I checked out the debut of ...
Question: I checked out the debut of AMC's
Mad Men on your recommendation, and I loved it. Fresh, stylish and stirring! I was especially excited to see familiar faces
Vincent Kartheiser (Connor from
Angel) and Christina Hendricks (Saffron from
Firefly). I guess you can tell I'm a
Joss Whedon fan! I was very happy to discover that the
Mad Men episodes will be available On Demand through my cable provider. This got me thinking about VOD's potential to completely revolutionize the television industry. It could impact scheduling with choose-your-own prime-time ability, while invalidating the Nielsen rating system (thank goodness) once networks can get true reads of viewership. This would hopefully extend the lives of beloved but not mainstream shows from minds like Joss Whedon and
Judd Apatow. And I can't even imagine the changes to come in the world of commercials. What are your thoughts on VOD and the future of scheduled television?
Answer: On Demand viewing is a terrific innovation (I plan to use it frequently next week to catch up on some of what I missed during press tour, especially on HBO), and it may very well impact viewing habits and scheduling as time goes on. But for now, it's probably having just a slight impact, given the relatively small number of people who actually subscribe to these services. In this DVR and now VOD age, so many people assume scheduling is an obsolete concern, and for them, maybe it is. But for millions of others, it still matters when a show airs (and on cable, how often it airs). So while I'm glad that the On Demand option gives more people more opportunities to catch something as terrific as
Mad Men, I'm not going to stop reminding people that its first-run airing is Thursdays at 10 pm/ET and that it shouldn't be missed.
