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When I was a child, we had magic hours throughout the day. The news were on at 8 pm on the dot, and a must-watch for everyone in the household. If you looked out the window then, you'd see an empty neighborhood of row houses and mostly abandoned yards and patios. In front of a turquoise green background, male and female newscasters read out one piece of news after the other, from a sheet of paper, stoic as stones and without batting an eyelid even in the face of the most devastating of disasters. We learned everything that happened in the world–and hadn't already been covered in the morning paper. Afterwards, it was entertainment shows with hosts dressed in ghastly sports coats or crime series featuring grumpy detectives in their mid-fifties who'd solve murder cases in gray cities. We had a whopping three channels and were anxious to arrange our daily routine around them. But is television finally dying, now that video and streaming portals are successfully stealing their viewers, both young and old?
The battle for viewers isn't lost for TV stations just yet! At least for Europe, the numbers are still hopeful: In 2019, 80% tuned in every day, an impressive figure that beats YouTube (roughly 70%), which often serves as a radio replacement these days. Amazon Prime and Netflix come in at a far lower 50%. This may be due to force of habit (we probably all grew up with television) but also because of the quality of newscasts, which are still nowhere to be found on streaming portals. While TV stations may feel tempted to cheer at these figures, a closer look will give them pause. There's a huge generational gap between viewers. 87% between 50 and 65 regularly watch television, while only 67% of viewers under 30 do the same. And the younger demographic certainly favor video platforms (81%) and streaming services (73%). Important news to the advertising industry, who primarily targets a younger audience. Private stations that solely rely on ad revenue may start to feel a little nauseous at this point. Reason enough to incorporate more product placements and surreptitious ads into "documentaries" to make a few extra bucks–and water down their already frothy content even more? The voices calling for critical journalism that steers clear of the rich and powerful instead of low-brow entertainment are getting louder. Alas, it remains a rare breed in the landscape of television.
So why do many younger viewers dislike TV? Reasons vary. Many viewers no longer enjoy predictable nine-to-five jobs, which makes dead-set TV schedules a no-go. Then there's exclusive, and often much-coveted, content that is tied to a particular provider. Like the many big series that aired first on streaming portals and pay TV channels–and that feature lengthy plots that span across multiple episodes so you'd better not miss a single one of them (unlike my beloved Columbo that always started out with the status quo)! Some reasons are even simpler in nature: TV sets are no longer an essential commodity in many households, especially among young singles. They've been superseded by PCs, laptops and tablets, many of them featuring big enough screens to offer sufficient viewing pleasure, from small apartments to dorm rooms. That is why less then half of viewers under 30 believe traditional TV still has a future. Naturally, TV stations are reacting to this trend, e.g. by setting up their own media portals and reinforcing their news and life advice sections to emphasize their core strengths. However, more often than not, only small portions of their regular programs are available online, with complete seasons remaining a rarity. On the other hand, internet-based TV has its pitfalls: Smart TVs or the ever popular Amazon streaming devices frequently suffer from flaky TV apps or poor handling. The jump to the online world still poses a challenge for many, even though it has been around for decades by now.
Our traditional rituals are another victim of the current trend towards selective online viewing. We used to make jokes in the past that TV turns a family circle into a semi-circle. Today, only 11% watch TV as a family, the rest usually watch alone (48%) or with their partners (41%). The younger the viewer, the more likely it is they'll watch TV by themselves. Here's an example: When I was young, "Star Trek The Original Series" was my sci-fi highlight of the week. There was nothing else available. Today, I can not only select between all possible Star Trek series, with hundreds of episodes, but have instant access to countless other sci-fi series and movies. And there's pay TV with dedicated sci-fi channels for 24-7 entertainment. So did I watch TV with my (grand)parents in the past because we had similar tastes? Nope, there simply wasn't enough variety and I only got my own TV set much much later. We agreed on the smallest common denominator, and that usually meant Boris Becker, luckily. If the situation became unbearable, you'd simply grab a good book and move elsewhere. Had I had the alternatives we have today, I would have been over the moon!
Naturally, you can't talk about TV without some mentioning of ads. We all know private TV stations can't survive without ad revenue, but that doesn't render the present situation any less disagreeable. The movie's coming to a climax? Now would be a great time to blast my ears with details about sanitary napkins, treat me to a bunch of croaking chocolate-craving kids or show me what's next on your station, don't you think (you televisionary hucksters)? On top, most commercial breaks are excruciatingly long. Who'd want to watch the first movie in "The Hobbit" trilogy and risk staying up past midnight–on a week day? I also don't take kindly to overlays that plug some grouchy host and his cooking show and instantly flambée the thrill and excitement of what I'm actually trying to watch. If you devalue your own content to this extent, don't come crying when people stop tuning in! Besides, it'll be next to impossible for traditional TV stations to match the ease and comfort of streaming services: no disruptive overlays and only a brief program reminder in between episodes. That, I can live with!
