TV Tuesday: Bring the Snacks!

[yourlibrarian]

Given this has been awards show season, have you ever attended a TV watch party? And if not, would you like to? Take the poll and tell us more in comments!

Poll #34379 Watch Party

This poll is anonymous.
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 28

Have you ever gotten together with people outside your household to watch something on TV?

View Answers

Yes
20 (74.1%)

No
7 (25.9%)

What sort of viewing was it?

View Answers

Awards show
2 (10.0%)

Sports
4 (20.0%)

Special event
3 (15.0%)

TV series (any kind)
18 (90.0%)

Movie
10 (50.0%)

Gaming related
1 (5.0%)

Weekly watch party
3 (15.0%)

Other
0 (0.0%)

Have you ever done a group viewing regularly?

View Answers

No
14 (50.0%)

Yes, for some things but not others
5 (17.9%)

Yes, as part of events
0 (0.0%)

Yes, as an activity with friends
11 (39.3%)

What's your favorite thing to watch with a group?

View Answers

Start of a TV show season
2 (10.0%)

A weekly watch of a show
11 (55.0%)

Debut of a new show
1 (5.0%)

Special TV event
4 (20.0%)

Something I have a bet on/gambling pool
0 (0.0%)

TV show rewatch
13 (65.0%)

Something we can play along with
1 (5.0%)

Other
2 (10.0%)

Comments

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

When I was little, my parents would get together with all their nerd friends to watch broadcasts of space exploration events. Nowadays it's virtual -- being online for the "7 minutes of terror" Mars landing and such.

Re: Thoughts

[yourlibrarian]

How cool! Yes, I could also see some semi-impromptu news viewings.

[lilysea]

Once a week, I participate in a group rewatch of Blake's 7 online while we all chat on discord about the episode.

The group rewatches started in 2020, and they just keep going - as soon as we get to the end of season 4, we start season 1 again.

It's a lot of fun. Lots of jokes and silliness

[yourlibrarian]

I can imagine a lot of traditions develop! Where do you access the episodes from?

[lilysea]

People watch their own DVDs/bluerays etc - we start strictly at a synchronised time, and someone also sends a special icon to the discord to tell everyone when to press play

[yourlibrarian]

Ah, that explains it. I'd seen a post somewhere linking a YouTube series of posts but could never get past episode 3, the rest disappeared.

[reeby10]

When s1 of Teen Wolf was airing, my friends and I would get together with snacks and drinks (and tissues when necessary!) to watch the new episodes.

Now, I have twice weekly Thai drama watch parties that are partly IRL/partly discord voice chat to watch currently airing shows and, if we have an open slot in the schedule, to watch/rewatch older shows.

[yourlibrarian]

It's great that you've been able to do that over the years!

[yourlibrarian]

I couldn't recall anything I'd watched together with others besides roommates or one friend (which couldn't be called a group watch). I know that in college both I and my partner had group watches of shows go on in a common dorm area, but it was never anything I was watching.

I thought of a trip last year where I introduced the two friends I was traveling with to Star Wars Rebels. We went through almost four seasons as we were binge watching each night. But it still seemed to me more of a roommates situation, since I'd sometimes done the same when others had traveled to visit us.

The closest I could say was when our local NPR station staged an advance showing of the first two episodes of Downton Abbey, probably for S3? Tickets were free and we went to a local theater for it. But even though this was a TV show it was more like watching a movie with strangers, which is not the same thing. I have seen TV episodes shown at a convention, but I never stopped to watch, although that would feel more like a watch party.

At this stage it would likely need to be something done online for me to take part.

[starfleetbrat]

I did a watch party with some online friends a long time ago for a tv show (pretty sure it was BSG or Stargate, I can't quite remember though)

then there was a subreddit a while back that did a weekly watch of the first ep of a tv series (nominated by vote), but it wasn't technically a watch party, just a watch when you could sometime during the week and then discuss the ep, kinda like book club I guess.

which was better for me, as an Australian time zones can be rough for hanging out with people online, especially if its with people in the UK (7pm UK = 5am for me)

[yourlibrarian]

Oh that's interesting about the book club model, I hadn't heard of a setup like that before. Yes, that's such a benefit of asynchronous communities!

[dancesontrains]

Over Discord or Hyperbeam, yeah :)

Partner and I are long-distance and try to meet up for tv watching regularly - atm we're going through S3 of 'Glow Up', a makeup focused competetion, and starting 'Steven Universe' (a rewatch for me, first time for sem).

A few Discord servers I'm in also do regular film watching.

[yourlibrarian]

That makes sense about Discord since it lends itself well to simultaneous viewing.

[rogueslayer452]

I've only ever done watching with others if it's family and it was a weekly show that we sometimes would watch together, or just have certain schedules of (re)watching the shows that we all share interest in. For a while me and my sister would sit and watch an episode or two of a show during dinner, it became a nightly routine.

I've never done anything in a group setting, though.

[yourlibrarian]

Yes, we always watch TV with meals -- sometimes it's the only time we can watch together!

[china_shop]

About 90% of my evening socialising is TV-watching dates. I have a friend who comes over once a week for Kdramas, and another friend who joins my partner and me for whatever-show-we've-decided-to-watch. It's great.

[yourlibrarian]

That's great to have that sort of tradition 😃

[jo]

I answered no to the first question yesterday, but this morning remembered that back in 1972, during the famous Canada-USSR summit series (hockey), all the kids in my primary school gathered to watch a game on TV. I would have been in grade 4. I don't know which game it was -- just one of the games of the 8 game series? The final game of the series? No idea. I do vaguely remember that I really didn't care at all -- I wasn't much into hockey. Canada must have won -- I remember everyone cheering. So probably it was the final and deciding game? It was played in Moscow, which probably explains why it was on during the day in Canada.

[yourlibrarian]

I'm not sure my schools could even get TV reception. We used to have filmstrips sometimes in elementary school, and maybe in high school too, I can't even recall. But while I've seen and heard about this happening during major historical events, not sure I ever heard about it for a sports one!

In fact, I'm trying to think of what major historical event would have been likely and the only thing I can think of was the Reagan assassination attempt, but that's not an ongoing thing we would have been watching. A lot of news events would have taken place outside of school hours.