchor give me just slightly more than a tidbit of news while I read the headlines scroll across the bottom of the screen. More bang for my buck.
My girlfriend hates it and prefers a full newscast with indepth story detail and interviews and such, which is fine. I quite often just want the punchline for watercooler fodder. Then I can learn more from others in the conversation.
Makes me appear learned when really I’m still learning.
Don’t do the downloading, but I do find that my finger’s constantly on the fast forward button of my remote. Las Vegas (the show as opposed to the setting of CSI) is one of those that I enjoy – but only when I can speed up the fluff. There are a bunch of others like this – the 4400, almost any drama the BBC’s currently putting out, Veronica Mars when they’re just going into the teen angsty stuff.
And it is because there’s not enough time in the day to keep up with all this stuff – or at least I’m not willing to put in the time to watch them unless they really grab me.