LogFAQs > #906675925

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Not really. Because while I agree there are people who didn't see Star Wars even at the height of its popularity, I would still argue that Star Wars had more accumulated eyes on it than pretty much every movie released today that isn't a Marvel film.

The era of "must-see" movies is pretty much dead, and in turn, it's extremely difficult to say "a majority of people have probably seen this film". Whereas 20-30 years ago, it was much easier to reference Star Wars or Die Hard or LotR or whatever and have a very strong likelihood that the person you were talking to had probably seen it.

I would strongly argue that Marvel has become the new Star Wars, although Star Wars is plodding along. Plus you still have widely quoted action movies. Die Hard -- which, iirc, adjusted for inflation had a box office that was *still* less than Taken -- has its counterparts in widely-quoted films like Taken.

Plus the problem with your argument is that it's retrospective and we won't really know the long-lasting impact of some of these things right away. I *do* know that I've run into plenty of people who fucking quote Taken all the time in much the same way that people parodied Die Hard fans.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

I agree. But it does mean that even the most popular media is being consumed to a much lesser degree than previously (which is why TV execs keep panicking because ratings keep dropping), and online even some of the more popular channels tend to be lucky if they draw more than a million views on a video (and that's without discounting multiple views per person).

...again, the ratings issue doesn't necessarily denote viewership because the tv execs are having issues with *live* broadcasts cutting into ad spends whereas viewership has shifted online and, of course, to piracy.

Are we concerned about advertisers or viewers?

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Children HAVE always had limited variety in media consumption compared to adults, but the factor you're overlooking is that children today also have vastly expanded variety in media consumption compared to children 30 years ago.

That and a buck won't buy you a cup of coffee... well, except maybe a senior coffee at McDonald's.

The added options don't really amount to much when parents aren't bothering with them.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

I've pointed this out in the past, but this is one of the major reasons why the entire concept of "Saturday Morning Cartoons" died out - because kids have very little impetus to get up early on a Saturday to watch cartoons when they have dozens of channels offering them content 24-7 365 (and often their own televisions to consume it on, whereas kids 40 years ago were more likely to have to watch on a "family" TV). Once you factor in Internet videos and video games into the mix, the average child today has more content available to them in a month than I had in more than a year as a kid.

Saturday morning cartoons started to die out in 1992 when NBC stopped the practice (or technically earlier), with CBS ending at around the same time. Cartoon Network, the first true cartoon channel, came out later that same year. Nickelodeon, another major competitor, didn't start its original content until 1991. The alternatives were *just* starting when the trend was dying down (although sure, Nickelodeon *did* have some cartoon offerings before that).

Honestly, the fact that weekdays were picking up was probably doing more to kill Saturday mornings than anything else... as well as new FCC guidelines introduced in 1991

https://deadline.com/2016/06/kids-tv-shows-saturday-mornings-fcc-loophole-advertising-1201774658/
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