So television will have to change to survive the competition. Being free, as in free TV, alone won't cut it. Viewers are willing to pay for quality content, as 171.77 million Netflix and 150 million Amazon Prime subscribers can attest to. Permanent availability, highly diverse content and being ad-free are factors that will shape the coming generations of viewers–and they won't settle for low-budget shows with a spinning wheel as their main attraction, no matter how cozy the past decades have been!
What I would like to know: Do you still watch TV daily? What could TV stations do better?
An excellent assessment, combined with many excellent and informative info from many parts of the world.
Glad it got world-wide review.
I'm just about to the point where TV is of little value. With hundreds of channels available through various networks finding good content is another challenge. Most of the choices are disappointing consequently I simply turn it off many nights. If there was a network available to stream that would allow you to customize your channel lineup I would be inclined to choose that option, but I have not found that option with the channels choices I would group together.
I still mainly watch free-to-air television but the first release 1 hour drama series are getting harder to find. It seems that a lot of air time is now used to broadcast virtual reality television in which I have little interest. These shows to me are generally inane and amount to very little.
I for some years have had access to Fetch TV via a package with my phone and internet provider which has given a wider range of shows to watch. But even then some nights the choices are slim and I revert to watching a show that I have recorded.
I also enjoy investigative shows or well produced documentaries but even some of the investigative shows are a pain to watch as they proceed at a snails pace and are highly repetitive in padded out content.
So most of my viewing these days are retro dramas on the supplementary free-to air channels which I pre-record and fast forward through the advertisements. That way due to time restraints I can view these shows according to my schedule rather than that of the broadcaster.
You Tube also has benefits that regular television doesn't provide; for instance a good old western movie - although the resolution and sound quality can be very poor in viewing films this way.
Watching Network and Local News is still important. But money is still to be made in the one who invents an effective but privacy inclusive measurement system.
TV and the major networks are propaganda arms. Why pay or watch them? It's like you are funding your own brainwashing.
Support and defend the US Constitution.
Being retired, ie over 65, I tend to watch television, but since I do not like wasting my time, I refuse to watch television before 2100 hrs and quit after the news at 2330 hrs. Very rarely do I watch outside those hours. We receive about 15 channels and I have trouble finding something to watch that interests me. Most night I end up reading a book. My wife has a similar opinion. My son, however, watches Netflix - as you say, it is the generation gap.
I watch tv on a large screen tv which I consider better than smaller versions like my cell phone or tablet. The tv also allows for more than one viewer comfortable. I also watch Netflix and prime on occasion, and I have a dvd collection on Walmart's vudu. I very much dislike the volume of advertising on tv channels. Although advertising has become more creative. I have DirecTV and watch maybe 8 channels from their voluminous lineup.
Hello! From the beginning I tell you that I'm not a fan of TV. What to do? In my opinion, first of all, the commercials destroy all the entertainment and make the television less attractive. Beyond that, I can say that the shows that appeal to me must be different and not keep the same intensity line because you cannot pay constant attention to the TV for a long time. Sometimes I like to see competition, sometimes I want to see confrontations or debates and sometimes I have the disposition for a movie or something to get me out of my daily routine ...It's very hard for a television to find a balance between these types of shows and that's why people prefer to do it themselves, which is to choose for themselves when and how they feel necessary. There is a lot to say on this topic, but in essence I think that television has a difficult and important mission and doing this 24 hours/day and 365 days/ year is very difficult.
Hardly watch TV at all only some times catch our 5 pm news "Australia" then i take the pink pill for depression as the news is so bad as i feel the world is going to hell in a hand cart but when that is finished i then take the blue pill to buck myself up again.Being retired, i mostly listen to my radio in my little shed out the back and have a quiet smoke and there i can tell some waffling prime minister he is a dick.
What can TV do better? I will leave that to better men than me.
Regards
Hughie
Sven,
I remember those days of only 3 channels, like you, but we didn't know what color the backdrop was because the TV only got black and white. I was married and out of college before I could afford color. We lived in a small town in Oklahoma for a while and the only way to get a decent signal was cable, a very new idea. The weather and town news channel was a camera pointed at a barometer, thermometer, clock, and small blackboard with the weather forecast chalked on it. If the local mill was closed, that news put on the blackboard.
