Good morning! I hope the world is being good to you and you’re being good to it.

Grab your coffee or beverage of choice and share a thought with me!

Have you ever been channel surfing and come across a movie you enjoy, so you start watching it and sitting through the commercials despite having a copy you can watch from the beginning uninterrupted? Then, instead of spending two hours on a movie, you end up investing three or four on something that’s riveting mainly because it’s familiar and comfortable. This affliction has impacted me, many times.

The most recent occurrence involved For Love of the Game. Initially, I started watching about a half-hour in and made it until the last 45 minutes before realizing I needed to go to bed or else I’d spend the next day suffering in a cloud of exhaustion because of Kevin Costner. I own this movie on DVD and could have popped that in at any point and finished watching (I’m talking credits rolling) by the time I ended up turning off the broadcast with movie left to go. A couple weeks later, I caught For Love of the Game from the very beginning, but ended up only being able to make it to around where I started watching the first time. As of writing this, I’ve not completed a viewing of For Love of the Game in 2026 – a travesty to be sure.

Here are some observations from the experience. I got to see the same commercials multiple times over the course of, we’ll say, three combined hours. Thanks to this, I know a good option if I have type 2 diabetes and want to handle it well, how certain cosmetics are made especially for the aging woman, and that St. Jude’s is extremely effective at touching an emotional nerve, every single time. Because of the network on which it aired, I know movies like For Love of the Game are a bright spot in a sea of decaying programming. I also realize there is an art to properly placing ad breaks during a feature film. Broadcasts still seem to do a decent job at this. Streaming sites, however, throw caution to the wind and insert ads whenever the algorithm says it’s time. Convenience has, undeniably, led to an inferior product and, at times, experience.

Looking back at falling into the broadcast movie trap, perhaps the most egregious broadcast watch involves The Lord of the Rings. I don’t remember which part of the trilogy I happened to sit down and watch, but when we’re talking those films, I don’t know that it matters. Watching any of them with commercials will make a day evaporate.

So why would someone put themselves through something like that? Honestly, I think the simple explanation is that I simply don’t want to go through the hassle of stopping and starting. If I’m caught up in the story, I just want to see it through and will let it ride, commercials or not. It’s one thing to have a movie come on in the background while doing things around the house and then migrate to the couch to sit down and watch. It’s something else to deliberately set aside the time to watch a movie from start to finish when that’s the only thing I’m doing. There are different levels of commitment required for two routes through essentially the same experience.

Okay, thanks for sticking around. Time to see what’s on.