As we approach the 50th anniversary of the Beatles’ first appearance on “The Ed Sullivan Show” (Feb. 9, 1964), it’s instructive to consider the ways television viewing has changed in the interim.
You would have been watching the Fab Four on an ovenlike set anchored in a bulky console, on one of maybe five channels you got (including UHF).
Almost certainly in black-and-white. (At the start of 1964, only 3 percent of American TVs were color.)
If you ventured into the kitchen for refreshment, you just missed your only chance to see the lads sing “She Loves You.”
Slingshot that same viewer without transition into 2014, waiting for a bus, and she’d swear she was witnessing sorcery: That boy is watching the episode of “Teen Wolf” that was just on TV last night on a small rectangle he calls his mobile phone.
That man is watching a movie that’s still playing in theaters on a slightly larger screen he calls his tablet. And he’s stopping and rewinding the action.
Yet no flying cars as in “The Jetsons.” It takes exactly as long as it ever did to get to work.
Yes, we live in a brave new world of television. And the innovations and choices are coming at an ever-accelerating pace.
More content, more outlets, more delivery systems. It’s a buyers’ market out there for TV viewers.
“The line used to be: ‘500 channels and nothing on,’” says Lucy Hood, president and chief operating officer of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.
“Now it’s ‘1,000 channels and there’s too much to watch.’ The biggest complaint we hear is, ‘I haven’t had a chance to catch up on that series. I hear it’s great.’ That’s a nice problem to have.”
Certainly, production has proliferated as original programming, once the exclusive province of broadcast television, spread to pay cable, then to basic cable, and now to streaming services such as Netflix and Hulu.
“I would say the competition for original programming has increased more than tenfold,” said Chris McCumber, the president of cable channel USA.
The more intense rivalry for eyeballs has led to a creative boom in the business, exemplified by series like “Mad Men,” “Breaking Bad,” “Game of Thrones” and “The Good Wife.”
“Everyone’s been telling me that I’d like the way the medium is going, how it’s character-based and darker in tone,” said M. Night Shyamalan, who is bringing a limited-run thriller, “Wayward Pines,” to Fox this summer.
DVRs and On Demand have changed the way Americans consume TV, ushering in the conventions of delayed (or time-shifted) viewing and binge-watching.
“We have a generation growing up that can’t distinguish between what’s live and what’s time-shifted,” said Matt Strauss, the senior vice president and general manager of video services at Comcast.
Chugging shows has also become prevalent. “A recent study at the University of Southern California showed that 60 percent of Americans were binge-watching,” said the television academy’s Hood.
“The younger viewers might watch a whole series, 22 episodes, in a weekend,” Hood said. “The more middle-aged viewer considers binge viewing to be two episodes, maybe three.”
“Viewers no longer want repeats, so a definite challenge is having to schedule as much original programming as possible, 52 weeks a year,” said Andy Kubitz, ABC’s executive vice president of program planning and scheduling, via e-mail.
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