I refuse to be a slave to the TV schedule. The only attraction of the cable box was the ability to record shows so we could watch them when we had time and speed through the commercials,
Recently, we cancelled cable television and get everything we watch from the internet. In order to see the few current programs we like, we use the networks' streaming services. The drawback is we can't speed through commercials.
My daughter watches the local news while she gets ready for work to know what the weather is going to be, and a little of what the news is.
We subscribe to Netflix, Disney, Acorn, Britbox, CBS All Access and Amazon prime. The monthly charge is worth it to avoid commercials.
There are some 'free' streaming channels that we will watch, despite the extremely repetitive commercials, but only for the 'classic' shows and movies.
We tend to binge watch the programs we like. This evening we watched multiple episodes of two shows we enjoy on Britbox, 'Time Team' and 'Would I Lie to you?'
What could TV stations do better? Follow CBS's model: offer two levels of on-line programming, one with limited commercials and
one commercial-free for a small increase in the monthly charge.
Thanks for the opportunity to sound off.
Ken
I have a nice, 65" 4K HD TV that I turn on once every month or so, when I have a moment of spare time, and then it is almost always to watch a Blu-Ray. Although I have decent Internet service with lots of apps on the smart TV, there is very little I find compelling enough to break into my lifestream. One thing is certain, though. The content I watch has to be what I want at the moment, and I have zero interest in checking a schedule to see when something might be made available. Impatient Millennial? Nope. I'm over 70!
My partner & I have not watched our tv for almost 18 months as we detest reality tv. We now use our computer to read many newspapers from around the world, live updates & movies, documentries,etc. I think people by & large are sick of the cheaply produced cooking, reno's, dancing, etc. night sfter night. Gone are the days of movie nights at 8pm almost every night. We used to watch the tv movies, they are rare now here in Australia, Some new stations run & run old tv shows long past they're use by date I feel.
TV stations are killing themselves with all the sexist reality shows put on at prime time. They must think that this is better television for kids.. I don't think so. On the other hand oldies who have some spending money need to go to bed earlier have nothing to watch because all the entertainment starts as they are going to bed.
Of course Netflix and the likes are entertaining without ads but the real reason is you can watch what you like when you like. Until TV stations cut their ads and change their program producers they are going to slide backwards and not recover.
I am nearly 80 years old and have seen the progression of television from it's inception in the 1950s (on a monotone 23cm scratchy, flashing screen with one station!) to the present day (on my super dooper LED 160cm behomoth with a gazillion stations). Like you, Sven, I have marvelled at so many things that I watched - Queen Elizabeth's coronation (live tv!) In 1953, Kennedy dying in 1963, Armstrong dropping onto the moon in 1969 and the twin towers falling in 2001.
Having said all of that, I now find myself avoiding switching the tv on unless it is very necessary. I hate all of the reality shows, ads, cooking shows, ads, and other lightweight fare that is dished out 24/7. Did I mention I hate the constant, repetitive ads that constantly insult my intelligence (or what's left of it!). I even find it intensely irritating to have to endure constant ads on my (very expensive, paid, dollar grabbing) streaming service. These breaks seem to be programmed to interrupt the program at the most tense moments when we are totally engrossed in the story! At least I can fast forward through the ads on my recorded tv programs (but not on the streaming services!).
Luckily, despite my advanced age, I have spent the whole of my working life and beyond using computers (yes, even the first IBM mainframes using large buildings!) so I can indulge in all of the current techno offerings of the present day, but I feel very sorry for most of my contemporaries who languish in the world of free tv.
Well, there you go. I feel a bit better now! Thanks for tolerating my pain!
Peter Bailey, Brisbane, Australia.
I really get quite tired of the same movies over and over on the same channel. Then the same movies will be playing a week later. We have PVR's now if we like we can record movies we are not able to watch.
What is the point of paying hundreds of dollars for year round repeats
I gave up watching television over a decade ago! Too many more interesting to be doing instead. I do still listen to Radio 4 though, although even that has lost quality in recent years.
I don't know about the rest but drug ads, ambulance chasing lawyers, loan sharking and endless medicare junk are slowly driving completely away from standard TV broadcasts. We now subscribe to various ad-free streaming services and watch them most of the time. And we're part of the 'older generation.'
I feel that 'linear TV' started dying a long time ago. Once a multitude of channels arrived, we were no longer limited to viewer specific content. We wanted news, there was a news channel; we wanted sports, there was a sports channel, and a channel for movies, and a channel for old movies, ...
We also didn't need need to watch at the schedule TV stations decided. We had VCRs which could be programmed to record at a specific time. We could also rent or buy movies or TV programmes on VCR, and then on DVD. (I have a huge DVD library; when I was single I didn't watch TV, only DVDs.)
