We’ve covered the best and worst of 2009, but what about the biggest? After the jump, an incomplete list of the biggest TV trends and developments of 2009, and your invitation to suggest more in the comments:
The Jay Leno Show. I won’t belabor the arguments I made in my Time cover story, but whether you like the show or not (and I don’t), its existence is hugely significant. It’s the most drastic example of a broadcast network trying to deal with the effects of shrinking audiences, declining revenue, the movement of viewers to DVR and online (taking ad money with them) and a generally fading business model. Whether it lasts or not, NBC’s gamble / downsizing strategy is the hallmark of an era when big TV is getting smaller, good TV is more often on cable and old mass-media institutions matter less and less.
Oprah Goes to Cable. Speaking of which, if Jay wasn’t enough to prove to you that TV’s leaders saw a future where cable was more lucrative than fizzling old broadcast, then Oprah should be. The most successful woman in TV announced she would end her syndicated broadcast talk show and concentrate full-time on her cable network, OWN.
Comcast Buys NBC. Or rather, Comcast buys NBC Universal’s stable of cable channels and gets a broadcast network thrown in for free. Putting another underline on the lessons of Leno and Oprah.
Twitter. Now some of you will think that I included Twitter, created in 2006, simply because I just joined it this year. Let me be clear: you are correct. But also, Twitter’s critical mass of users made it the perfect symbiotic partner for TV. It was the medium through which the world collectively talked back, quickly and loudly, to television, giving immediate voice to the Save Chuck campaign and protests over CNN’s Iran coverage alike.
Late-Night Is Actually Interesting! There was turnover at a major late show for the first time in years, as Conan O’Brien delivered a very funny Tonight Show (but significantly fewer older viewers. David Letterman seized the opportunity and took control of the late-night ratings race, but got unwelcome publicity through a Sarah Palin feud and a sex scandal. And George Lopez, Wanda Sykes and Mo’Nique found a place for non-white-males in TV talk as well.
The Rise of Glenn Beck. A decently successful host from Headline News moved to Fox on Obama’s inauguration day, and became an overnight sensation for apocalyptic populism. (Apocapopulism?) Agree or disagree, mock him or take him very seriously, the man knows his way around a TV camera and a movement of free-floating anxiety and suspicion.
Susan Boyle. Plenty of people have held forth on how Boyle’s out-of-nowhere success story was about optimism, about the rejection of reality-TV meanness, about the triumph of talent over appearance, and so on. But simply as a TV story, Boyle’s was important simply because she became an overnight phenomenon in the U.S. on the strength of a show that aired in another country. Thanks to YouTube and the various tentacles of the media that picked up on her story, Boyle became ubiquitously known entirely through online media and secondary sources. Boyle was an American TV star before she ever actually appeared on American primetime TV.
Michael Jackson. The shocking celebrity death showed that, for all its decline as a mass-medium, TV was still the place where people congregate to learn about breaking news, to remember, to celebrate, to mourn.
Tabsplosions! On the other hand, the spiraling up of stories like the Jon & Kate divorce and the Tiger Woods affairs scandal showed that TV is now only part of a huge ecosystem in creating media frenzies. Gossip websites, social networks and other new media often beat old media on the stories, got to the details first and made them impossible for slower media to ignore.