Back in its heyday, broadcast television was criticized for appealing only to the lowest common denominator. In their drive to attract the highest share of the national television audience, the networks tried to air programming that would appeal to the largest number of viewers, often resulting in bland and repetitive television shows.

Today it seems technology has exploded the old television model. Broadcast networks are facing ever-shrinking audience numbers as they struggle to find any common denominator likely to bring in mass audiences.

The family television set was once compared to an electronic fireplace where the family would gather together.

Grace Bickert of Prospect remembers channel battles with her father in the 1950s.

“I don’t remember not having a TV as a kid,” she said. “But I do remember the Philco black-and-white television on a swivel table in the living room.

“When I was told to change the channel, I remember my dad saying ‘Slow down, don’t turn it too fast, click one number at a time,’” said Bickert. “I was the kind of child who would do things quickly, and I thought it was fun to try to turn the know one revolution with a single turn of my wrist. Dad didn’t like that.”

There was a Philco in the childhood home of Janet Sentner of Penn Township as well.

“Besides watching Saturday morning cartoons with a bowl of cereal in front of me, I remember coming home from school and watching the ‘Howdy Doody Show’ and ‘The Three Stooges’ with my brothers on a tiny black-and-white Philco TV,” said Sentner of her childhood in Lawrenceville.

Things changed as Bickert got older, she remembered.

“By the time I reached elementary school, there was a small television in the kitchen,” she said. “Since I walked home for lunch each day, ‘The Price is Right’ was my go-to TV show along with a bowl of Lipton Noodle soup,” she said. “And the best part about watching that show was hearing the name Bob Barker since that was also my dad’s name. I loved to say ‘Bob Barker is my dad!’”

And with changing technology, additional TV sets became additional devices for watching televisions: laptops, computer tablets, phones and smartwatches. The electronic fireplace had scattered sparks all around the family home.

Daniel J. Dieter, an assistant professor of strategic communications at Slippery Rock University who teaches classes in mass media and society, civil discourse and a capstone public relations marketing communications class for seniors, sees a great shift in how people watch television going from broadcast to cable to streaming on the internet.

“Absolutely, the trajectory of consumption has been affected,” he said. “Television used to be a communal experience. Everyone was watching the same thing, such as the moon landing,” Dieter said.

“With streaming and personalization out there, everything is on demand," said Dieter.

Dieter said studies have shown that compared with Baby Boomers (those born between 1955 and 1964) and Gen X (those born between 1965 and 1980), Gen Z (those born between 1997 and 2012) is spending 31% less screen time on traditional television. They are spending more time watching You Tube and TikTok what he called “user-generated content.”

Dieter said it is an interesting paradox that Gen Z is demanding better quality TV images and technology while watching more user- created content, which are essentially amateur videos.

Dieter added this is causing a “silo” effect, with people only seeing what they want. “It’s changing how we consume content. Being on-demand empowers the individual,” he said.

Dieter said he is amazed by the choices available to draw on. “They are getting what they want on demand wherever and however they wanted,” he said.

Christopher Bondi, assistant professor of communications at Butler County Community College, said he remembers growing up with the “Big Three” networks (ABC, CBS and NBC) and when MTV and ESPN came along and “cable TV exploded.”

Today, Bondi said he streams his TV content and doesn’t have cable TV which he called indicative of the shift on how people watch content.

He said this, along with the domination of social media platforms has led to a lot of segmented audiences.

“For example, for the first time in years I watched the Grammys,” said Bondi because he wanted to see Billy Joel perform. But he said he could have just as easily watched Joel’s performance the next day on YouTube.

“If my parents are watching something I don’t want to watch, I will go onto my laptop,” said Bondi. “Back in the day, we only had one or two TVs. Today I have a TV in every room of my house.”

This increasing choice of viewing options, according to SRU’s Dieter, has also affected the audience’s world view.

He noted during the supremacy of broadcast TV networks, programming was a “preferred reality” presented to viewers. Watching shows such as “Leave It to Beaver” or “The Waltons” presented viewers with an implied shared moral sense of the universe and accepted norms of behavior.

Now the fractured TV audience could also be responsible for fueling political divisions.

Dieter said, “There’s a selection bias. People seek things that will align with their beliefs. They are in echo chambers. Polarization will follow naturally.”

