It's circling the drain as viewership evaporates with the disappearance of rooftop aerials.
NPR review: <https://www.npr.org/2024/06/25/nx-s1-5017620/book-review-cue...>
LARB review: <https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/to-be-real-on-emily-nuss...>
"Live sports are headed to streaming services, and audiences are ready" <https://www.nielsen.com/insights/2022/live-sports-are-headed...>
Elsewhere, I've read of softening in live sports viewership. Though SuperbOwl viewership trends are still apparently increasing: "Super Bowl nabs 123.4 million viewers, according to CBS" (2024) <https://www.nbcnews.com/news/sports/super-bowl-ratings-rcna1...>. Swift may have been a factor.
It is already happening in Hollywood. Massive bloodletting and unemployment as tens of thousands of jobs simply evaporate into the ether.
Even low budget/low manpower efforts like reality shows are getting axed left and right.
With the exception of CBS, network television is experiencing a gaping chest wound, with everything posting massive loses in viewership every year. CBS is the healthiest, but even their top shows are getting lighter by 25% a year. Nearly all their shows are some variation on the same thing. Cop show, fire show, md shows.
When was the last time anyone talked about a show on network television? Decades? I can't name a single show on any network, and I know I am not alone in that regard. I can only name a handful of shows on cable, but that's only because we talk about how bad they are.
The largest owner of broadcast stations is trying to dump 30% of its holdings, including its best performing stations. The problem? No takers. No one wants to buy a ship that is sinking.
Streaming is changing, too. Companies are no longer going to bankroll a million productions to see what sticks.
The thought's occurred to me recently that television (OTA broadcast, networks, and cable) are about to get, or are in the process of getting, newspapered. In the sense that the evisceration which hit newspapers from ~2000 to 2020 is about to hit the video sector. Mostly because of advertising flight and audience shifts to elsewhere.
I don't know what the end result will be. Maybe the situation in the radio industry, where increasingly there's little more than hit-driven track-programmed pop stations, increasing dominance of Spanish-language broadcasts, and at the left end of the dial (in the US) a smattering of public, religious, and college broadcasters. Rock radio is all but dead. Classical all the more so. What TV's analogue to this might be I'm not sure, though I suspect it's already somewhat represented by present offerings: shopping networks, non-English broadcast (particularly Spanish), and highly-automated syndication, all chasing smaller ad spend and, likely, less lucrative audience segments.
Having largely avoided TV for the past four decades I'm really not positioned to observe what's happening here, though I'm seeing increased general signs of stress from articles and news reports.