The point he made here is very accurate I think:
“It’s viewers who are scared of trying new talent, not commissioners. It’s viewers who nine times out of ten will choose a mediocre true crime or celebrity doc over a brilliantly made doc about almost anything else. It’s viewers who — overwhelmed with choice — are terrified to take risks on unfamiliar-looking new propositions.”
I am someone who does make an effort to try new things and even I constantly feel the pull to choose something mediocre in a “safe” genre I like (mystery, for example), rather than take a risk on a documentary or drama that is of much higher quality. Instead of challenging myself to learn more about the world or face some new/complex themes that I can reflect on, I’ll choose some derivative slop and get halfway through before bailing.
Many of us have too much going on in our lives and feel so overwhelmed that screen time (TV/film/social media/gaming) has become this drug that we repeatedly go to so we don’t have to think about and deal with our problems. It’s like feeling guilty about your poor diet, but instead of actually taking a stand and planning your meals out, buying the ingredients and cooking for yourself, you just indefinitely delay it and continue the cycle of eating bad and feeling bad about eating bad. Screen-based entertainment has become a fast food for too many people; they are addicted to it, and the cognitive dissonance in the face of that fact is so strong that they’d rather blame someone else or ignore the problem than take some agency over their own lives.
It’s still kind of an issue of their own making though. Their metric for acceptable viewing numbers is ever changing. And they tend to pick and choose what counts as a view as well.
So if you don’t watch it in their time frame and/or on whatever platform they extrapolate view counts from then you basically didn’t watch the show to them.
if one show does really well, now all those other shows are expected to reach around the same number without taking into consideration all the circumstances.
I am someone who does make an effort to try new things and even I constantly feel the pull to choose something mediocre in a “safe” genre I like (mystery, for example), rather than take a risk on a documentary or drama that is of much higher quality. Instead of challenging myself to learn more about the world or face some new/complex themes that I can reflect on, I’ll choose some derivative slop and get halfway through before bailing.
I mean if this was uniformly true, then Netflix, Apple-TV and HBO etc would also be similarly struggling. It’s not as if Channel 4 puts out challenging content themselves anymore to test that suggestion themselves.
I mean if this was uniformly true, then Netflix, Apple-TV and HBO etc would also be similarly struggling.
Struggling in what way? Netflix, Apple TV and HBO are all losing by a mile to YouTube. Channel 4 also has a much bigger share of the audience than Apple TV or HBO (which isn’t even listed). It’s doing better than most.
But I guess I interpreted this argument as about more than just viewer share in the UK. All of these services use algorithmic recommendation systems to feed more of the same to their audiences, which pushes people towards the same shows and types of shows, which result in trends that influence production. All of this waters down the quality and variety of content and results in an echo chamber that doesn’t reflect the true diversity and creativity of humanity. The criticisms in the article weren’t based on the financial success of Beast Games, but rather its lack of artistic merit and value to society.
Struggling in what way? Netflix, Apple TV and HBO are all losing by a mile to YouTube. Channel 4 also has a much bigger share of the audience than Apple TV or HBO (which isn’t even listed). It’s doing better than most.
Well I’m speaking beyond the UK here. There’s clearly still an appetite for content that isn’t just brief brainrot. I think the wider impact of Youtube is absolutely eating into the audience for Channel 4 and further, terrestrial television because for the most part the content from them in the last decade or so was never that much more high-art than a lot of Youtube in the first place.
One thing not brought up in this article is that YouTube and TikTok has content available NOW. And I don’t just mean that traditional shows air once a week and I have to wait for it. I mean some shows are available so randomly it’s hard to keep up.
The show is advertised as coming out on Tuesday, but when on Tuesday? Midnight? Midnight my time? Primetime? I had free time on Tuesday, but it wasn’t available. Now I wake up on Wednesday and I see news articles all about it. Feels like I’ve missed it. Next thing I know the season is over and it’s been cancelled.
Alf Lawrie, who spent almost six years looking after shows including The Great British Bake Off, Gogglebox and The Jury: Murder Trial,
Lmao.
Lol sure boomer, blame “users” instead of inproving what and how people watch your crap content. Maybe just maybe people are tired of your shit programmes and adverts uo the arse
Right … it’s the people who consume your content’s fault. Not the network. Not the medium of which content is provided. Not the content that’s provided…
“Why won’t the people eat the cat shit we provide!? They’re the problem!”
if we’re talking about it purely from a uk perspective, than internationalisation and americafication is to blame once us based streamers started pouring in.
I’m going to agree with him. People have given up on intellectualism. And the algorithms are half to blame, but people also need to share responsibility. Lemmy is about as high-brow as I can find for social media, but I spend too much time on it myself also. So I am aware of how much a hypocrite I am
Well sure, but there are still highly watched serials from the streamers that are as ‘intellectual’ as any TV
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You read the article!
I think his overarching point is true, but it’s not as if Channel 4 has attempted to seriously elevate content in the last 5-10 years. I also don’t think its responsible for Channel 4 (or terrestrial TV’s relative decline either).
It didn’t seem like he was suggesting that broadcasters needed to elevate their content. Only that he was incredulous that people prefer YouTube which he believes is less intellectually engaging.
Well a lot is, but certainly not all of Youtube.
Agreed.
But it’s complex. As an example, I have some (IMO) very bright family that tend to default to YouTube over TV simply because they’re exhausted from work, even though they’re huge TV and video game buffs.
Another sample size of one anecdote: this appears to be a trend in other media. For instance, in fanfic land, hardly anyone comments anymore, and short fluff/smut pieces or “prompt” anthologies get way more attention than the rarer long adventures (which used to be the other way around).
I’ve observed this with news as well (hence my old employer went under), video games, and even some academia.
As an example, I have some (IMO) very bright family that tend to default to YouTube over TV simply because they’re exhausted from work
That connects up with his argument. People are unwilling to take risks because they’re tired, stressed and time poor. They will instead, more often than not, take the easy/safe option and that has an impact on the industry.
Yeah.
It just struck me as a really extreme example, as these are folks who have a home theatre with Plex + a gaming desktop setup.
The fact that like 2/3 of the comments in this thread didn’t read the article and therefore missed the point kind of proves the point.
If only the article was higher quality, then those commenters would have clicked it and read it!
I’m not sure how they would have determined it was higher quality without reading it, but that’s beside the point!
It’s paywalled. The Times is Newscorp respectability-washing.
Not really, because the author doesn’t have a point, just a nonsensical complaint aimed at the wrong people.
So please don’t bother reading this slop and just give knee-jerk reactions because it is what this article deserves.
See what I mean?
Yes, blaming people for the problem your industry created is a non-starter at best and a blame game at worst.
On a side note, I remember way back in the day when MTV still had music videos. I noticed a strange trend where they started changing camera angles constantly. I thought to myself WTF do they think people don’t have an attention span anymore.
They created this problem not the consumer. It was all about increased engagement at the cost of genuine thought, art, and consideration.
And again.
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I tend to think his complaints about the quality of the content are well founded, but (1) strip off the production values and TV/Movie people have been making plenty of lowest-common-denominator slop for decades, and (2) the popularity of YT/TT crap reveals more about how people always would have acted with the current options.
Cultural elites’ gatekeeping the production and wide distribution of video content is a double-edged sword, but I’m always suspicious of anything that implies some huge cohort of people like “TV audiences” are inherently worse than they used to be.
Digital processing was the ‘true villain’ of typewriter manufacturing.
The industry gets people addicted to fast slop content. This hurts non-fast slop content producers. So they blame the end user!?
Man these people need to get bent. Try blaming the people who created this in the first place.
