Comment by thom
7 months ago
Am I the only child of the 80s that hates this? A bunch of stuff I'm not interested in, and then I switched off. The moment TiVo was available we had it in our house and it was great. I still like the occasional shared experience of big sporting events or Eurovision or something on broadcast TV, but outside that it's just the equivalent of doomscrolling. If you look at your plethora of streaming options today and can't find anything to watch, just do something else. The wonder of the modern age is the sheer volume of stuff you can ignore entirely and never care about.
You're not. Though on a recent vacation, one of my kids only had access to cable and absolutely loved the randomness of what was available.
I'm a child of the 80s too and I haven't watched TV in a decade, save for the occasional TV in hotel room. I do miss the luxury of occasionally having what you watch already decided for you and the serendipity of discovering something engaging by accident. Lately it has started to feel like all the choices we have in modern life and the decision paralysis that entails is causing more not less stress. I'd hazard the biggest problem with the old format was not so much the lack of control as the lack of quality content and paradoxically having too much choice with the explosion of cable tv channels. I think there's space for a refined version of something like this to coexist with all the modern options - something like a personalized curator that picks quality content tailored to your tastes and just plays it without you having to decide exactly what to watch beyond flipping (a limited number of) channels.