People of my advanced years will remember well sitting around the TV with the family and waiting for a show to start. We had no choice- if the show was starting at a particular time, you would have to be there to watch it. The VHS video recorder could be pumped into action to record the show, but the recording experience and subsequent pain of watching my mother or father trying to work the huge machine became too much and I preferred to sit in my bedroom playing on my ZX Spectrum.
With the advance of the internet and more importantly smartphones and tablets this has all changed and the days of scheduled entertainment are numbered. We can now use BBC iPlayer, ITV Player, Netflix, Sky Go and numerous other apps and services to watch our TV shows and the coverage has reached the stage where almost every TV show we want to watch is available whenever we have the time to view it. This makes a lot of sense in times when we are busier than ever before and it is amazing how quickly our mind-sets change to adapt to the lack of scheduling. I haven’t watched a scheduled TV show in over a month and won’t do until Britain’s Got Talent reappears because my children insist I watch it with them- not because I would want to watch it myself of course (cough). I watch TV shows on my tablet if I have the time and if I don’t, I watch nothing at all.
I can now choose what I want to watch and when I want to watch it and the same applies to any other form of digital entertainment. Podcasts are played in the car through my car stereo from my smartphone, games are mostly played if I have a few spare minutes on my tablet and of course my music is available 24 hours a day through locally held tracks and Spotify. I have internet at home and everywhere I travel, and so I have entertainment on tap. My entertainment when I want it. Who would have thought?
About Shaun McGill