Hacker Cinema
General Hospital
1963 · TV series · 64 seasons
Created by Frank Hursley, Doris Hursley
Families, friends, enemies and lovers experience life-changing events in the large upstate New York city of Port Charles, which has a busy hospital, upscale hotel, cozy diner and dangerous waterfront frequented by the criminal underworld.
1 negative5 neutralfrom 6 commenters
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6 comments on Hacker News
> On a social network, however, nothing is that self-contained. Any time you see something that looks like a name or a picture, you expect to be able to click on it and go see that user, their profile, and their posts. A TV show application doesn’t work that way. If you’re on season 1 episode 1 of Babylon 5, you don’t expect to be able to click through to season 1 episode 1 of General Hospital.
That is exactly what I'd expect, and that is how small websites like IMDB work. I am on the page for a General Hospital episode, and via the actors in the episode or whatever other part I can click through to Babylon 5, or the other way around, or anywhere else.
I was not aware that General Hospital was the name of a TV show, so not only the headline but the article itself made little sense to me initially - it read like randomly generated spam.
And when it's done for the day, it's done. You can't turn on your TV every 7 minutes to check for new General Hospital, and even if you binged 57 years of episodes, you would in time exhaust the content.
The General Hospital soap opera TV show has been running for 57 years. Facebook was only launched 16 years ago.
> How many hundreds of hours of entertainment for $167?
That's not relevant. The simple fact is that $167 for a season is well beyond the budget of the average person whose opinion you're considering. "Hours of entertainment" is (always) the wrong formula, by the way. Nobody needs to steal anything to enjoy hours of free entertainment doing a myriad of activities. Most TV shows simply make no effort at all to price either episodes or full seasons for a wide market.
Compare two ABC shows on Amazon Video, General Hospital and The Bachelor. General Hospital is a daily soap opera with 36 minute episodes and modest production value. The Bachelor has 2-hour episode with higher production values. A full season of The Bachelor is reasonably priced at $20. Individual episodes are $3.
Individual General Hospital episodes are also $3 each. This doesn't seem too crazy if you're talking about someone who might otherwise miss an episode because they are traveling or something. It's probably steeper than it should be, I imagine most soap fans will just read up on what they missed if they care enough rather than shelling out money to watch. But regardless, the full 241-episode season is $735.00. This is quite obviously not priced to sell as a package. No one would buy that. It is simply 241 episodes times $3.00 per episode, which is a generic Amazon price for an HD episode of anything. In fact you can buy the SD version for $15.00. It is clear that no real thought at all has gone into the pricing scheme.
I think soap opera might still be correct.
As you watch a Soap Opera it becomes apparent that all the drama has no real consequence, and thus becomes meaningless. That is why General Hospital can be on for 40 years or something at this point. You can watch for a year, skip a year, then come back. You missed a ton of events, but it doesn't effect what you take from the show.
Once "the ending" becomes detached from the show, it is very difficult to manufacture meaningful drama.
Some shows, like Seinfeld or Simpsons always return to a set point at the end of an episode. So they don't need a real ending. This is different than the soap opera. Because there is no illusion of an ending. You know the show isn't going anywhere and you experience just what it is in that moment.
The soap opera is diabolical. As each episode ends, you are hooked, waiting for the next so you can find out "what happens", but there is no ultimate payoff. Just a never ending sequence of false promises.
Soap operas are the worst offenders, who best illustrate the point. But any drama series without a fixed end point is guilty of the same crime. Take LOST, which began as a brilliant show, but as it was stretched out began to anger many people. When would it have become a full Soap Opera? 10 more seasons? My point is that it already was, just shorter than some others.