Hate-watching


Hate-watching is the activity of watching a television show while simultaneously hating its content or subject.

History

The New Yorker described the short-lived Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip as a show people loved to hate-watch, as "it was bad in a truly spectacular way—you could learn something from it, about self-righteous TV speechifying and failed satire and the dangers of letting a brilliant showrunner like Aaron Sorkin| Sorkin run loose to settle all his grudges in fictional form".
Entertainment Weekly and other publications noted the difference between hate-watching and watching as a guilty pleasure. "You wouldn't tune in every week to hate-watch a really "bad" reality show — that’s a guilty pleasure. Generally speaking, hate-watching requires a TV series with high ambitions and features a certain amount of aesthetic perfection".
In a Los Angeles Times article describing the complexity of effects of U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump's appearance on Saturday Night Live as host, writer Mary McNamara references the hate-watching phenomenon as a reason that ratings alone are not an indication of support.
On a February 2020 article, Spanish television reviewer Borja Terán described the concept of hate-watching as "audience enjoying watching shows to be able to criticize them", citing it as part of the reason behind the success of Telecinco and its reality show-based lineup : "the viewer feels superior to the guinea pigs taking part in the televised competition. They feel better with themselves and evade from personal problems by spending energy torpedoing a mere entertainment they follow through a screen."

Shows listed as "hate-watching"