So many times, I hear some buzz about a TV show that some of my friends are raving about. But when I watch the first episode, I’m either not moved, or moved to disgust. My friends tell me, “Give it a chance, it gets better.” They tell me that it takes time for the writers, actors, and directors to work the kinks out and figure where the story is going.
Here’s the thing: my time is valuable to me and I don’t find watching TV physically comfortable in the first place (I get headaches, tired neck and upper back, and tired eyes). So, if you want me to keep watching, you’ve got to make it worth my while in the first episode, and keep it worth my while. TV is never going to be a have-to for me. I lived completely without it from age 10 to 12. When my mom finally got a replacement set, I watched constantly for about a month and then went back to watching almost no TV. The exceptions were “All in the Family” and occasionally, “Laugh-in.” I would have liked SNL, but those were the days when you had to watch in real time, and as a morning person, it was too late in the evening for me.
Three things happened that brought me back to TV: first, in December, 2019, my son-in-law gave me a Google Chromecast device, letting me display anything I can see in the Chrome browser on my laptop on the single TV we own, with a bigger, clearer screen and better speakers than any of our computers. Next, the pandemic hit, and all of a sudden, we weren’t going to concerts, plays, or parties—and I finally started using the Chromecast: watching London theatre, archival superstar rock concerts, and European orchestras on the big screen. And third, after living with us for a few weeks in May, 2020 (and turning us on to the first series we watched all the way through), our other child’s partner added us to his Netflix subscription. So now, typically, we turn on the tube once every week or two.
TV has improved enormously since I last watched regularly (when my kids, now 34 and 29, were toddlers). We were enchanted with “The Good Place” and watched all four seasons, despite my skepticism of the big plot flip after the first season. We watched a fascinating four-episode show called “Unorthodox,” about a Chassidic woman who leaves her community in Brooklyn to create a secular life in Berlin. And we made our way through “The Queen’s Gambit,” with its feminist/youth empowerment themes and window into the very odd world of professional chess. Now we’ve just finished the second season of “Orange is the New Black,” with its deeply psychological and sociological approach to the diverse characters within a women’s prison. It took us about a year to get through the first two seasons.
But even though I knew they’d get better, after just one episode, I rejected “West Wing” because even as a politics junkie, I found the situations dated and less-than-intoxicating, and “Schitt’s Creek” because I didn’t want to waste one more minute hanging around with an unpleasant, dysfunctional, narcissistic family of formerly wealthy people in a retelling of “Green Acres.” I rejected several others after one or two episodes.
I recognize that many people are more patient than I am about this, and will invest time into four or five bad episodes to start getting the good ones. Outside of the TV world, I’m actually a very patient person. I’m the one who will scrape the last bit out of a jar or out of the food processor. And that same patience underpins my huge faith in the transformational power of business and in the ability of ordinary people to create a society that works well for everyone—beliefs that require extreme patience!
But despite my impatience with bad TV, I’m actually the kind of viewer that producers and broadcast outlets should woo. I am considered an influencer. I write books, publish newsletters, and give talks. I’ve just told 4,000 of you about four TV shows you might want to watch and two more that I didn’t feel were worth my time.
So maybe TV producers should spend a bit more effort providing an experience that people like me not only will sit through, but enthuse over. Next month, we’ll look at some brands that figured that out and created such a positive user experience that it built their entire brand.
