Imagine watching an entire series in just a couple of days. Impossible? Not anymore. With the popularity of Netflix and other free television streaming websites, people have the opportunity to skip the waiting time between episodes — and the commercials.
Back in the early days of TV, you had to be glued to your set on a specific day at a specific time to catch the newest episodes of your favorite show. And if you missed it, you were out of luck. Unfortunately, not all of us have time to be stuck to our TVs. But nowadays, that’s no excuse, the Internet is filled with video streaming websites with basically every TV show or movie you’d want to watch (and plenty that you wouldn’t). With PVRs, you can record multiple shows at a time, and spend an idle weekend catching up on everything you’ve missed.
Don’t have a PVR? Too lazy to Google where to watch your favorite show? Well then you can turn to Netflix. For those of you living under a rock for the last few years, Netflix is a video streaming service available online through any device connected with WiFi and requiring a small fee for unlimited access to movies and TV shows. Now you can choose your show, sit back and watch as many episodes as are available to you.
In 2012, The New York Times published a story about how How I Met Your Mother’s seventh season had the best ratings the series had ever seen. Coincidentally, the earlier seasons of the series had just become available for instant streaming on Netflix. The show hadn’t necessarily gotten better, the people who were too busy to watch it before could suddenly catch up and tune in.
The popularity of the company has even allowed it to expand its market from movies and TV shows, to producing their own original content. Shows like Orange Is The New Black and House of Cards are both Netflix originals that have gained immense popularity. After being cancelled in 2006, Arrested Development was revived for a fourth season exclusively on Netflix due to the huge demand from fans and both House of Cards and Arrested Development garnered multiple Emmy nominations this year.
Is this the way of the future, or are we just getting lazy? Either way, this just goes to show that in today’s fast-paced world, people will find ways to make anything more efficient. We get busy, and we want to watch our shows whenever we have the time. If that means having to squeeze one whole season into one day, then that’s what we’ll do. Who knows, maybe one day TV schedules will be a thing of the past and our beloved shows will be available to us whenever it’s convenient. All we know is that we want our shows and we want them now, and we’d prefer a whole season in one sitting.
