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The Hot New Medium of the Post-TV Era: TV!

By James Poniewozik | @poniewozik | January 3, 2011 | +

Rounding up the year-end Nielsen ratings for 2010, The New York Times’ Brian Stelter notes that—despite all the alternative media and entertainment choices—viewers actually watched slightly more TV than they did in 2009. The overall balance of the viewing continued to shift more in cable’s favor, but that’s still a growing audience for plain old-fashioned TV on a TV set.

The report doesn’t break down TV viewing vs. other entertainment (video games, et al.) or vs. other means of watching video (streaming, via download, through gaming devices, on smartphones and tablets, &c.), so it’s not possible to say that TV gained relative to other media. It may be—and I would assume that it is—that these other devices and video streams grew as well.

And it doesn’t appear that the audience for individual shows is growing, so much as the collective audience for many, many different shows is. (In light of which, if you have some time, this 1979 TIME cover story on the rising new medium of cable is fascinating: “For a monthly fee averaging $7, the viewer can watch up to 36 channels”!)

What we can probably assume is that, more than ever, video in whatever form is becoming the chief language of our society. So why in the world are you wasting your time reading these boring words?

Related Topics: TV Ratings, Uncategorized

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  • michlaw

    Thanks for the link to the Times 1979 article on cable. The one fact that really shocked me is that “Mork and Mindy” had an audience of 50 million. Wow! That would be a mega-hit show in today’s TV world. I loved that show as a kid but I can’t believe that many people watched it weekly.

  • The Hoobie

    Yeah, TV has gotten so good in the past few decades that I can honestly say I’d rather watch TV than see a movie. Not to mention that it comes into your home (relatively) cheap and easily. No need to hire a babysitter; in fact, the TV can be a babysitter!

    I find that TV’s my main window into other forms of pop culture, as well. I don’t listen to the radio that often, so the main way I discover new music is TV. (Not sure I’m especially proud of that, but there you go.)

    The most recent instance of that for me was a video game commercial during The Daily Show. The last video game I played may have been Tetris, but when I saw this excellent commercial, I sat up, all “Oh my God, what is that song?! I HAVE TO HAVE THAT SONG!!” (Of course, turns out “Young Men Dead” is from 2006, so it’s not exactly “new,” but still. :-) )

    As an employed-at-least-for-now-cross-your-fingers copy editor, I’m not sure what to think about the idea that video is becoming the chief language of our society. If it’s video like this beautiful and effective PSA (which made even my stout-hearted husband tear up), maybe that’s not so bad? (Hmm. Maybe I should look into video-editing classes at the local community college, sigh….)

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