TV Tuesday: Is This Us?

[yourlibrarian]

A Financial Times article discussed a cultural change during the holidays in Britain, as smart TVs and non-TV viewing by a younger generation means that there is much less viewing of holiday specials, which had been a national tradition. Instead "data shows children as young as four spend longer watching YouTube each day than all PSB services combined", and that ratio is even worse with young teens. The article notes the situation is equally dire for other European broadcasters.

In the article, the concern is that younger viewers are turning away from content that is authentic to and about their own country. In the U.S., too, public television is under threat. Are there TV traditions that are disappearing due to the shift in viewing? What might be gone in another generation or two?

Comments

[ecto_one_spengler]

Wondering if Youtube taking up so much watchtime is because the actual contents of TV aren't truly unique or quality much anymore, and the few channels that do often are inundated with ads or in threat of being shut down althogether because it "isn't profitable".

Yes ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

>>Are there TV traditions that are disappearing due to the shift in viewing?<<

We've already lost Saturday morning cartoons. That's disappointing, because it used to corral children's binge-watching to a few hours once a week, which was reasonable. After that, they usually wanted to run around outside for a while.

Watching several hours of passive screen content every day is not good for anyone's health or activity.

I used to leave PBS running for nature shows while doing homework. I also watched some of the BBC shows that PBS picked up in America -- which is how I'm bidialectic enough that if a British friend says, "It's in the boot," I know where in the car to look for the thing.

Before YouTube fell into enshittification, I was watching and recommending a lot of its educational content. But when I see a professional piece about pterodactyls, and one picture shows its wings posed like crossed arms while another has bat wings with multiple fingers, that greatly undermines my interest. I already know those are wrong, but what else is wrong that I might not catch? >_< So conversely, that raises the value of educational TV again, hopefully with better production standards.

[delphi]

I honestly don't know exactly what is lost by decentralizing TV; I think it depends entirely on what mainstream stations are offering. For example, I don't particularly care about the tradition of holiday specials, personally, or about losing 'water cooler' moments. To a large extent where I am, broadcast TV was developed as something to sell ads, and I am not in a demographic they tend to prioritize in terms of programming. There are advantages of gatekeeping in media and huge disadvantages as well. But as a Canadian whose media landscape is dominated by U.S. content, I do care a lot about regional programming that tells stories that wouldn't reach a large audience without national effort, and tells them in languages that are more likely to be lost without the same effort.

But otherwise, I think the biggest thing we're losing is the opportunity to not watch TV or TV-like material. That's obviously something that started in the cable era and was just ramped up by mobile devices and streaming, but I can retroactively see the value of having grown up in a time of finite TV and copious boredom that there was not enough passive media consumption to allay.

(Yes, I hear myself. I am old. I have become the "boredom builds character" person. I'm sorry. :P)

[yourlibrarian]

I suspect it has a lot to do with generational change. People are on their phones so much and they're so portable that watching can take place anywhere. By comparison, assuming younger people even have their own place they are less likely to have TVs. And YouTube is free.

Re: Yes ...

[yourlibrarian]

Yes! It's rather like when Nickleodeon and Cartoon Network etc. began, efforts to program for kids ended.

I mean, we do have holiday specials for kids and I believe they still get aired on the broadcast channel, but I am much more likely to hear about Hallmark marathon movies at the holidays instead. There are classic films but I notice that ones such as Elf or Christmas Story or Home Alone have taken precedence over It's a Wonderful Life.

And yes, what passes for content on YouTube is pretty concerning. There's a lot of good stuff there but the volume of slop is crowding it out.

[yourlibrarian]

Yes, I gather there are laws in Canada that mandate a certain amount of domestic programming?

I think there's a lot to be said about "empty time" (since I have rarely found that to be boring by default). I was hearing a discussion about that on Wait Wait Don't Tell Me this weekend (radio! Still exists!) and the host was saying that his young son, in leaving the dinner table and walking to another room, declared himself bored because he did not have a phone to look at. I think there's something alarming about not even being able to have thoughts to muse on during periods of quiet.

Re: Yes ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

>>Yes! It's rather like when Nickleodeon and Cartoon Network etc. began, efforts to program for kids ended.<<

Disappointing.

