Watching TV

My friend Jane in Milan received a sales call from Sky TV, offering a deal on their satellite services. "I don't watch TV," she told the salesman, which apparently left him completely dumbfounded.

I know exactly what she means: who has the time?

The Christian Science Monitor reported some time ago that "The average US household has a TV on for an astonishing 7 hours and 40 minutes per day."

That certainly is astonishing - how do people have that much time for TV? We spend presumably 8 hours out of 24 sleeping, and another 6-8 at school or work. That leaves only 8 to 10 hours a day - so basically, almost every minute that you're at home and not sleeping, a TV is on? I guess these average households have the TV on while they're doing other things - preparing and eating meals, doing homework, etc.

I couldn't live that way. I didn't grow up with TV, and never developed the American knack for ignoring it (or dividing my attention between it and whatever else is going on), so I find it very annoying and distracting to have a TV on unless I actually want to sit and watch it.

There are a few things I would like to watch on American television but, as an expatriate, my options for doing so are limited. Some shows are offered, in English, on Sky satellite TV - but not enough that I'd find the entire Sky package worth paying for. And, since Sky Europe airs American shows well after their original American air dates, with as much as I read on the Internet, I would risk being "spoiled" - learning about important plot points before seeing the episode in which they occur. I like to keep the surprise in my TV shows, thank you very much!

Apple's iTunes service keeps adding shows that I would like to watch and would even be willing to pay for, but I cannot buy them, because I don't have a US billing address for my credit card. With my Italian billing address, I can only buy from the Italian iTunes store, which does not feature American TV shows.

I won't even bother ranting about the incredible stupidity of this. An article (LA Times, I think) mentioned people in England who (illegally) download TV shows which have already aired in the US, but not in the UK. One British woman interviewed said, "Well, it's TV, it's free, so where's the harm?" She knows that her favorite show will eventually be shown on her local station, but she doesn't want to wait to see what happens next, and doesn't believe that anyone loses anything by her downloading the show to watch it right away.

She's wrong, actually - theoretically, if everyone in the UK downloaded the show, there would be no local market left, and the UK station would no longer pay for the priviledge of airing it. But this problem could easily be solved by airing on the same (or close to the same) schedule as a show is first aired in the US - the solution now used for many big movies. Or the shows' producers could solve the problem by selling directly to the customer worldwide.

Yes, I know that would stomp all over longstanding regional distribution agreements; local TV stations would scream, and TV producers are not going to change until convinced that this tired old business model is completely unviable.

They don't seem to get that, in this age of globalization, their marketing is all too globally effective: US excitement over a show quickly spreads worldwide, creating global demand for something that will be officially released outside the US only months later. As for me, living in Italy, I would not only have to wait years, but would have to watch my favorite shows dubbed into Italian. I don't think so!