Life after traditional broadcast television has occasionally made me nostalgic for the oddest things, like certain commercials or programming blocks. Lately it's been time slots. The whole way that I figure out what to watch from day to day has changed completely. Appointment television hasn't exactly disappeared, with many streaming services sticking to a weekly release model for shows. Netflix is still a holdout, but even they're starting to dole out shows in smaller batches instead of full seasons at once.
However, the concept of time slots is becoming irrelevant. Practically the only people who watch media the second it premieres are either the die-hard fans or the poor entertainment journalists who are obligated to binge whole seasons of shows so they can publish their articles in a timely manner. There's still a fairly entrenched population of casual viewers who watch programming because it happens to be on while they happen to want to watch television, but that kind of passive viewing is no longer considered the norm.
In the analog era, I used to spend every Sunday morning with the weekly television listings, mentally making notes on what shows and movies were airing at what times, and sometimes making plans around anything really important, like the Oscars or a new episode of "The X-files." I was enough of a nerd that I kept track of premiere dates for new and returning shows, but individual episodes were impossible to really pin down more than a week ahead of time. During sweeps and premiere months, the episodes would mostly be new, and over the summer they'd be repeats, but sometimes shows were cancelled early, or they never showed the reruns, so if you missed an episode, you might have missed it for good. Especially if you liked the more obscure, less popular shows, you had to keep an eye on the listings in case the time slot moved, or there were pre-emptions. I feel like fans had much more intense relationships with television pre-streaming, because you had to commit more. You had to be on time every week, or reliably know how to program a VCR or DVR. You associated certain shows with certain days and times. Thursday was "Friends" and "Seinfeld." Sunday was "The Simpsons."
In the streaming era, I keep calendars now, instead of referencing listings. I prefer to make my own so I can combine different media - VOD and streaming premiere dates for feature films, streaming premiere dates for various series and specials, and occasionally those few remaining broadcast-only events that I'll eventually figure out how to watch online. Everything, even "American Crime Story: Impeachment" will eventually find its way online, because if it doesn't, for a good portion of the population that means it's simply not worth watching. If I didn't maintain my calendars, though, I'd be in no danger of missing out. I can watch these shows whenever it's convenient for me, not when it's convenient for the majority of potential viewers. I don't have to worry about choosing between shows because they happen to occupy the same time slot. I don't have to watch them as they premiere if I don't care about following the discourse - and yes, the discourse is still a thing.
It didn't really occur to me until my calendars started merging with my "To Watch" lists that streaming content hasn't just bust out of time slots or traditional seasons, but viewers really have been left to program their own lineups entirely, and it's now perfectly normal to be discovering older shows years after they were cancelled, or to be devoting as much time to watching Youtube creators as it is to be following studio-produced shows. We've gone way beyond the old dream of the "a la carte" model of choosing your own bundles of specific channels you wanted from the pay cable stations. Today, it's closer to having the ability to choose the specific shows, and the specific episodes.
But strangely, I can't quite shake the habit of thinking about shows in terms of timeslots, even after all this time. I'll end my night with late show clips around 11PM. I tend to save genre shows to watch on Friday nights because that was always when they would air the nerdy science-fiction programs like "The X-files" and "Doctor Who." I really don't miss appointment television, but I'll admit the instant gratification is less fun, in a way.
Saturday morning cartoons watched on Thursday afternoons just isn't quite the same.
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