It's been roughly a year since "The Good Place" ended, and I stopped watching any network programming regularly. Well, let's be more specific here. I stopped watching their scripted programming regularly. I still watch the late night monologues, and I've actually started watching the news more, since there's been easier access to the newscasts online. Aside from a few brief attempts to get into shows like "Evil" and "Superstore," I've ignored pretty much every scripted show being broadcast, in favor of streaming options.
And that feels like something significant. Cord cutting might be accelerating, and 2020 was the year when the streaming wars really came to a head, but there are still millions and millions of people who still largely get their media from over-the-air television broadcasts. I looked up the stats for the 2019-2020 season, and out of the top twenty scripted shows, I've only watched episodes of two of them - "NCIS" and "Hawaii Five-O." That means there's a huge part of the current popular culture that I am totally out of touch with, right?
Well… maybe and maybe not. "NCIS" and "Hawaii Five-O" are in their eighteenth and tenth seasons respectively. Lower down on the chart, "Grey's Anatomy" is on season seventeen, and "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit" is somehow still going after twenty-two seasons with Mariska Hargitay and Ice-T still hanging in there. Almost all the top rated shows are some kind of familiar doctor ("New Amsterdam," "The Good Doctor,"), law enforcement ("FBI," "Chicago PD,"), or first responder ("Chicago Fire," "9-1-1") show, and none of them appear to be very highly regarded. Amazingly, Dick Wolf managed to launch two new television franchises while I wasn't paying attention - the "FBI" shows on CBS, and the "Chicago" shows on NBC. I remember "9-1-1" eliciting some very funny critical takes when it premiered back in 2018, because of how absurdly melodramatic it was, and now it's the highest rated drama on FOX and has a spinoff, "9-1-1: Lone Star," that is the second highest rated drama on FOX.
When I was originally spitballing ideas for this post, I considered watching an episode of each of the top ten scripted shows currently airing on network television, and then writing up the experience. However, the prospect of having to watch so many of these procedurals immediately put me off. Even when I was still watching network television regularly, these weren't the shows that I watched. I was watching the sitcoms, the offbeat action shows, and the (almost always doomed) sci-fi and fantasy shows. These are all television genres that are being steadily replaced by more and more reality programming like "LEGO Masters" and "The Masked Dancer." The breakout hits that fit the bill, like "Ted Lasso" and "The Mandalorian" are all on streaming.
There are a handful of the popular shows that I'm curious about. The two highest rated non-procedurals are ABC's soap opera "This is Us," which still has its share of critical kudos and awards buzz, and CBS's "Young Sheldon," which is a spinoff of "The Big Bang Theory." Those are the two, along with "Brooklyn 99," are the only series that are present enough in the wider popular culture that I feel like I'm missing anything by not watching them. Otherwise, the pickings are slim. Network programming has clearly become a lower priority to studios like Disney and Paramount. I've seen almost no marketing for any current television shows, and frankly I didn't know many of the highly rated ones like "Chicago PD" even existed.
What's to become of prime time? At this point, nobody knows, but major changes are certainly due. The remaining shows all feel like copies of each other, with a few exceptions. The audience keeps shrinking and trending older, and the pandemic only seems to have accelerated the migration. Watching traditional commercials is feeling weirdly nostalgic, and I can't imagine going back to appointment viewing. Broadcast television will never die, probably, as radio never died, but I think it's clear that its days as the dominant form of media are done.
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