Last nite's Washington Nationals game was unfortunately rain postponed until much later in the year, so I was left finding alternative choices for what to watch. Since I'm a satellite subscriber (DirecTV thank you), and have PVR units featuring TiVo throughout the house, I have a nice collection of programming stored up for watching at my convenience. Especially useful for the few times in the year when I get victimized by "rain fade" (where the satellite signal is interrupted due to very heavy rains for a brief period of time).
As it turns out, I had set the receiver in my recreation room space to record the made for HBO mini-series Elizabeth I (about the 'scottish queen') and would have watched that live had it not been for the thought that I'd wind up missing a few minutes (at least) of the show due to the rain fade issue. With that in mind, I found an alternative air-time for Elizabeth and have set my PVR to record the later showing, so I won't miss anything. Meanwhile, I was left to find something else to watch, and turned to recorded programs in my "Now Playing" list.
Last season I found myself impressed with a show that I started watching late in it's run -- the HBO original program Entourage -- it's a great ensemble program, not quite comedy, not quite drama, loosely based on the life of Mark Wahlberg and his crew of friends that were along for the ride as he made his way to fame. I had started watching it late in season 2, catching approximately the last 4 episodes before the end of that season. If I hadn't been hearing some raves about how good the show is (thanks to Tony Kornheiser's local radio show, where he would discuss the show with his Pardon the Interruption co-host and compatriot from The Washington Post Michael Wilbon), I might never have watched an episode, but thankfully I did catch those raves and opted to give the show a chance.
Along the way, I've picked up UMD (Sony's proprietary format movie discs for the PSP handheld game/multimedia console system) discs of season 1 and really enjoyed seeing those episdoes. That left me about 6 - 8 episodes short of being 'current' with the show coming into the current season.
That's where HBO, and my beloved TiVo box, shines. HBO re-airs their shows in series order coming into the next season for their show. With Season 3 of Entourage coming in June, I knew that I could count on re-airings of Season 2 around this time of the year, and HBO hasn't let me down. Starting last weekend, Season 2 episodes started airing back-to-back on Sunday evenings, before the Sopranos (another great HBO show). I set the TiVo to record those episodes, and have set it to manually record coming episodes of the Season 2 run, and am catching up quickly to how we got to the events I saw in the last several episodes when I first started watching the show.
It was while watching the show last nite that I had this very weird feeling again that the shows I was watching were much longer than they actually are. Each episode of Entourage is 30 minutes (on average, actually about 27 minutes give or take). The big difference is that unlike 'regular' network programming, HBO's shows run a full 30 minutes (or, in the case of The Sopranos, a full 60 minutes). You don't lose the continuity the way you do when regular network programming is interrupted by commercials. Instead of getting 20 minutes (or less) worth of program in the 30 minute package, you get 30 full minutes.
I wish that the networks would learn that long lost art again. The one of actually providing a lot more programming in their programming blocks, rather than continuing to over-fill their shows with a bunch of worthless advertisements. I know the ads/commercials aren't worthless, and they are part of the price we have to pay to get free programming, versus paying for HBO or other pay cable channels, but the networks have gone much too far to the side of airing commercials. If they'd put more time into airing episodes that are aired 'un-cut' that are sponsored by a single sponsor (similar to what Ford did some years ago with the Fox network show 24) I'd have a lot more patience and respect for the networks.
