Must (not) see TV.

In case you haven't heard, Tim Kring, executive producer of NBC's onetime hit drama "Heroes," got himself in hot water with recent comments about viewers and DVRs. Kring said that DVRs are making it tougher for serialized shows like "Heroes."
At a screenwriting conference earlier this month, Kring said of the serialized trend:
"It's a very flawed way of telling stories on network television right now, because of the advent of the DVR and online streaming. The engine that drove [serialization] was you had to be in front of the TV [when it aired]. Now you can watch it when you want, where you want, how you want to watch it, and almost all of those ways are superior to watching it on air. So [watching it] on air is related to the saps and dipshits who can't figure out how to watch it in a superior way."

I used to like television. Back when it was free and the shows weren't infested with advertising. You might not be old enough to remember when that happened. Last week, while watching one of my favorite shows ("Heroes" on NBC) I thought that it was my imagination that the show was continually interrupted by advertising, so this week I decided to take notes while I watched the show. That's not a bad idea anyway, since there are so many characters it's like listening to an economics lecture and harder to keep track of. But I digress.

Monday night's "Heroes" (which besides featuring the longest solar eclipse in history) which NBC tells us is an hour-long drama, contained a grand total of 39 minutes of content. That's 21 minutes of commercials, or for you math majors, 35% of the allotted hour. The highlight (from my copious notes) was at 9:21, when 8 minutes of program was followed by 5 minutes of commercials and another 5 minutes of program followed by 4 minutes of advertising. From 9:21 to 9:43 (22 minutes) there was 13 minutes of the actual program.

Besides ruining something called continuity, it makes it difficult to follow the story when it's interrupted every 6 to 8 minutes by ads. In serialized shows, it's important to be able to remember what happened and not be distracted by continuous interruptions. The longest run of program content was 8 minutes (twice) and the shortest was 5 minutes. That's right, 5 minutes of program sandwiched between 9 minutes of commercials. In the hour, there were 5 commercial breaks...

... and 39 minutes of the program. Seriously.

But the evidence for Kring's claim doesn't look very strong. Nielsen stats for the week ending November 2 show that "Heroes" was among the most-time-shifted shows on television, with nearly 40% of its total audience watching on a non-live basis. Only CW's "90210" and NBC's "The Office" got bigger bumps from DVR usage.

Hey Tim: Maybe it isn't the DVR, but the amount of commercials you choose to sell on your show that makes people time-shift it and skip over the ads? Who's the dipshit now?

NOTE TO NETWORK TV PEOPLE: You are in danger of losing even more viewers to DVDs and pay cable. Sunday night's Showtime episode of "Dexter" (the unofficial best show on television) ran almost the entire hour, uninterrupted by advertising. Of course, it costs money to watch it, but given the alternative I think the cost might be worth it.

Hey, maybe that's what they're up to? The networks will frustrate us by adding more and more advertising to shows until we finally scream that "We're as mad as Hell, and we're not going to take this anymore!" So, in a show of good faith they allow us to purchase commercial-free network television.

How long will it be before that happens? With this digital conversion happening in February, they're taking another step toward taking free television completely away from us.

There's an old saying: Once the camel gets his nose under the tent, it isn't long before the whole camel is in the tent with you.

He'll have both feet in by February.