>>I mean, we do have holiday specials for kids and I believe they still get aired on the broadcast channel,<<

We can't even get broadcast anymore. I miss when television programming was free and you only had to buy the TV itself. Cable was so obviously a scam, but nobody believed me when I told them they'd wind up paying for programs and still stuck with commercials.

>>There are classic films but I notice that ones such as Elf or Christmas Story or Home Alone have taken precedence over It's a Wonderful Life.<<

I was never into It's a Wonderful Life; I liked and still like the animated and stop-motion specials. But my current favorite is Red One. :D This year we watched Nutcracker and the Four Realms, which was a lot more complex and interesting than the original ballet.

>>And yes, what passes for content on YouTube is pretty concerning. There's a lot of good stuff there but the volume of slop is crowding it out.<<

There are still some reliable channels, but it's getting a lot harder to find what's good when the cover pictures are no longer taken from the videos but are mostly AI slop.

[delphi]

There are, even though I personally think they still lean a little too far towards counting "American Lite" productions - things people hope to sell to the U.S. market and therefore do their best to not make them seem too Canadian. To my understanding, having recognizably Canadian characters or settings gets you a bonus point but isn't a requirement.

"Empty time" is such a better term for what I was thinking of! I can only speak for myself, but I know how much better I feel when my days have a mix of watching things, listening to things, reading, looking at static things, making and creating, and spending time quiet time with my thoughts. And to bring it back to television, I definitely enjoy the things I watch more when I haven't been zoning out with short video all day.

[fleurviolette]

Yeah there’s a shift towards streaming, including live tv.

[mllesatine]

That is super interesting. I was discussing the exact same thing with my mother a few days ago. We both felt that there weren't any of the usual holiday movies being put up on German TV. The evening program was either dreadful or just slapdash. We mostly watched the DARTS championship because there just wasn't anything on! (Besides Harry Potter, Indiana Jones and the Home alone movies)

I also noticed that there weren't any commercials for their holiday program on any of the channels. In the past they started running those weeks before so you had something to look forward to.

You could usually count on catching some classics like the b/w Miss Marple movies with Margaret Rutherford or the Poirot movies with Peter Ustinov. Not one channel showed those this year. And we also noticed that movies that were literally on at prime time one day were simply repeated in the early evening the next day. You could watch Pride & Prejudice at 8 pm and then at 5 pm the next day. Like there was no care put into putting eveything together.

Of course suitable movies were repeated in past years but not the next day in a slot that would usually play a different movie at that time during the holidays. Almost like the ran out of material. And I'm talking about a public channel here where there were cuts to the funding last year so maybe they really didn't have the funds for the licensing.

When I was a child they always showed the Sissi triology (Romy Schneider) - that's completely gone. Might be the changing times since those are movies from the mid -1950s.

Both my mom and I miss the "Princess Fantaghiro" series. That's an Italian fairy tale in 10 parts (90 minutes per epfrom the early 1990s. They always ran this around Christmas but I think it has been taken out of rotation for a few years now.

They did show some classic sketches by Loriot.

The public channels here have started showing new adaptions of old fairytales a few years ago. They all lack the warmth of older productions. They just shot the bare minimum - nothing to just fill the screen. If there is a scene of a market they show you three stalls and two geese. If it's a castle we will see two rooms max. You always feel like if you they pull back even a tiny bit you would see the catering table next.

But they made a ton of those movies so it's clearly quantity over quality.

[kazzy_cee]

My boys (both in their 30s) don't watch mainstream (free) TV at all. They stream everything.

[mllesatine]

I also want to say that my parents don't speak English and even though they could theoretically watch youtube on their smart TVs (well Smarttube - youtube on a TV is dreadful with all the ads) they aren't interested. Even going into the media center all the public channels offer isn't something my parents would do without me pushing for it so I think there still are lots of people (older than 60) who solely rely on a TV schedule.

[mllesatine]

Do they watch TV when they are with you? A don't have a TV of my own but I will happily watch (and argue about) tv when I'm at my parents.

[kazzy_cee]

No, we don't sit around watching TV when they visit, we spend time catching up.

[yourlibrarian]

Agree, it's good to have a variety of tasks or entertainments.

[yourlibrarian]

Oh yes, I definitely think older viewers are the mainstay of broadcast TV and cable.

You always feel like if you they pull back even a tiny bit you would see the catering table next.

Ha! That's a good way to describe it. Shame about that, though I guess with changing tastes they're trying to stay more current.