Revenge is good. I feel your pain.
Yeah I am hooked. I am up to the last two episodes now, one of which I did not end up having saved on MY DVR.
I can sit at my computer and watch it, or I can just bittorrent it. I actually want the networks to try and earn money off my viewing, but they seem to want to make it extremely difficult. They have got me as a revenge user in spite of themselves.
TV Guide lists all the episodes as available. Does that help at all? I'm not clear on which ones are free and which aren't but Hulu only has the latest five eps for free. (I can't test the links.)
That was the weird thing for me... ABC.Com had the pilot, and episode 3, 4 and 5, but did not have episode 2. Normally I would have chalked it up to them only having the most recent episodes, but since the pilot was there, it did not really make sense.
As for the episode guides, I do end up going to them more often than not just to make sure they are missing something.
I would add it is even worse for serial shows that should be watched in order, which Revenge is definitely one, should be working harder to get people caught up to speed and on board.
In the last year or so I caught up entirely from start to finish on Breaking Bad and Good Wife. Previously Dexter. The cable shows I could get every past episode I wanted to see. Good Wife I had recorded them when they aired but I still ended up with a few missing episodes that I had to torrent.
The networks just have to figure out better ways to get people to see their shows to catch up and other ways, because it is a massive advantage for the cable networks and it is why you see cable networks able to grow shows when the regular networks end up with a downward spiral.
One of the reasons a show like NCIS jumped in its ratings over time to become a huge ratings winner is because they were running episodes non stop on USA. Which that is not a show you have to watch in order, this still made it possible for me to catch up. I think I watched the first 4 or 5 seasons on USA because they ran the episodes all the time. Then I was ready to start mixing in new episodes as well.
To me the issue is they take their eye off their core business too much and sacrifice getting eyeballs on their primetime shows by worrying too much about the ancillary markets so they do things that hurt their core business because it helps their ancillary businesses. So it is great if one out of ten people buy an iTunes episode of a revenge episode on iTunes who missed it. Imagine if they had a way to provide those episode to people in a more effective way and instead of keeping one of ten people who missed an episode watching they could keep four out of ten or five out of ten.
Imagine if in December when not much was on someone had the ability to catch up on all the old episodes of Revenge easily and then when new episodes come back they were a brand new viewer boosting their ratings. Instead they are like, well if anyone wants to do that they can kick out $20 to iTunes... Again, not a good solution, and bad business.
This is one of the reasons why serial shows are doing so poorly on networks, for the most part. The networks do a horrible job of keeping their audience, and building their audience. It is why CBS continues to dominate with all their procedurals because they do not require any of that kind of work and effort. The kind of work and effort the pay and basic cable channels are more than happy to put in.
As for me paying for itunes. I have the last two seasons of Dexter on my dvr. I have the last season and current season of Sons of Anarchy waiting, I have the the first couple episodes of Walking Dead this season waiting, and any number of other shows. I have plenty of options and if they choose to make it too difficult or expect me to pay for the privilege, well it is their loss not mine. I have too much good stuff to watch anyways.
