‘My show is on’: ‘The White Lotus,’ ‘The Pitt’ help usher in the return of appointment TV

Wednesdays are for The Studio. Thursdays used to be Severance days, but now they belong to The Pitt. New episodes of Yellowjackets are out first thing on Fridays. The White Lotus used to air on Sundays, but soon, The Last of Us is taking over.

That’s Zoë Rose Bryant’s weekly TV schedule. She’s a 25-year-old pre-K teacher who frequently goes viral for posting about her favorite shows on X.

Though streaming services make some series available to binge-watch at our convenience, there’s been a resurgence in fans tuning into new episodes of shows during their original airtime rather than catching them later online. Sound familiar? It’s called appointment TV. And it’s back.

“One thing I love about appointment TV is how it gives you something to look forward to throughout the week. This is the first time in my life I’ve had a consistent adult job, and even though I love it, the schedule can undoubtedly get monotonous from time to time,” Bryant told Yahoo Entertainment. “When you have a new episode of a favorite show to look forward to nearly every day, it helps the week move.”

She watches everything with her mom and says they both agree that it’s a “great escape from the chaos of everything else going on” and “a chance to live in another world for an hour.”

Jenna Anderson, the host of film and TV podcast Phase Hero, watches Daredevil: Born Again on Tuesdays and Survivor on Wednesdays. Sundays are packed — she’ll watch The Righteous Gemstones, The Last of Us and The Rehearsal all on the same night in the coming weeks.

She told Yahoo Entertainment that she prefers appointment TV over binge-watching because she “can relish in the details and storytelling of a particular episode and not have it all just turn into a blur.”

She also found that her podcast audience is “much more electric” if they release episodes immediately after a show finishes airing rather than waiting until the next day to talk about it.

Kaila, a 26-year-old marketing specialist, has The Pitt, The Studio and The White Lotus in her rotation right now. She told Yahoo Entertainment that, had her appointment TV shows been released through the binge model, “conversation would have died 3 weeks in as the conversation around [the series] would have been exhausted.”

“Seeing how [The Pitt] has grown in popularity over the weeks it’s been on [the] air, it’s clear the people yearn for weekly television,” she said.

Alexander Reams, a 22-year-old filmmaker, told Yahoo Entertainment that he grew up watching two shows week-by-week with his family: Hawaii Five-O and Castle. He got into TV again in college, and because of the pandemic and strike-related delays, all of his shows began airing around the same time.

He started with Invincible, Reacher and Shoresy, then transitioned to Daredevil, The White Lotus and The Righteous Gemstones. Some shows he found out about from social media, but his appointment TV appetite came from this “mass snowball effect” on scheduling rather than the desire to take part in conversations on social media.

For some, though, the conversation and community element is central to their TV-watching experience.

Before the Severance season finale on March 20, 36-year-old client engagement lead Chelsea would watch every Thursday.

“I’d collect memes and tweets like a little crow with trinkets for my friend who watched Fridays,” she told Yahoo Entertainment. “Then [I’d] send them all to her en masse when she was done, and we’d dissect for a solid hour.”

Brenna Sherrill, a professor at Western Kentucky University who wrote her dissertation on fan behavior, told Yahoo Entertainment there’s been a resurgence in “watercooler” conversations between fans, where they share “their thoughts and theories as a show unfolds.”

Shows like The White Lotus and Severance make for particularly great appointment TV because of the mystery element that’s fun to solve from episode to episode.

“When bingeing shows started to become the standard, we lost the ability to talk specifically about shows and didn’t really have the chance to theorize about what might be coming, when you could just start the next episode immediately,” she said. “I think appointment viewing creates a more unifying fan experience where people can come together online or in real life to discuss an hour’s worth of TV as it happens.”

She added that this “makes for more discerning viewers” because fans have longer periods of time to ruminate on episodes rather than “semi-mindlessly moving forward.”

More than 100 fans responded to Yahoo Entertainment’s request for their appointment TV habits on X. Several mentioned that they keep track of their shows in their planners, making sure to watch as close to their original airtimes as possible to avoid spoilers, which can be a necessary evil for those wanting to discuss what they’ve just watched online.

“Appointment tv was a core memory for most millennials and it sucks that it’s largely gone!” one X user wrote.

“I found myself basking in the nostalgia of must-see TV in college and want more to look forward to!” another said.

Fans recommended Below Deck on Mondays; Abbott Elementary and Everybody’s Live With John Mulaney on Wednesdays; Good American Family, Elsbeth, 9-1-1, Matlock and Wheel of Time on Thursdays; and RuPaul’s Drag Race on Fridays. Many said they’re looking forward to the return of Andor, Hacks and The Handmaid’s Tale soon.