A DVR World

9-5 jobs, dinner all together with the family before 7:00 and watching our favorite television shows at the hour they are scheduled to air … these are all American traditions fading away into history.

In the year 2009 work days have no set times: some of us are at our desk by 6am, others don’t get to head home until midnight. In this electronic age we are reachable 24 hours a day and no one wants to say no or I’m off the clock in this economic downturn. Because of this mentality, our family values and appointment television days are changing (quickly).

It’s rare to hear about a family who runs on the same schedule and can all be seated around the kitchen table before 7:00 to enjoy a home cooked meal and share the stories of the day. Everything around us is changing. We are all adjusting except those who rule our televisions. I think it’s time for networks and the media to start living up to their end of the bargain.

I’m a television producer looking for a job. My time off really opened my eyes to a business that is in desperate need of a makeover (and boy do I have some ideas, if only someone gave me a chance and a job!). The days of news from 5-6:30pm are wasted on empty rooms. (Contact me if you’d like to hear my plan to maximize dollars and viewers with a revamped 7:00pm hour.)

Despite the need to "shake up" our outdated television lineups, producers and networks need to understand the power of the DVR World. Appointment television is a theory of the past. When is the last time you made sure you were in front of the television right at 8:00pm Tuesday nights to see the very first second of American Idol live? In an informal Megan poll, 95% of my friends and family admit they haven’t been in their front row seat on time in at least 4 seasons. That is because we aren't home and done with dinner by 8:00 and we can experience our favorite shows in their entirety at any time thanks to the invention of the DVR: or so we thought.

This season of American Idol is by far the worst when it comes to producers correctly timing out the shows. I don’t think the powers that be at Idol have hit their mark since we got out of the audition rounds. Thanks to a lack of discipline we’ve all missed a standing ovation from Simon for Adam Lambert’s outrageous rendition of “Mad World.” We’ve had to call friends or search online to see if the judges used their save on Michael Sarver. And, I can't remember the last time I heard Carrie Underwood sing the goodbye song and saw the video montage to the latest Idol contestant who got the boot. I could go on for hours with examples of what we’ve missed because producers aren’t producing to the new DVR world that we live in.

In my years producing live newscasts I know going over your time slot is a big N-O. You cut off the beginning of the next show if you are a local station cutting into network programming. If you are the network, you push back local programming so it can’t start on time. This is a ratings game. A 11 or 10pm news going on late means you likely have a huge percentage of viewers jumping ship to catch the top stories on a station that managed to hit the correct start time. Network shows like Idol going 8-10 minutes over has loyal fans in an uproar googling a performance that is being dubbed the best of the season because our DVRs stopped tapping; others tweeting or calling friends to see who got kicked off … you get my drift.

As you can tell by the reports on-air, in print and on the web, television shows are being cancelled, newsrooms are closing as major budget cuts across the board are handed down. Something has got to change or television viewers will continue to slowly get up from their seats and walk away. Until producers and television executives turn their appointment television and 8-11 primetime switches off and take a good look at the new schedule of an American family and this DVR world, the slow demise of television won't stop anytime soon and the Internet will start to really rule the way we get our entertainment.

It’s a shame because there is so much potential for a bigger and better television world. I think it might be time for some new thinkers to get a chance to revitalize a dying American tradition.



** A side note, I don’t think DVR is perfect it has a lot kinks to work out such as: allowing us to tape more than 2 shows at a time. If we are taping 2 shows, allow us to watch a third live!! And, wouldn’t it be great if our DVR machines could recognize a show is going long and keep taping (just some Megan thoughts!). **