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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/
