The Balkanization of media

Believe it or not, there was once a time when television brought people together.  Once TV began being broadcast into everyone’s home, it was one of the few universal realities in everybody’s lives.  There were only three networks (and ABC barely counted for a long time) so the entire nation was subject to the same experiences.  And when there was a special event – the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show, the moon landing, the final episode of MASH – the entire country shared a unifying experience.

The first crack in the façade was the debut of cable.  While many people had access only to the three broadcast networks (plus syndication, plus FOX eventually), other had access to basic cable channels that couldn’t be picked up no matter how much you adjusted the rabbit ears.  Braves games on TBS, MTV, and home shopping were mysteries to those who got their TV over the broadcast spectrum.

Cable was so different that to wasn’t allowed to compete for Emmies at first.  Many high quality TV shows had to compete for the prestigious Cable Ace award, like the late Gary Shandling’s The Larry Sanders Show.  By the late 1990’s enough people had cable that there was no point in the distinction, and cable shows were allowed to compete for Emmies (recently, almost no broadcast shows are even nominated in categories like Best Drama and Best TV Movie).

But there was another rift, between basic cable and premium cable. Premium cable like HBO played by different rules; they didn’t care about rating because sponsors didn’t buy air time.  They didn’t try to fill three hours of programming every evening because they reran everything repeatedly.  And they were able to spend more and do more daring stuff, like have a series starring the head of a mob family who was constantly whacking people.  So American had people with rabbit ears, people who watched basic cable, and people who paid for HBO.

But they were all united once DVDs came out.  I may not subscribe to Shotime, but I can rent Dexter from Netflix or Blockbuster (when those still existed).  Sure, I may have to wait a year to see Game of Thrones, but I had access.

But that is crumbling.  Streaming media is creating new schisms in American culture.  There are TV shows I want to watch that only stream on Hulu; Emmy winning shows are inaccessible to me because they stream on Amazon Prime.  My Netflix subscription is no longer enough to assure me access to all of media.

The VCR war between VHS and Betamax was won by VHS, to the great regret of those who still insist Beta was better.   But that was a battle of competing technologies.  Hulu and Amazon Prime can co-exist.  There is a financial barrier, like there was when premium cable separated haves who could watch Cinemax’s soft core porn and the have nots who couldn’t.  You can have access to all media, but you’ll have to subscribe to multiple platforms.

Of course some argue that it is actually cheaper to cancel your cable and merely subscribe to Hulu, Amazon, Netflix, and whatever sports cable channel you fancy; stream all broadcast and cable shows off their network websites, and if there is nothing on choose from the on-line content.  This may be correct, and you can call me old fashion but I don’t want to choose.  I want to turn on my TV and be entertained, not decide what streaming platform to subscribe to.

The trouble with all these platforms?  500 channels and nothing on.  Maybe fewer choices is a good thing.  I have enough to choose from on Netflix; why do I need Hulu? 

But I lose my connection to those people who chose Hulu.  TV is no longer unifying America.  Maybe that explains Donald Trump.   No, nothing does.