The Power of Playlists

 

For a long, LONG time, I was content with planning my evening’s entertainment around the DVDs that I had on hand; which, yes, meant removing and inserting disks and waiting for them to load at about half-hour intervals (I don’t “binge-watch” anything, and neither should you). As a child of the broadcast TV era, and an adult of the VHS era, I was accustomed to this. It teaches patience.

It took me an unconscionably long time to figure out how Wifi and digital media could make an evening’s entertainment seamless, and it took even longer for me to realize that iTunes’s Playlist feature could be used just as well for video content as it is for music. This was more than a “lightbulb over the head” moment: it was a door opening.

Away back in the days when I was the night guy/de facto children’s librarian at the library of a small local college, I started hosting a regular “Free Movie Night” for the students, and from the start it was never just a movie. I’ve always been interested in re-creating the kind of full program that movie theaters used to offer their patrons, and so I presented an array of short subjects before the feature: usually a cartoon, a two-reel comedy (Laurel & Hardy or Buster Keaton), and a chapter from an old cliffhanger serial, because that’s what I had on hand.

In those days, it was next to impossible to run a seamless program, without interruptions. In addition to the projector, it required two VHS players, or a VHS and a DVD player, the latter of which was a New Thing then. I would have to cue up the tapes the night before so that they would start at the desired point when I switched them out. With DVDs it was actually harder, even though the quality was better. Because of menus and un-skippable commercials.

In later years, when I had friends over for a movie night, it was still the same challenge, with the same unsatisfactory result: impossible to create a really smooth program. In fact it was a little bit worse, because I’d have to occupy one of the best seats in the house just so that I could reach the players easily.

It wasn’t until about three years or so ago that I discovered the freedom of using playlists in iTunes to arrange the evening’s show. I know, I’m slow on the uptake. But with a small amount of prep, I could pre-load an array of trailers, movie-theater bumpers, short subjects and the feature; at showtime, all I had to do was press “PLAY,” sit back and watch it unfold seamlessly. 

This was a Joy.

From there, the next logical step was to arrange my normal personal evening TV series viewing the same way. Before I moved to town from the country fifteen years ago, I’d never known anything but free broadcast TV. After that, DirecTV was the best option, but I quickly grew tired of paying every month for a bunch of channels that didn’t interest me. The rise of streaming services passed me by; I’d already pulled the plug by then. It wasn’t rocket science to figure out that nobody knows what I want to watch better than me.

I have an older iMac that I’ve converted into my server: and an AppleTV connected to my television, which easily allows me to connect my TV to the computer, and run iTunes directly through my TV. It isn’t the fanciest or slickest set-up, and there are plenty of other ways to do it (and plenty of sources to tell you how), but it’s simple, it works, and I was able to figure it out for myself.

Nowadays, whatever I’m watching, I usually plan the full week’s viewing in advance. I have an array of “station ID” bumpers that I’ve created, and am amassing a growing collection of vintage TV commercials, so that when dinner is over and I sit down for the evening’s entertainment, all I have to do is launch the playlist; what unfolds isn’t particularly authentic, but it is a fair approximation of the style of what prime-time television used to be like when I was growing up. And I’m finding a lot of pleasure in the planning, in being the “Programming Director” of my own virtual station. 

I still buy physical media. In fact, I ONLY buy physical media: digital content can go “poof” too easily, and in too many ways. But every disk that comes into the house is immediately ripped (via MakeMKV and Handbrake) to digital MP4, because it’s that much more convenient. As Monty Python once said, “It’s fun, and only slightly illegal.” 

Over the next few posts, I’ll be walking through my current schedule, the thinking behind it, and the hows of finding and arranging it all. It’s a way of writing about media that goes beyond just what the present day is shoveling down your throat. Hopefully this will be of interest to somebody; perhaps it’ll give you some ideas, and open some doors for others. I’ll be starting with most critial night of the week: the dreaded Monday.

See you there.

—Thorn.