Sensyden’s: An Open Letter to the Television Industry

Since it’s premiere I have been a casual fan of the ABC series “V”. I have not loved every episode, characters have been more than a tad annoying at times, and some of the plot lines felt a bit stale. However, in my humble opinion it is better than a large majority of the junk that pollutes the digital television signal on a weekly basis. That said, until recently, if I found myself with an hour less TV time a week I would strongly have considered dropping “V” before any other show.

This season the series was on a slow march towards significant improvement in quality. I was moderately excited to see the episodes each week and even chose to watch them the night after they aired rather than wait till it was the only thing left on my DVR. Unfortunately, somehow, my DVR recorded the episode entitled, “Concordia” without sound. Rather the watch the whole thing closed captioned, I decided to delete the episode and catch it on Netflix, Hulu, or ABC.com. Worst case scenario, I figured I would purchase the episode from iTunes or Amazon.

I was a little surprised when it was not streaming anywhere legally and free on the Internet. I was simply flabbergasted when I realized it was not even available for purchase when I wanted to give the series money to buy it directly. This left me only two options, give up on the series or skip a crucial episode in a highly serialized show. Luckily in my complaining about the lack of “V” availability my sister-in-law mentioned she had the missing episode and I just needed to trek my family to her place to get caught up.

It should not be this hard to keep up with a television series.

Just today I reached my breaking point with “The Vampire Diaries”. When it first premiered I gave it a shot and decided it was not for me, though I admittedly have unreasonably high expectations for vampire shows (I called them the “Whedon Factor”). As the show continued I heard from people I trust that this was a fantastic series. A couple of weeks ago I listened to an interview with one of the show’s stars on the Channel Surfing Podcast and thought “Vampire Diaries” sounded a lot more interesting then the first episode I watched almost two years ago.

I hoped the series would stream on Netflix, Hulu, Hulu Plus, or the new Amazon Prime streaming service. Being a fairly popular show, with good buzz, I assumed they would want as many new eyeballs as they could get. I assumed wrong. It does not stream on Netflix, Hulu, or Amazon Prime. It might stream on Hulu Plus but I have no idea how to find out and I’m not paying a monthly fee before I know what is available.

This leaves me a couple of options. I can purchase season one on DVD, purchase season two when it comes out this summer, and start watching new episodes as they air next fall. Or I can purchase season one on DVD and pick up season two on iTunes or Amazon for $2.99 an episode. However, there are already 15 aired episodes of this series so far this season. That’s almost 45 bucks for an incomplete season and I’d have to burn my DVR memory saving the rest of the season while I get caught up. That is a tremendous amount of money when you add in the $28.99 it would cost to pick up season one on DVD.

If I want to download season one of Vampire Diaries it will cost me $32.99 for the standard definition version. This version is a digital copy and requires no shipping, DVD or packaging materials, and very little storage costs because it is sent over the Internet. But it is more expensive then the DVD version on Amazon.com because, why?

But if I really wanted to get caught up with “Vampire Diaries” I could do it. I could not, however, watch “Vampire Diaries” comfortably or with my wife. This is because once we get to our purchased season 2 episodes I would have to watch them on my laptop or my iPod if I purchased them in iTunes. I cannot easily get content off my computer and onto my television. I could purchase a Roku box or Apple TV, but is “Vampire Diaries” worth an additional $70.00 to $100.00 expense on top of the 80+ dollars I would be spending on the episodes? Not likely when you factor in that I already own a PS3 and Wii both of which stream content from Netflix perfectly fine already.

Therefore, instead of watching “Vampire Diaries” as I would like to, I am going to fire up the PS3 navigate over to the Netflix channel and watch “Stargate Atlantis” which I am sure does not appeal to me as much as “Vampire Diaries” would have if I had the chance to check it out. However, it is really simple to do and looks great in high definition. All for about 8 bucks a month.

It is not surprising that television ratings are down. I am forced to stream a show that has been off the air for two years because that is what is convenient and cost effective.