Your comment reminds me of a distinction I was going to make between different kinds of television and their likelihood of being watched in modes of communal commentary or solitary appreciation. I notice that TVittering sometimes goes on moment-by-moment, and sometimes seems to wait for an episode to finish. (Jason sort of references this above in comparing sports and narrative.) This distinctino maps onto one of value, between the television programming we might say we feel superior to or that we consider unworthy of our full attention, and programming that we value highly enough to want to watch absent any distraction. The Eurovision experience suggests that the commentary is in some ways more significant and worthwhile than the text, or that this kind of television (e.g., live events, reality shows) has value to the extent that it gives people a community within which to discuss or make fun of it. If I’m right about this, I find it interesting that new modes of television consumption are reproducing familiar distinctions of value between “quality TV” and more disposable or ephemeral forms of programming.

There’s a recent trend in the UK of arch intellectuals, writers and comedians providing twitter commentary to Saturday night variety TV – Britain’s Got Talent in particular. This weekend, in a bid to create a partial Eurovision Song Contest party atmosphere watching with only my Euro-virgin partner for company, we set up my laptop and twitter feed on the sofa, refreshing constantly throughout. Thus (along with text commentary from friends) we had a highly entertaining virtual Eurovision party of puns, quick fire jokes and perceptive musical commentary from my range of British comics and broadcasters.

This, along with the recent UK election, really illustrated the power of twitter as a community builder to me, and I doubt i’d have enjoyed either (the election masochistically so) without twitter and tv combined.

Otherwise, I’m firmly in offline mode while I watch. TV is exclusively via DVR (or online, or Netflix, or home network, etc.) in our house, and I’m not interested at all in reading or posting thoughts in real time during episodes. Moreover, I’m only occasionally interested in reading and writing about shows between episodes (e.g., here on Antenna), and much prefer the online discussions that happen between entire seasons, where there’s plenty of time for post-mortems, speculation, theorizing, and everything else.

I like being connected, but I resent being implored to be connected at all times. On the couch watching TV is valuable to me in part because I can be disconnected at that moment.

At the same time, though, our expectations of remaining spoiler-free or truly being part of the discourse become less realistic over time, so we expect to be out of the loop or hear which songs were performed on Glee ahead of time. It would be perfect if everyone could agree to not start watching Glee until twenty minutes of commercial buffer time has built up, but you can’t always get what you want (including not having it spoiled that Glee used “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.”)

One point you didn’t address is that this conundrum is very much tied to the Eastern/Central timezones – when I was in LA in March, I realized that late-afternoon was TVitter time and I wasn’t invited. It’s even worse abroad, where the choice isn’t even available to flow with Twitter except for through the black market of online pirate streaming.

Back in 1990, in a college dorm room, I used to chat with friends online while watching M*A*S*H reruns, hop onto alt.tv.twin-peaks as soon as an episode had finished, or jump into a MOO and talk with friends while watching the Oscars. The kinds of live tweeting we see today aren’t anything new other than in scale and platform independence (sitting on the couch tweeting from a laptop or sitting in a bar tweeting from a phone, etc.), and are something I’ve personally found powerful over the years.

But, as a fan (and decidedly not a TV scholar), I find myself preferring the live or near-live interactions afforded by jumping into that online conversation while the DVR is used simply to catch up on shows that I don’t particularly care as much about. That is, “appointment television” is the only television that really matters to me — the DVR is about completism and breadth of watching (so I can see what happened on a show I don’t care enough about to watch when it airs), while Twitter is about experiencing a show that I care about with others whose opinions matter to me.

I’m probably very atypical for the readers of this blog, but I’ve considered getting rid of the DVR entirely and just waiting for these other shows to inevitably show up on Watch Instantly, Hulu, or DVD/Blu-Ray.