Let’s just get it out there. The decline of traditional TV was as predictable as heat in the summer as technology changed.
All of these breathless articles about ratings and Nielsen and viewership among young people and so on keep rolling out as though anybody should be the slightest bit surprised that the world does not schedule their days and nights around what time Two and a Half Men comes on anymore.
You know what would be a big story? Nobody watches anything on TV anymore. That would be a actual shift in the public perception of a medium. If aWalmart and Best Buy were begging people, begging them to please take this heavily discounted 8K LG TV off the shelves so that they can keep from going bankrupt that would be a story. But people still watch TV shows. They’re watching more TV than they ever did before. And while some people take advantage of mobile opportunities they still make and sell plenty of nice big TVs. There are so many TV options that the other story everybody keeps saying is there’s too much for people to watch. And that people feel overwhelmed.
Am I the only person watching this the narririve that thinks it incredibly boring?
Does anybody really believe that people would have been watching I Love Lucy at a specific time on a specific night when it was a new show if they could have just watched it anytime they wanted? This narrative is the biggest non story in the industry. As is the overall ratings for TV shows. Yes I get it, Cheers used to have amazing numbers compared to something like Breaking Bad today. Bob Newhart would wipe the floor with anything on TV now if you just looked at how many people watched it at the time compared to how many people watch anything now. But that doesn’t mean anything about consumer trends. Everybody didn’t just love what was on TV in the 50s and 60s and 70s. But if they wanted to watch something on TV they only had three choices. And that was if they had a good enough antenna to get all three channels. So when the option was watch Bob Newhart talk to your spouse and kids all night or read, a lot of people chose to watch Bob Newhart.
Does anybody remember mid 2020 when trolls 2 came out and it was this huge hit? It’s not that Trolls 2 was somehow transformed into the year’s biggest film or best or most entertaining. But it came out when nothing new was coming out and all the kids had been at home for a month or so and they were driving the parents crazy and so people ordered something like trolls to just to shut them up and give themselves a break so they could get a little work done.
If a third Trolls movie came out up against Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness it would be virtually invisible. Just like everything else that came out when Spider-Man No Way Home hit the theaters. And that includes the Oscar winners thank you very much.
The trend that sees live TV valued more then Studio shows in advertising add everything to do with that you never know what’s going to happen factor. I’ll make a prediction right now. If Oprah interviews Will Smith live on ABC next month it will be the highest rated interview in the last five years. At least it will be as long as the mainstream media keep talking about it Non-Stop.
People have not changed all that much and even a hundred years. Everybody wants to get paid what they think they’re worth they want to go home and relax and whatever is the popular media form of the time well take up most of the time when they get home. What is happening with traditional TV outside of sports and competition shows it’s exactly what should happen. This is more about the democratization of TV viewing in media than it is anything else and it’s time people start recognizing that.
