24: Season One on DVD |
There's a whole new category of video
release these days: compilation sets of television series, usually marketed in
complete-season chunks. Technically speaking, it's far from a new phenomenon --
some TV shows with particularly enthusiastic followings have been available in the past. Star
Trek, Dark Shadows, and The Twilight Zone have all been offered at one
time or another, usually as videotapes or laserdiscs containing two episodes per unit.
Frequently these were even available by subscription.
One new element in the story, of course, is the amount of
data that can be jammed onto a DVD. Another is the changing television landscape. The
current economics of television demand shorter seasons: I read somewhere that a moderately
successful TV show essentially breaks even with a single airing, a second broadcast
produces the profits -- and, while the most successful shows generate a lot more
advertising revenue than even moderately successful ones, they also cost more to produce,
especially if the actors can leverage that success into real money. Naturally, the major
networks now have reduced the number of new episodes per season to the point where each
show is guaranteed at least two airings.
There are also syndicated shows -- classic examples include
Star Trek: TNG and Xena: Warrior Princess -- where a "season" is
however many episodes its producers feel like making (or have calculated they need to
reach critical mass).
But the biggest change, I suspect, has been premium cable
channels (well, HBO), which, like syndicates, can make a "season" out of as few
as 13 episodes.
Of course, it doesn't really matter how short a season is
or where a show originated. The real news is that people are actually willing to pay to
own television shows at all. Putting premium cable to one side for a moment, television is
generally thought of as free -- and TV shows have traditionally been considered
disposable, or at least transient, pleasures.
Who'd actually pay to watch episodes of a TV show? That all
depends. Are we talking about high-calorie visual junk food like Friends or a
multilayered cultural satire like The Simpsons? Miniseries like Roots, Traffik,
or Lonesome Dove weren't really television shows, of course. They were
large-scale works, more like movies, really, than TV.
I think the turning point in the consumer zeitgeist was
probably two-pronged. First, not to put too fine a point on it, there's HBO, which, in Sex
and the City, The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, and Oz has
transformed episodic television with shows that feature great writing, superb acting, and
substantial storylines. HBO's shows generally consist of short (but not too short) seasons
that sustain story arcs that are multifaceted yet concentrated in ways that the major
networks have never even dreamed of.
Also, of course, everyone who watches these shows already
realizes that they are not free -- adding HBO to a cable package in my area costs about
$10 per month, or about $9 per Sopranos episode. Further, for all its impact on the
popular culture, an HBO hit like The Sopranos is only seen by about 10 million
people (the first episode of season four garnered slightly over 13 million viewers -- an
HBO record). That leaves a lot of Americans who have never seen the show, but who have
read and heard about it for years now. No wonder people have been buying the complete
season compilations -- 13 episodes for under a hundred bucks is a bargain.
I suspect, however, there's another change in the weather
that is greasing the skids for this trend. I'm not sure we can attribute it to TiVo, given
how lackluster personal video recorder (PVR) sales have been, but more and more people are
starting to time shift television shows -- sometimes to the exclusion of actually watching
broadcast TV in real time at all.
As my schedule gets increasingly hectic, the amount
of time I devote to watching TV falls off dramatically. Not that I consider myself as some
sort of cultural bellwether -- quite the opposite, in fact. I'm generally well behind the
curve on trends like this. The point is, as my time allotted to television has shrunk, my
reliance on devices like TiVo has increased. Once I've programmed in my season pass
selections, I no longer even know when my favorite shows are broadcast -- when I have time
to watch, I know I'll have something I want to see waiting for me.
Of course, that means I no longer stumble upon new shows
that have escaped my notice but have the potential to become favorites. As a result,
exceptional shows sometimes pass under my cultural radar.
24, for instance, sounded like too much of a gimmick
when I first heard of it. A TV show that takes place in real time -- the plot progresses
by an hour per episode and by a full day, 24 hours, over the course of a season -- sorry,
but how precious is that? By the time friends assured me it was compelling and exciting,
I'd missed a sufficient number of episodes to feel I'd never catch up. I even missed its
reruns through the entire cycle.
All of which made me the ideal customer for the DVD release
of 24: Season One (wow, almost 900 words into the review and we actually get to the
point). When I saw the specially priced six-disc set on sale at the local megalomart, I
snapped it up, remembering all the friends who had called it "the best show on TV not
on HBO."
