Wednesday, July 30, 2014

Circle of Life (on Network Television)

Photo courtesy of Fotolia

 

 

                More and more frequently, I notice that the change in weather and the lengthening and shortening of daylight aren’t the only ways I mark the passage of time. It turns out that television is a great time-keeper, too. And that isn’t necessarily a good thing.

                I remember a time when there were only thirteen television channels that audiences could watch, including PBS—which aired Masterpiece Theater, hosted by Alastair Cook, and Sesame Street. Now there are hundreds of channels to choose from, including three that broadcast current and older episodes of Masterpiece Mystery on three different days and times. I can’t even count on both hands the number of reality programs that currently air on network and cable television channels. Did these types of shows even exist when I was growing up?

                Back in my day, the new season of a television series started in September or October and ran through May or early June. Thereafter, networks were inundated with sports broadcasts, reruns from those series and the occasional made-for-TV movie. In the past few years, new “tester” series are aired during the summer. These series only last a few months at most; the lucky (successful) programs get renewed and are even scheduled to continue during the year if they attract enough viewers. Or, not: Sometimes, the renewal means the series will return next year, to keep viewers watching that network until the regular television season begins.

                On the one hand, I always know that it’s summertime because Shark Week returns to the Discovery Channel, usually at the beginning of August. (TV ads to celebrate this annual event should start hitting the airwaves any day.) Apparently the third season of the new series of Dallas will also be back at the end of August. ABC is already advertising the return of their hit series, Scandal, which starts in September, when the show’s summer-replacement ends its season. Reminiscent of seasonal programming when I was growing up, the CW re-runs previous episodes of its hit shows about the supernatural throughout the summer until the new season begins again in October.

Great Britain gets to catch up with the goings-on at Downton Abbey in October. Meanwhile, there are so many opportunities (risks) of catching spoilers about the show on social media until Americans get to see the series in January/February of 2015. I won’t even get started about the frustration of having to wait until who-knows-when to watch the next season Game of Thrones. And when Alison Sweeney, an actress on the long-running daytime soap opera Days of Our Lives recently announced that she is leaving the show for good this season, fans took up a vigil to make sure they wouldn’t miss her final episode…whenever that happens to be. It could be months until that happens, yet they are counting the days until something they don’t want to occur actually takes place.

Even Real Time with Bill Maher goes off the air during the summer, until he returns after his well-deserved summer hiatus in September. Wait. Maher still has one more episode of his series before his break. Why am I moaning about his vacation right now, before he’s even left?

That is exactly the point I am trying to make. Despite the great efforts of network executives and their advertisers, television is not the end-all-be-all source of entertainment and enjoyment in our lives. We are so much more than just a fan/someone who gets caught up in the drama of and behind our favorite television shows. Sure, we feel a twinge of emotional pain when something changes in our entertainment routine. But that is because this routine is familiar and enjoyable. More important the familiarity of watching and looking forward to watching these programs has become comfortable, even comforting. The same is true of the fondness we develop and feel for the characters and talk-show hosts that we see day after day or week after week. We feel like we really know them after all the time (sometimes, years) we have been watching their shows. They are part of and have become a subconscious known, a mental script that our subconscious minds have written about one of the ways we enjoy relaxing and spending our time.

I don’t worry about this separation from my favorite programs anymore. You know why? By now, the experience of bidding a temporary adieu to our favorite seasonal programming is also a known in my subconscious mind. Based on my experiences over the past years, I can comfortably rely on the fact that once again I will likely be curled up in front of the TV watching my favorite programs sometime—probably at the same time—next year.

               

 

 

 Sara R. Fogan, C.Ht. is a certified hypnotherapist based in Southern California. She graduated with honors from the Hypnosis Motivation Institute in 2005. For more information about Calminsense Hypnotherapy®, please visit http://www.calminsensehypnotherapy.com/