Just Enjoy the Show

Shawn Blair

Monday, November 3

The shows I watch on Mondays are the only shows I generally watch. The rest of my week is either filled with work, school, or both. So my Mondays are pretty planned out. I never know what I'm going to watch, but I just use the age-old process of elimination to see what I want to watch out of the hundreds of channels available. I do always watch "Las Vegas" between classes Monday mornings, but that is my guilty action/drama pleasure. And there are only a handful of other shows I can watch all the way through. Other than that, I sit on the couch Monday nights with the one goal of watching TV until I go to the bar, and then come back and watch some more TV. Mondays are my refuge to get me through the week.

There is also an "Always Sunny in Philadelphia" night where all of my roommates and friends come together to watch it at our house once a week. (This is also true for "Project Runway" and "Top Chef," but one just ended and the other will begin soon).

I'm not surprised that I watch this much television in a Monday, but while keeping track of the shows that I watched I noticed a couple of things. With my DVR I have developed a habit of recording a show just so I can watch it live, flip through other channels while commercials are on, and then go back to the show and rewind back to the beginning of that segment. Also, I think that advertisers have started to show their logos longer than usual in each commercial because I can still see the logos flash up almost subliminally even when I'm fast-forwarding through commercials quickly. If they don't do that already then they should start because I can fast-forward through a block of commercials but still want to buy a Mercedes or use the new swiffer mop (which I bought) by the end of the commercials I rushed through.

It is surprising how my life sometimes revolves around TV shows. I won't leave the house to do anything until I finish a show. My life is actually segmented out in thirty block segments- unbelievable.

This journal also really helped me realize what kind of shows I actually watch. Most of the shows are aimed at a college demographic, so I'm not surprised that I have an interest in them. But i think journaling the shows I watch in one night pretty much accurately represents all the shows I will ever watch at my age so i can see why Nielsen would use surveys like this. It makes a lot of sense.