The Television and Film Wars

Superficially, one could distinguish between film and television by the way they are presented to an audience. The film spectator sits in a movie theater while the television spectator before his or her home television screen. With DVDs, computers, and TV film programming, this difference becomes null, with the slight current exception (soon to be void, I think) that television series are not watched in a cinema. Today, of course, one need not ever step into a theater or buy a TV in order to watch movies or television. But there is still a distinction being made. Television programs are delivered in series, with a different “episode” airing every week and multiple “seasons” of that series airing roughly every year. A film is released once, is normally between 90 and 200 minutes (with longer films being close to three hours), and is typically watched all the way through the first time.