Stages of Reception

Since the new telly has been one of the major hindrances to my blogging recently, I felt the need to change that by making it the topic of a decent sized post.

Stage 0: Basically the background to make everyone understand what a big deal this is to me.
For over 21 years of my life, I’ve had just two TV channels: DD (Doordarshan) National, which had (and still has) vague shows and never bothered trying to look the least bit appealing, and DD Metro, which I used to watch for the daily half hour (or 1 to 1 ½ hours, at some stage) of cartoons. That was fine, because I had other things to do and one cartoon a day was enough to keep me happy.

Then DD Metro was suddenly replaced by the redundant DD News which consistently seemed to give one news from the previous day. Suddenly, the quality of the weekend movies on the National channel dipped, and my frequency of viewing them increased since they were the most watchable things at that time. Every time I went to a friend’s house and the telly was on, I’d be glued to the screen, no matter what was showing.

Kind of like these guys:

When I got my laptop, I started watching shows and movies on it thanks to friends who downloaded regularly—I never download any of that stuff because I like letting other people do the dirty work—and sites that allow free streaming.

At this point, not having watchable channels on the telly was something of an advantage. I could watch new episodes of shows airing in other countries almost as soon as they came out, unlike everyone else who had to wait for them to be aired here (if they ever were aired here, that is).

Stage 1 
And then, a couple of weeks ago, after a few years of debate, we got a new TV set. The deal was that if we bought a new telly, we’d get all those channels to go with them. The dish connection came only about a week after the telly, so the first week was kind of like this:

Stage 2
I returned home after being away for the weekend, and found hundreds of channels to flip through (although I didn’t bother previewing most of them), accompanied by mixed feelings of joy (“Oh, so many channels! I don’t have to wait for stuff to stream online and watch off a small monitor any more”) and cynicism (“Now I can watch shows at specific times dictated by the TV. With ad breaks. After they’re at least a couple of seasons old”).

Stage 3 
Despite the cynicism, after not switching on your telly for months because you knew it was pointless, you’re more excited than anything else, and so you decide to see what the channels have to offer. Initially, everything is awesome. Even the advertisements are refreshing, simply because they’re more aesthetically pleasing than the ones on the DD channels. So you're kind of going back to part one of stage 0, where you’ll watch pretty much anything.

Stage 4
After the initial excitement wears off, you fall into a routine. There are certain shows you watch regularly, and others that you watch while waiting for the regular shows to begin or return after the ad break. Not so much magic any more, but it’s nice to have a couple of good shows to watch and not be obsessed with simply any colourful show on the telly.

PS - Looking at this post makes me realize that I really should get back to my real drawing materials.