On Wed, Mar 3, 2021 at 12:02 PM PGage <[email protected]> wrote: > I largely agree, though I think both you and the CNN piece may be making > an exaggerated, or at least still premature, obituary, both on awards shows > and television. Millions of Americans still watch television every day, > just a lot less than they used to. Even averagely successful broadcast > shows are still a pretty good way to reach concentrated numbers of eyeballs > for advertisers. >
I didn't intend an obituary. There are lots of things that build huge popularity and continue to thrive in a niche status afterward. It's the framing of the news media that treats a number decline like an inverted parabola: once the phenomenon shows a drop in numbers it's speeding to its eventual doom. That doesn't necessarily happen; sometimes the phenomenon finds a stable lower level and endures. Typewriters and print news magazines are still around even after they've lost their prominence. Since network TV can still bring in millions of viewers, even if the numbers are nowhere near where they used to be, that will attract advertisers and that can keep the business model going. But when I still got a print newspaper I saw after the department stores and other major businesses stopped running ads the paper started running some strange and often dubious ads in their place since those businesses were the ones willing to pay. I can't imagine a different future for network TV as the numbers continue to drop. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TVorNotTV" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tvornottv/CAJE-FiHDcjFMJ%2BYQ-kr9k5%3D%2BCK1ZWgUXhwvj4q_xkOHD7WGfhA%40mail.gmail.com.
