As an avid television viewer, I hate commercials. I use and abuse my DVR and its fantastic fast-forwarding abilities. Watching live TV, with the exception of sporting events, is like torture for me. As Robert Allen was discussing Iser's ideas of "strategic interruption" in the form of commercial breaks, however, I started to wonder if maybe I wasn't getting the full experience out of television-viewing. By shortening the "interruption" from maybe three minutes to about 30 seconds, I may not be giving myself the time to really think about what is going to happen next and get excited about it or get anxious about it. I can't imagine I'm the only one who does this, though. DVR and TiVo have really changed the way audiences and households view TV. It leaves no time for discussion between commercial breaks.
While watching Private Practice, I noticed that the use of commercial breaks was so brilliantly frustrating. Call me impatient (really, I am), but I would be so upset if I watched that show every week and had to wait A WHOLE THREE MINUTES to find out if this woman was going to die of blood clots or not.
On the flip side, I also wondered while reading Audience-Oriented Criticism and Television what Allen would say about the new trend we are seeing in movies-the three parters. Movies like Pirates of the Caribbean Twilight, Hunger Games, and The Hobbit are all being split into multiple separate movies, making the interruption time generally around a year. The strategy behind this is brilliant. The anticipation and the hype are elevated tenfold. The wait is painful, but I'm counting down the days until the second installation of The Hunger Games.
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