I’m going to start with a fairly controversial statement: personally, I think the abundance of streaming platforms formed over the past decade has permanently changed TV. I know, I know. I am the only person who has ever thought this, and ever will. But of the many ways the various clunkily named, plus-symbol affixed platforms have altered how we consume television – big-name A-listers in limited high-budget series; the way we now binge eight hours of content in one day just to have a zeitgeisty opinion about them; the strange re-popularisation of corny Christmas films – one that has flown relatively under the radar is the concept of “ambient television”.
What is ambient television? Well, primarily, it’s people who can’t fall asleep unless the American version of The Office is playing in the background. That’s what Netflix first figured out, then started to weaponise: a lot of streaming platform television is now, I am convinced, designed to be half-watched, puttered around to. You can make dinner and miss five or six scenes but figure out the gist anyway. The platform autoplays from one episode to the next and you didn’t notice because you took a toilet break without pausing and only twigged when you said, out loud, “this is a long episode”. You can paint your nails to it, or go on your phone to it, or flutter into a nap. We are living through a peak time in history for pausing episodes halfway through because it doesn’t really matter, and this is because streaming platforms have started methodically making half-TV, to be half-paid attention to.
