Reflecting on my TV watching habits over the semester.

HERE you can see my Weekly “diaries” about my TV watching from the start of Week 8 to the end of Week 13.

From my time use diaries, several patterns emerge, and trends appear. The most obvious one being that I watch 90% of TV alone, which is a result of living alone, and the only times I watched TV with other people were when I was staying with family, or during a lecture for this subject. Television isn’t a very social pastime for me, and the shows that I watch do not lend themselves particulary well to group disuccsion whilst watching (which is something I am not overly fond of anyway).

Meanwhile, I also engage in rapid and elongated consumption of TV shows on non traditional mediums (DVD, Streaming services etc..), for example I watched the next 7 episodes of True Detective in mere days following watching the Pilot in the TV cultures lecture, and all 10 episodes of Better Call Saul in under a week. My frequency of these “binge watch shows” varies radically, if I am currently engaged with a show I will watch it with extreme frequency, often late into the night “just one more”ing. However once I am done with a show, I do not immediately find another, and often go weeks or even months without having a show in which I get super into it and watch a season in a week.

Another emergent pattern is that there are 3-4 shows that I watch regularly on free to air television, Good Game, Chaser’s Media Circus, Gruen and Doctor Who, interestingly all on the ABC. These are the only shows that I watch with a mind to their schedule, as in if I am doing something else at home I will stop to turn on the TV and watch them. However their prevalence in organizing my life extends only so far, whilst I will stop browsing the internet, playing video games or other entertainment based activities, they will not influence any greater decisions that extend beyond my apartment, such as going out or anything important such as staying late at RMIT to finish an assignment.

This is because all of those shows are easily avalible on other platforms for “catch up” watching, in all of these cases, ABC iView. This means that although I intend to watch them at their designated time, and will stop what I am doing to put my almost undivided attention towards them, if for some reason this is impossible there is nothing lost and no need to worry as they are readily avalible to watch on other platforms.

Along with those shows, the rest of what I watch on free to air TV has a much different level of engagement, things like The Simpsons, Futarama and Bob’s Burgers run one after to other on a Wednesday evening, and while I enjoy those shows, I do not engage my attention to them fully as they are 99% likely to be episodes I have seen before. Instead they are more of background noise, usually on when I am doing other tasks such as cooking, eating, cleaning etc… Attention is divided between whateer it is that I am doing, and the show, due to the relatively non-complex plots and familiarity missing a few lines of dialogue or keeping my eyes of the TV for a minute doesn’t have a major impact on the viewing experience, but they work as good background entertainment whilst doing menial activities that do not require my full attention all of the time, as well as serving as a rough indicator of time, as a new episode (the structure is Simpsons, Futarama, Simpsons, Futarama, Simpsons, Bobs Burgers) indicates that 30 minutes has passed.

Beyond even that there is a third subset of shows that I watch with an even lower amount of attention payed towards them. The things that inadvertently come on after something I want to watch has finished and I neglect to turn the TV off. I payed these shows so little attention that I couldn’t even remember what they were called when I went to fill in the time use diary the next day, something to do with prisons or something. These shows are less than a distraction and more-so a result of laziness, with me opting to do stuff on my computer or phone with some background noise rather than turn it off.