That's what I was thinking, yes. My dad is a real scholar when it comes to cinema, incredible knowledge not only as a viewer, but experience with the technical side of it as well. He told me recently that he simply cannot watch movies or shows anymore, all of the introspection is completely gone. Whenever he watches something all he sees is the director's POV, the camera angles, the thought process behind it, and so forth. He has become meta, destroyer of fun.
Maybe for you the sheer fact that you "watch" a series while doing something else already demonstrates part of the problem. Our, as in humanities, approach to art and entertainment is skewed. I feel like this is due to many reasons, infinite availability of material being one of those. I doubt 70 years ago when color television got really popular that people were thinking "I'd rather be watching something else right now", what was on, was on.
Which is why I'm trying to quit YouTube, or at the very least, change my viewing habits.. Watch more movies, not streams but actual physical copies of movies I have lying around.. Listen to proper records. Because the experience is important. The interaction with the medium, all the surroundings. The internet is so incredibly self contained, a little bubble that features almost every song ever written, almost every movie ever shot, it's utterly bizzare.
I will be watching Fargo I think, only heard great stuff about it and it seems to be right up my alley.
I should add that I do watch some shows, like The Wire, Fargo etc, without any
distractions, but I feel most aren't worth my full attention.
There is also Clay Shirky's observation that many of us are no longer just
passive consumers of media. Forums, where people help others, wiki editing, and
many other areas on the net allow people to create and to be active creators of
media. Of course, that's a bit over-blown in many instances of social media, but
it is a huge difference to the days where you had to watch whatever was dished
up at a particular time. Answering questions on science/maths sites is an
active
use of media, and a wonderful change that just wasn't possible even 30 years
ago. I find that far preferable to watching pap on TV.
Every Christmas, much to the horror of everyone in my family except my partner
and son, I propose a toast to the gremlins who cut out ads from the shows we
download. They have made TV series more bearable. I love those little guys!
The Fargo episode in the bowling alley (a homage to The Big Lebowski) was as good
a piece of imaginative writing as I've seen in a long time.