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Television

Ask Slashdot: Do Streamers Waste More Time Deciding What to Watch? (tvtechnology.com) 50

Posted by EditorDavid from the what-to-watch dept.
"Are you old enough to remember channel surfing?" asks long-time Slashdog reader MightyMait. "When there were only a handful of broadcast channels, it wasn't a big deal..." But when we got cable/satelite, one could spend inordinate amounts of time flipping through the channels looking for something decent to watch. Now, with the proliferation of streaming services...
Streaming viewers are now "spending a record 10.5 minutes per session deciding what to watch," according to TV Tech, citing a new study from the Nielsen-owned entertainment-data company Gracenote.

Their 2023 State of Play report "found that that there were 1.9 million video titles available to viewers in the U.S., U.K., Canada, Mexico and Germany in July 2021, a number that had swelled to 2.7 million titles by June 2023." Of the total count, a whopping 86.7% were available on streaming services. Compounding complexity, many popular shows now appear in multiple streaming catalogs, as the industry pivots from offering content exclusivity to broad distribution strategies that companies hope will balance massive streaming loses, the report noted. The Gracenote analysis also found that audiences now have nearly 40,000 individual FAST channels, streaming providers and aggregators to choose from.
The original submission from MightyMait asks Slashdot readers: "Are you feeling the pain? And if so, "What strategies do you employ to avoid this time suck?"

Share your own thoughts and experiences in the comments. And do streamers spend more time deciding what to watch?
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Ask Slashdot: Do Streamers Waste More Time Deciding What to Watch? More

Ask Slashdot: Do Streamers Waste More Time Deciding What to Watch?

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  • 57 million channels... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by cirby ( 2599 ) on Saturday September 02, 2023 @05:44PM (#63817846)

    ...and nothing on.

  • Simple, really (Score:3)

    by war4peace ( 1628283 ) on Saturday September 02, 2023 @05:50PM (#63817868)

    My wife and I had a blast during the last year, revisiting our favorite movies and TV series from the past.
    She just finished watching Stargate SG-1 by herself, while I re-watched dozens of movies I had enjoyed in the past, for example "12 Angry Men" (1957 as well as 1997 version). We also watched Stargate Atlantis together, as well as most of the Stargate movies.
    Yesterday, we watched Waterworld, because why not.

    As for new stuff? Most of it is pretty shit. We enjoyed Guardians of the Galaxy 3, The Menu, Top Gun, All Quiet on the Western Front, but we were lukewarm to many other releases and disliked most mainstream stuff.
    Thousands of hours of movies from the past to enjoy (again), no time to dawdle looking for current stuff.

    • If you want to watch some of the older stuff, why not bing on the Bob Hope/Bing Crosby/Dorothy Lamour Road To [wikipedia.org] series? Seven films, and not a dud in the bunch.
    • I want to watch big brother us from the beginning. Yes i know it's not everyone's cup of tea, don't judge. I saw all kinds of ads "watch big brother on Paramount+" so got paramount+. No big brother! Oops apparently it is only on Paramount+ in the US. So far i have not found a way to watch it in Canada. There was one site that streamed it but they got a take down notice from cbs.

  • begging the question (Score:5, Interesting)

    by phantomfive ( 622387 ) on Saturday September 02, 2023 @05:51PM (#63817874) Journal
    This article is assuming I don't enjoy looking through the shows seeing what is available to watch. Sometimes that can be more enjoyable than the actual shows.

    • I watch a channel called Pitch Meeting on YouTube. Itâ(TM)s a guy who does funny critical reviews of movies, and heâ(TM)s typically spot on while being hilarious.

      I used to watch his videos only for stuff that I had actually seen before, to avoid spoilers. But now I watch him for stuff I havenâ(TM)t seen and it saves me from wasting my time watching the actual âoework of artâoe.

    • This article is assuming I don't enjoy looking through the shows seeing what is available to watch. Sometimes that can be more enjoyable than the actual shows.

      A sad reflection on the state of television.

    • I remember when iPods first launched. At the time, I had a "regular" MP3 player, and was used to just pushing "Play" and listening to things randomly. It was all stuff I liked, so the order of the songs didn't matter to me. iPod people would spend many minutes playing with the fancy scroll-wheel interface, searching for the perfect song for their current mood. I concluded that people spent just as much time playing with the UI as they did listen to music. At work, it was a major problem as people would

    • This article is assuming I don't enjoy looking through the shows seeing what is available to watch. Sometimes that can be more enjoyable than the actual shows.

