If you can find a good TV show for your Netflix DVD queue, it makes life simpler. No matter how many movies you choose, they end up running out. But with a TV series as your back-up plan, you’re golden.
Today I went through all of the Netflix choices for TV series on DVD. The list went on and on. After a while I felt as though I was browsing through Borges’ Library of Babel.
Eventually I managed to make it through the entire list, but it took a surprisingly long time. During my long journey, I learned many things, such as the importance of spelling.
For example, The Flash and The Flesh turn out to be extremely different TV shows. It is also comforting to know that Hazel and Gomer Pyle, USMC are at my fingertips should I ever need them.
But the interesting thing was how many shows there were that I simply had no interest in seeing. I began to be cognizant of a vast and endless industry existing simply to entertain, and that for me it pretty much wasn’t working.
I’m not sure whether this is a reflection of me, or of that industry. I suspect it’s a little of both.
Back when I had a job where I could watch DVDs while I worked, I figured out that you can only send and receive DVDs from Netflix so quickly, and the trick to getting the most entertainment value out of your DVD subscription is to get DVDs with the most content on them that you can. That means TV shows where you usually get about four hours of content on a disc compared to 90 minutes if you’re getting a movie. I managed to make my way through so many shows while I was at that job.
“I began to be cognizant of a vast and endless industry existing simply to $(FOO), and that for me it pretty much wasn’t working.” That’s a nice summary of many industries.
I loved Netflix because they had such good coverage of the long tail. You could finally see all those movies and shows that you’d intended to see but somehow missed. But with the transition to streaming, Netflix abandoned the long tail (even for the DVD business). Add the fragmentation of content across streaming platforms, and it’s become harder than ever to find the stuff you want to see.