TV is back on centre stage as viewers switch on, not off

Strong programming has won back viewers and made the medium more socially accepted.

Laura Carmichael as Lady Edith in a scene from season four of Downton Abbey, one of the shows drawing people back to television. Nick Briggs / AP Photo

Manjula Stokes has twice sworn off television, once throwing a set off her deck in a fit over an ex-husband’s sports obsession. Now she’s a devotee of programmes such as Downton Abbey, Mad Men, and Survivor.

The teacher from Santa Cruz, California, illustrates a subtle change in society’s attitude toward television. The medium is growing in stature, propelled by both art and technology. More worthy programmes are available at a time when viewers are becoming more comfortable setting up their own schedules to watch.

“I feel it’s more like reading a good book,” Ms Stokes said. “The acting is better, the direction is better. I think it’s more serious as an art form.”

A CBS survey of 700 people in the United States with internet and television connections last year found that 28 per cent said they were watching more television than they did a year ago. Seventeen per cent said they were watching less, with the remainder indicating their habits were unchanged.

That may not seem like much, but there is a long history of people saying they are watching, or plan to watch, less TV - even as Nielsen measurements proved the opposite was true.

In other words, liking television is becoming more socially acceptable.

Television also continues on firm footing financially, despite the rise of digital video outlets like Netflix and YouTube. The research firm eMarketer predicted that TV ad spending will hit US$78.6 billion in 2018, up from $66.4 billion last year.

Fears of so-called “cord-cutting,” where people drop their TV subscriptions and rely on online video services, was “surprisingly benign” in the second quarter, with just 305,000 households in the US quitting pay TV, according to financial advisory firm MoffettNathanson.

“You can go to a sophisticated party in New York City now and people will be talking about television programming, not the latest art film or the latest play,” said David Poltrack, CBS’ veteran chief researcher. “You can go to a bar in a lower socio-economic neighbourhood and they’ll be talking about television. They may be talking about different programmes, but they’ll be talking about television.”

Now, for every award-winning drama there’s a series about botched plastic surgeries, naked dating or Kardashians. More than one, truthfully. But the push among cable networks during the past decade to make original series has significantly increased the amount of quality programmes.

For years, polls uncovered a certain shameful attitude toward watching television.

When asked in 2000 how much time they spent watching TV the previous day, 84 per cent of respondents told the Pew Research Center it was less than four hours. That didn’t jibe with the Nielsen company’s finding that the average American that year watched four hours, 15 minutes of television a day.

A Gallup poll in 1990 found 49 per cent of people said they spent too much time watching television. Only 19 per cent said they watched too little. Nine years ago when CBS began its annual survey, more people said they were cutting back on TV time.

This year, Nielsen estimates the average American watches four hours, 50 minutes of TV a day.

“I think the quality is better,” said Yael Chanoff, a 25-year-old writer from San Francisco. She’s a fan of smart comedies such as NBC’s Parks & Recreation. Many older shows Ms Chanoff has seen, even hitssuch as Friends, strike her as cliché-ridden.

Cory Phare, a 33-year-old academic conference director from Denver, said he grew up watching a lot of television but drifted away. The ability to binge on well-written dramas such as Breaking Bad, The Americans and Dexter through Netflix drew him back in. He just finished going back to watch the entire run of The West Wing.

“Even when I’m on a lunch break, I pull it up on my smartphone,” he said.

That’s another key to television’s resurgence. Ms Stokes, Ms Chanoff and Mr Phare all consider themselves fans of modern-day TV, and none of them have cable or satellite subscriptions.

“My friends all watch it on computer,” Chanoff said. She finds a friend with cable to watch Parks & Recreation, the only show she cares to watch live.

The days of needing to choose between two good programmes airing at the same time are now gone. The downside for networks is that it’s harder for less-established shows to catch on because some nights more people are watching DVR playbacks than any individual show on a network. That’s a problem for another day. The first priority is getting people interested in what television has to offer.

“Really, television is now more than ever at the centre of culture,” Mr Poltrack said.

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