      I don't.

      You should consider watching better shows.

  • Reverse the order of operations (Score:3)

    by Entrope ( 68843 ) on Saturday September 02, 2023 @06:00PM (#63817894) Homepage

    My strategy is simple: If I don't know what I want to watch, I do something else entirely. There are a lot of things I can spend my time doing, and streaming video normally loses out except as a background activity when I'm on the treadmill.

  • and make a note of shows & movies that we are currently watching, think we would like to watch, or have been recommended. Takes longer to get a show started on the roku than it takes to pick what to see next.

    Switching away from cable was a good decision for us. Pick what want and when we want to watch and spend less than half what comcast was charging per month all with no commercial interruptions.

  • I have found I feel more obligated to actually watch something I thought about and picked out than whatever random show happens to be on broadcast tv right now. Which in all honestly feels extra stupid when I stop and think about being able to pause, rewind and even re-play the show at will.
  • Lately, I've been spending time looking (more like exploring) through some old obscure 80s theatrican and TV movies, as well as watching documentaries, and older more established programs I've read user reviews about, and stuff I know I like but I haven't watched in years. As for spending time looking through newer shows and movies I know nothing about, it's frustrating having to go by box art and very short descriptions of what the show is about to determine if it's something I want to spend time watchin
  • What strategies do you employ to avoid this time suck? "avoid this time suck
  • Even before streaming services, I hated when a former partner would just flick endlessly through all the options on cable TV. Now with my wife we do a little research by googling the sorts of things we might like to watch. Discuss our options away from any computer and then once a decision is made we watch the show on whatever streaming service provides it. We rarely spend any time in a streaming platform looking for something to watch from their offerings.

  • We are spending too much time consuming media. Humans need 2 months off .. proper disconnected from watching TV or streaming .. every year, minimum (ideally 3 months). Now don't tell me some BS about "I can't get time off" .. yeah that has nothing to do with anything. The requirement is the requirement.

    1 month should be spent on vacation where 90% of the time is spent in immersing in a culture (or cultures). Off grid except for checking email or something once a day. Going places for a conference or work

  • I watch just a very few things. I go to a streaming service when I want to see something, not when I want to graze.

    The rest of my time is filled with designing, making, fixing, reading (actual books), practicing music, working when I have to, and in the moments when I'm not being a sucky Dad, hanging with my kids.

    TV is largely a waste of time. I need to have a destination show to bother,

  • You're asking, do they waste more time browsing? I mean, we're just talking about watching TV here, right?

  • Yep, I do (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I actually miss the days of scheduled TV, because I have no self control. If I felt like watching something, but nothing good was on, I'd be forced to find something to do or expand my horizons and try to enjoy something that wasn't in my wheelhouse.

    Now I can do whatever I want but spend half the time hemming and hawing, calling myself an idiot and rightly so.

    I should just cancel streaming and live with ATSC and F2A.

  • I no longer pay services where I can't easily find things I want to watch.

  • This post is Boomer as fuck (Score:3)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Saturday September 02, 2023 @11:09PM (#63818312)
    They said the exact same thing about cable TV back in the day. I wonder if the millennials are going to do this to gen Z when they get older...

  • I've been using Trakt to track what I've watched and what sort of rating I wanna give it for years and years now. I also use it to find new stuff to watch and maintain a watchlist -- every now and then, I ask it for the highest-rated movies and TV-shows from the past two years, filter out the categories and languages I do not like and add any interesting ones to the watchlist. Then, when I feel like watching something, I pick something from that list. Trakt also makes it easy to see when a show I've enjoyed

  • Why is it a waste of time if you get to watch what you want? Ah, no ads.
  • The apps are designed to push the content they want you to watch. Because they want to push it commercially, and because their CDNs and caches are more efficient when everyone is watching the same. The problem is, I refuse to do that. So I'm all the time fighting the interface. The only useful part for me most of the time is the "continue watching" section, which is very limited. I'd like to be able to manage my streaming content like I manage my Kindle library, or better: my email inbox. When I've found co

  • For broadcast TV, the only programmes I ever watch live are live sporting events (and even then I record them in case I get interrupted) - everything else I go through the EPG once a week and set a bunch of timer events to record shows, allowing me to watch them when I want and skip any ads. Note that in the UK, the commercial broadcast TV streaming "catch up apps" have multiple - often repeated - unskippable ad breaks, which is a massive showstopper for me.