Today, Dieter said, “There is micro-fracturing within homes. Everybody can do their own thing with their own device in any room they want.”

“This fragmented viewing is why television shows have become so episodic,” BC3’s Bondi said. “Shows move at a 30-minute clip and that story is continuous over a number of episodes.”

It’s an effort to attract and hold audiences, a task which gets harder every year.

Bondi said people’s attention spans have shrunk. “We seem to be living in a period of time where mentally we are on to the next thing,” he said, and that’s reflected in the content we watch.

He said he thinks this contributes to people watching content on their phones.

Dieter noted the students in his classes are very media savvy consumers.

“They understand things really quickly. For instance the Lady Gaga video for “Top Gun: Maverick” is cut quickly, with 2-second scenes. They could quickly point out the plot of the movie. A quick shot of a hand slamming a medal onto a coffin that was 1-second long and they could understand that this person had died (in the movie),” Dieter said.

But the splintering of the audience hasn’t been complete, according to Dieter. He said Super Bowl ratings count for 93 of the top 100 ratings on broadcast television, “which were incredible but it might be the only event capable” of generating these ratings today.

But even that monolithic audience might be threatened in the very near future.

The Jan. 13, NFL playoff game between the Miami Dolphins and Kansas City Chiefs shown only Peacock, a streaming service run by NBC, generated 23 million viewers, lower than the 30 million viewer average for the other NFL playoff games on traditional broadcast networks, Dieter said, but according to Forbes magazine both NBC and the NFL were pleased with the results.

It’s not hard to see why, Dieter added. “It’s a new model that is interesting. As a business model it is more reliable. Instead of generating revenue from ad sales, it is generating revenue from subscription fees.”

While NFL contracts with broadcast networks run through 2033, after that Dieter can see a day when football games and events such as the World Series will only be shown on pay streaming services, although he doubts the Super Bowl will ever be behind a paywall, because it still generates huge advertising dollars for whichever network is broadcasting it.

“Right now, the NFL is king,” agreed Bondi. He added pop singer Taylor Swift showing up to football games just cements this dominance. “Views of Taylor Swift at Chiefs’ games, it’s tough to go against the entertainment factor,” he said.

He said in the future the NFL will probably use this dominance to move more and more games to streaming television platforms that will charge subscription fees as opposed to airing games on free over-the-air broadcasts.

“You will have to subscribe to a streaming service. My inclination is to hope that doesn’t happen. In their rush, they will be alienating their audience by making them have to pay extra or access it through some service they don’t have,” Bondi said. But he added, things are definitely moving in that direction.

Whether this means that traditional broadcast television will ever be a thing of the past remains uncertain. Dieter said in the wake of economic forces and technological advances, it is an open question whether broadcast television can be sustained.

Dieter pointed out that July 2023 was a “watershed” shed moment, cable subscriptions dropped below 50% of U.S. homes, and 38.9% of TV use was through streaming services rather than cable.

Dieter said the so-called cable cutters were moving to streaming or even going back to antenna use.

Dieter said there is new technology becoming available that allows broadcast television to duplicate every feature available through the internet.”

“The ATSC 3.0 is a new tuner that can turn everything interactive. It offers 4K high-definition picture, Dolby audio and interactive apps,” said Dieter. It’s available in 50 big markets in the United States, but consumer adoption has “not been great.”

Former FCC Chairman Newton Minnow who in 1961 called television “a vast wasteland” wouldn’t find much has changed in the intervening 63 years, said Dieter.

“I think he would not be surprised,” said Dieter. “The technology has changed and the content is still not great.” In fact, Dieter noted, the FCC has a lot less power to influence television because streaming and cable television are not within its jurisdiction.

“It does not have the same effect on what people are watching,” Dieter said. “Today content is whatever the market dictates.”

Bondi thinks the emerging technological change will be artificial intelligence (AI). “It’s going to be very interesting to see how that changes the game in the next decade.”

Asked about Minnow’s "wasteland“ remark, Biondi said, “I would not call it a wasteland. With streaming and online content and the Internet, it’s a little bit more like the Wild West or a Gold Rush. You know there’s something valuable out there. The trick is in finding it.”