Word: broadcasters
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...networks. But for me as a critic and you as a viewer, the important question is, Are there better shows on TV or not? The answer is - and has been for years - yes. More important, the answer is yes for precisely the same reasons that the big broadcast networks are fading. (There's also more bad TV on the air because there's more of everything. Unless it bothers you that other people are watching bad TV, this is also not your problem...
...they can get away with sex and swearing (though it helps). They are able to aim high, and thrive, precisely because the economics of cable allow them to succeed with smaller audiences that want to be challenged. FX's Emmy-winning thriller Damages never would have made it on broadcast because of its byzantine twists and turns; it would have to be simplified, Law & Order -ized. Ditto HBO's and Showtime's hits: an audience intensely interested enough to pay to watch TV will reward risk, not caution...
...Broadcast's new enemy is digital media, including venues like Hulu that were created by the networks themselves, which cut into their ad dollars. Last year Heroes creator Tim Kring gave a legendary rant about how viewers using TiVo or DVDs or downloading - legally or not - cut into the show's audience, leaving "the saps and dips____ who can't figure out how to watch it in a superior way" to watch live TV (which still counts most for ad dollars). In one sense he was right, if undiplomatic. But only half right, because technology also makes it possible...
...telling stories that don't have to please 30 million people. The old networks (and the people who make shows for them) will struggle to make a buck, but new outlets will rise and thrive. ER will pass, but hospital dramas have birth stories as well as death stories. Broadcast TV may be flatlining. But its offspring are doing just fine...
F.D.R., however, was able to roadblock attention in American homes on the only mass broadcast medium in existence, one so new and intimate it still seemed like magic. Obama is in a mediasphere that includes broadcast, cable, blogs, Twitter and sundry home-entertainment boxes. To persuade in this world - and the President is not just the decider but also the persuader - you have to go multiplatform. (Read "The New Liberal Order...