    There's too many streaming services to subscribe t

  • Time wasting has always existed (Score:3)

    by MindPrison ( 864299 ) on Sunday September 03, 2023 @02:57AM (#63818522) Journal

    I'm old now, but I can see a pattern that repeats itself.

    Wasting time on things that might seem unnecessary is as old as time itself whether it's watching the stars, sitting hours and days looking for birds, watching television or anything else that can be considered a waste of time.

    We procrastinate, and we spend our time how we want to, personally I hated advertisement and I disliked it so much I was one of the first to ditch regular broadcast television back in the days when streaming was a new thing, and I never looked back, I loved the fact I could chose the time I watch it and what I watch instead of waiting for some hyped up event that would eventually dissapoint anyway, with streaming we can chose when and what we watch without the interruptions.

    So when it comes to livestreamers that's a different affair, you get more up and personal with the audience (half the fun I have is with you guys, yes you - who write here for years, I consider you an audience with opinions that are either interesting or annoying, but it's better than watching fixed content that has been planned ahead and you can't have any say in it or ...well basically anything), streaming is more fun because you can also have the chance to affect the content and you get in touch with the producers of your entertainment, that in itself is entertaining, at least to me.

    But when it comes to streaming services like Netflix, Amazon, Disney+ etc. it's a bit of a mixed bag, I don't watch these so much anymore because they are increasingly getting zone restrictions (meaning films only available in a few select areas of the world) and it's getting more expensive, and they are desperate to re-introduce the mind-numblingly stupid repetitive irrelevant ads again, and I protest by simply not subscribing and supporting those anymore.

    Livestreamers however, can be endlessly addictive because of what I mentioned before, so I do watch a lot of those, and I've picked up a few friends on the side as well whom I've met in real life and some of those have become my lifelong friends, try that with streaming services or regular broadcast.

    I also enjoy watching content creators, I often watch the smallest ones - you know, those that youtube try hard to hide as much as they can because they're not "advertiser friendly" or have content that is not in line with corporate policies, I want to watch regular people and their crazy ideas of content, I like that, I get to chose what I want to spend my time on.

    Is it a waste of time, sure it is, but so is anything that doesn't really earn us money or develops anything useful for the world, streamers are essentially useless in that regards, but there are pearls amongst them, like D.I.Y. channels and documentaries that can open our eyes to a world we could not see before because of sensorship.

  • All streaming service I've used (Netflix, Disney+, Prime Video) have some sort of "my list".

    Stuff gets added to the list if we see mention of something interesting somewhere or it's some classic (e.g. right now watching Star Trek Voyager on Netflix).

    Stuff gets removed if
    a) Series gets finished
    b) Turns out that it wasn't worth my time after a few episodes

    Stuff on the list is essentially in two categories:
    1) We are going to actively watch and is available right now
    2) Stuff that has been renewed and is pending

  • My wife and I make a watchlist, add interesting shows to it, and watch them in sequence an hour every night at dinner. We don't start watching a series until it has ended and don't stop watching it until we have finished it. The user interfaces on streaming services seem to range from unhelpful to obstructionist in this paradigm. It has to be deliberate design choice.

  • The question "Do Streamers Waste More Time Deciding What To Watch?" should be turned into a Federal research grant.

    I bet a skilled research proposal writer could turn it into a grant worth between $100,000 and $1,000,000 USD.

    After all, Federal money has been given away to research all sorts of useless stuff...a list too lengthy for /.

  • 10.5 minutes of trying to remember your freaking password, then typing it in from a poorly-engineered remote.

  • I am old enough to remember channel surfing, and I remember perfectly clearly cycling through every channel looking for something and eventually giving up. At least now I can generally always find something in the genre I feel like to watch, it just might be something I've seen before. Back in the day the choice after going through every channel was to turn around and dig through VHS tapes, or switch to music... don't get me started on the hours I spent staring at my CD collection realizing I didn't have

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