Television shows change over time to better cater to the preferences of the audience, it uses new technology to attract more audiences. The audiences had to adhere to television networks’ schedules for decades. Nearly every television norm, including the length of a show, its frequency, and its content consistency, is created to accommodate a linear schedule.  (Lotz, 2017) The internet allows the audiences to select their interests, which not only saves them from the VCR and recording DVDs but also saves time waiting in front of the TV. 

The classics are defined to be valuable which provides an ideology, and can be rewatched over time. Some critics have noted that the greatest television shows are comparable to the richest novels in this era known as the “golden age of television.” Children’s programming of the highest caliber can be instructive. Nevertheless, new studies also raise the prospect that excessive television watching, especially if it’s done for pleasure, could have negative consequences. It seems that the damage is caused more by the way it replaces more meaningful activities than by the content itself. (Lotz, 2017) Another advantage of Netflix is that individuals don’t have to spend a lot of time waiting for a new episode to air each week, people can watch the whole series in one go, therefore leading to the new question of whether is binge-watch Netflix worth it.  Once the audience binge-watches a Netflix TV show, the website will generate an algorithm and keep suggesting a similar TV show to the audience to let them continuously watch it, which leads to a longer time waste on it.  (Mareike Jenner, 2018)  In order to better attract viewers different companies are competing to make more appealing dramas, compared to the past many dramas have lost their meaning and are more about entertaining the public, and the decline in quality has made binge-watching a waste of time.

By Jiayi Gao

Reference :

Lotz, A.D. (2017). Portals: A Treatise on Internet-Distributed Television. [online] MaizBook. Available at: https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/maize/mpub9699689/ [Accessed 30 Oct. 2023].

 Jenner, Mareike, Netflix and the Re-Invention of Television (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018)