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TV Sets Your Internal Clock
That is, when you watch normal television, you'll find yourself knowing what time it is more frequently than if you are watching other stuff. For instance, if you're just watching HD-DVDs, streaming media, downloaded media, and other such stuff you'll just finish watching stuff and then wonder what time it is.
If you watch TV, though, you're constantly reminded of what time it is. For instance, just about everyone who watches TV knows that if you put Leno or Letterman on it's around 11:30pm and the news has just ended.
You even get to know the day of the week better because of what's on and the constant reminder with the stations own ads.
Why is this?
Likely, it's some simple form of conditioning. Through repetition, you learn to know what time shows are on. You will also learn the day of the week shows are on. After long enough, you'll get to be able to just know what time it is based on what's on TV. Many people live in households where the TV is just always on. It's turned on when people get home. It's used as background to whatever is going on, including making dinner, eating dinner, doing homework and housework, and pretty much throughout the whole evening and, in some households, the whole morning.
The household I grew up with was somewhat like this. In fact, I was someone like this until just over 6 years ago when Laurie and I decided to drop cable and not have any sort of paid TV. We didn't have any TV reception, either, until about a month ago when we discovered we had digital TV reception in our area. Since we switched to using Netflix to watch shows, we weren't totally out of the loop. However, the times of the shows didn't matter.
For Heroes, though, we used the net to catch up (sort of) and now we've watched it a couple of times on the air. Of course, if you watch it, you're already well aware of the fact that we've watched it on a Monday evening (9pm, we're not central time... heh).
A strange thing that's happened to me with the TV, though. I've gotten to staying up later. Sure, I'm blogging more in front of it, but it also tends to keep me up. We haven't been following Studio 60, but it's on and it has a couple of great actors from the West Wing and, of course, Friends. After that, I'll probably watch most of the news because occasionally there is something interesting. After that, how can I possibly turn off Leno?
"It's a sickness!" exclaims Laurie. It's addicting, too. I agree, though.
Posted by Shane on February 28, 2007 8:29 AM | Permalink
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Comments
I think it's pretty simple. Generally, you can tell APPROXIMATELY what time it is. Shows begin and end at regular intervals. So you're kind of keeping track of the major times of the hour (the times a grandfather clock would chime).
Now consider that most TV is very formulaic. Like I know that if I turn on the TV and its Perry Mason, and theres someone on the witness stand, then its 5 to the hour, because thats ALWAYS when Perry Mason gets his man or woman to break down on the stand. If someone has just died on CSI, then you're in the first five minutes. The point is, shows have progress, and their story arcs are backed up not just by the level of drama in the plot, but by the music and other subtle and not so subtle clues. The amount of money won by the game show contestant shows how far along they are in the show, the number of minutes shown next to Jack Bauer in 24 shows how much time has elapsed this episode. We even know, subconsciously, when the commercials come on during the episode.
And yes, it is sick. You are watching crap like CSI SVU which might as well stand for Sweet Valley University. Why would I want to give up my evening to watch a show on sex crimes?
Posted by: Lauren Darcey | February 28, 2007 3:13 PM
Oh, and I paid attention to an episode of Studio 60 and its really bad. I'm amazed how bad it is, considering I really like Bradley whatshisname from West Wing. But clearly that was mostly the West Wing writers making him cool.
And Chandler, whatever his name is in real life, Matt... Perry. Wasn't he in rehab? So they write him into the show with a drug addiction? Great idea. That's just sad. Its like making a recovering alcoholic pretend to drink on film. SICK.
Posted by: Lauren Darcey | February 28, 2007 3:16 PM