Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
We wanted–nay, needed–to watch the RuPaul’s Drag Race finale live. Since PlayStation Vue and Viacom split, my husband and I had to watch Season 9 on an iTunes subscription delay. In order to watch Sasha get so emotional as it happened, we decided to give Sling TV a go. It gave us the Drag Race finale as it aired and, as I excitedly scrolled through the internet cable service’s channel selection, I realized it could give us a lot more.
When it comes to classic TV (specifically ’90s sitcoms), streaming services come up short. Instead of popping up on Netflix and Hulu, a lot of shows thrive during daytime and late night cable. Will & Grace, Roseanne, One Day at a Time, All in the Family, Mama’s Family, The Nanny–I leapt at the chance to catch up with old friends or discover new ones. After all, sitcoms are keeping me sane in 2017.
And then reality set in. I learned that cable was nothing like it was before I cut the cord almost a decade ago. Cable networks have totally given into the bingeing culture made possible by streaming services, leading them to air shows in interminable blocks that lessen variety, result in truly bizarre schedules, and wreak havoc on DVRs.
I’ll use my beloved TV Land as an example. To totally become the stereotypical “back in my day” op-ed writer, I will say that TV Land was absolutely better when I was in college. Look at this list; TV Land’s 2004 lineup was packed with around 30 different shows running in syndication. Thirty! Nowadays TV Land is more like TV Cul-de-sac, airing only a dozen shows during an entire week’s 150ish hours of programming. That results in the daily grind of a four-hour Gunsmoke marathon followed by four episodes of The Andy Griffith Show and five episodes of M*A*S*H. Do you want to watch 24 episodes of Roseanne in a row or 7 straight hours of Golden Girls? I hope so, because that’s what TV Land airs every weekend.
This isn’t just TV Land’s deal. Logo airs nothing but 2-4 hour blocks of around a dozen shows. VH1 airs, like, 30 episodes of Cheaters every weekend. While you’re at work, USA is airing nonstop NCIS or SVU. TBS airs a seven hour nightly block of just three shows (Friends, Seinfeld, The Big Bang Theory). Cable seems to be operating under the Pringles Law: Once you pop, you can’t stop. There are literally decades worth of television–including the most recent one–being ignored so networks can let viewers keep popping a couple of flavors. TBH, f you like Golden Girls (and lord knows you should like Golden Girls), spending seven hours on the couch in front of TV Land doesn’t sound like a bad idea–if only bingeing was a thing that could be properly done on cable.
While networks only air shows in bingeable blocks, they also have to air commercials. Can one really binge if said binge is interrupted by a cavalcade of As Seen On TV products every few minutes? Classic sitcoms are sometimes a full 5 minutes longer than their current counterparts, so these old shows (a category that now includes shows like Friends) don’t fit with modern commercial breaks. That means the half hour block has become malleable. For instance, you can catch new episodes of Everybody Loves Raymond tonight at easy to remember times like 8:48 or 9:24. Or maybe you can catch Facts of Life at 7:38, 8:10, 8:43, 9:16, 9:47, 10:21, or 10:54 or… it goes on and on.
Even with these ludicrous start times, episodes are still overstuffed with commercials. Let’s look at Mama’s Family, the premier syndicated sitcom of the ’80s starring a tough-talking granny played by a comedian in her late 30s. My husband was stoked beyond belief to see Mama’s Family on Logo, since the show is absent from all streaming services. But watching Mama’s Family on Logo means sitting through twice as many commercial breaks, each one lasting 4-5 minutes. In one 33-minute programming chunk, 13 minutes of commercials aired during a 20 minute episode of Mama’s Family (and it’s possible that two minutes were still cut out of that episode). Other networks do tricks like speeding up the opening credits or playing the following episode’s cold open over the closing credits of the previous one. So the only real way to binge on cable is to do it on DVR, so you can ride the fast-forward button.
Except you can’t really do that, because all these bingeable blocks fill up DVRs faster than a movie theater on opening night of Star Wars: The Last Jedi. In my initial sitcom-starry-eyed overzealousness, I set Sling to record a few unstreamable sitcoms (Three’s Company, Home Improvement, etc.) and then did a double-take when my 50 hour DVR was overflowing two days later. I pumped the brakes and set the DVR to just record Mama’s Family and Match Game.
I gripe these gripes fully aware that cable is a major player in peak TV. These networks aren’t relying on reruns anymore; their attention is rightfully on all the original, critically acclaimed programming they’re turning out, like Younger, Mr. Robot, Full Frontal with Samantha Bee, and–the show that set me on this path–RuPaul’s Drag Race. All these networks also offer their original shows on-demand, which makes catching up with a modern gem like Playing House easy. There’s a lot to love about cable, duh, but the way they’re handling the other 20ish hours of their daily programming is just baffling.
Sling TV is a solid service, and a cable login is basically a cheat code in the world of streaming. But as a lifelong TV devotee, I’m frustrated by the lack of options and unrealized potential in the world of cable reruns. Cable can reunite viewers with shows they once loved, but these binge blocks limit the number of shows that get the spotlight, and commercials (an unavoidable part of the cable experience) derail the marathon experience and leave DVRs packed to capacity. Reruns now feel like filler, airing whenever a network needs to kill nine hours. I would rather see more shows fewer times a week on cable, and let streaming services handle marathons. For now, I’m just gonna keep my fingers crossed that Amazon or Hulu snatches up the streaming rights to Mama’s Family.