Then cable boxes started offering recordings, which made it even easier to see things when you wanted them.
The short of it, it's a long process, and it's still continuing. Being able to watch content in any order you want on Netflix isn't much different than renting DVDs (what Netflix started with), it's just more streamlined.
And by the way, I feel that 'linear' isn't the perfect descriptor. If anything, a series that being binge-watched is a lot more linear than having to watch one episode a week.
Hello, I am 83 years old and I can remember when I was a kid every house had a TV antenna there house and only has a few channels to watch, and they were free, with no monthly charge.then they started talking about pay TV and cable with a monthly fee without commercials,that the monthly price would take care of take care of that. Now we are paying for watching commercials and they have gotten really smart, when you switch channels, the channel you go to also has commercials, all channels have commercials at the same time.Well I just thought that I would chime in with my thoughts.
Yes, I watch broadcast TV every day (er, evening) for news and current affairs. [I will add that at 78, I'm definitely a senior!] We have the Australian Broadcasting Corporation which provides the
most reliable news in the country. They also produce high-quality drama etc etc (bur I find comedy is usually weak). They also import the best of British drama series plus comedy panel shows, however, not enough to fill an evening's viewing every night. I download a lot from YouTube so these sources, plus a large DVD collection built up over the years makes paid services unnecessary.
For the future, who knows, but I do know that streamed audio is making music a throw-away commodity, and there are TV parallels. OK, much music has few endurable qualities, but the throw-away nature will finally be realized. Similarly, many are watching movies/series and concerts on portable devices. Eventually they will find that a small screen and headphones provide an inadequate avenue for full enjoyment and appreciation. So I suspect large-screen TV's and good sound systems will come to be appreciated again, plus a means of having your own library of music and of good video material to be better appreciated.
Yeah mate, its like that jere in Oz tòo. The networks used to make an announcement something like " we interupt this programme for a short add break. The movie will return soon" Now they do not jave the courtesy to do that, but if they did it would have to be something like " viewers, we interrupt these adds for a short programme break" Also it is so yerribly sad that in most cases the adds are better than the programs, and funnier too. Look at the "Bugger" Toyota adds, or the slipery little succer adds. Oh well, I guess the old days when you had 15 min movie and 3 min adds are gone, just like quality television programming. Yes, the news broadcast is the best program....less violence, and less bad language than the programs. Rob.
I do not to watch TV that has commercials. I watch Iview which has what i want when i want it. Otherwise, it's youtube or Prime for me.
Your article is great and right-on-the-money in every way. My girlfriend & I were both born around 1950, so we remember those "golden years" of television quite well. I miss them (and I even miss the TV Guide from those days).
We continue to watch the TV every day, and it pretty much is the center of our entertainment (especially with Covid-19 outside our home), but we don't do much viewing of streaming videos of shows or movies. Unfortunately, the quality of the majority of network & cable shows is pretty bad, so finding something good to watch is a real chore. Therefor, we watch a lot of reruns. But the biggest drawback is (as you stated) the ads: The sheer bulk of commercials each break is over-whelming, along with their repetition, the way they bust into the shows with no break between them or the next commercial, and how no topic has been left sacred. The ads for prescription drugs alone is enough to depress and scare anyone with their long list of side-effects. You are also correct about those "overlays" and how much of an intrusion they are to the progress of the current program being shown. One TV station actually used overlays during shows to advertise products!! The moment the first one appeared I changed the station and fired off an email to them (I'm not sure I remember how to write a real letter anymore). I agree that television has to change to "survive the competition." Reality shows, an over-flowing abundance of ads, sitcoms with humor that would surprise even Lenny Bruce, and local news programs that are presented like entertainment will continue to drag down the popularity of a medium I once actually cherished.
With all that said, it's sad to admit I can't always go back to those days by watching the shows of yesteryear (I tried to watch an old Red Skelton Show recently, but could barely sit through the entire 30 minutes). Life, aided by television, has changed me. I will forever miss those early days of TV, but for the most part, I will have to leave them be and continue to deal with television constantly reminding me of how obnoxious the human mind can be and how my new medication can help me but may also cause more serious conditions (including death).
Thank you, Mr. Krumrey, for a topic that really needed to be said.
Now aged 77 i find TV waste of time. I only use amazon prime for my entertainment. I believe we are to be charged for a licence again later this year, if i cant watch amazon prime without a licence I shall definitely be pulling the plug. Times have changed but TV hasn't. There are too many repeats adverts every 10 minutes and too much football with so called stars being paid extortionate amounts of salary.
Time the stations look to themselves before its too late
get local easier instead of having to get a cable box.