Network TV lost young viewers because its rural shows stayed locked to 1950s taste

Evidence

If we examine CBS, in particular, we see that top shows of the 1960s were “rural” shows like The Beverly Hillbillies (about a backwoods family living in Beverly Hills), Green Acres (urban socialites take up “farm living”), and Hee Haw (a country music variety show). Innocuous, comforting entertainment, to be sure, and still capable of bringing tens of millions to prime time, each and every night, but hardly in sync with countercultural viewers. As ratings began dropping, the whole enterprise began to sag. Commercial television was surviving the late 1960s on sheer inertia—the lasting power of attentional habits is never to be underestimated—and the fact that the backlash, such as it was, was mainly in the younger demographics, and had not reached the whole population. — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 576

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes Wu’s ongoing argument that attentional inertia lets an industry coast long after losing its core audience — same pattern as radio’s decline earlier in the book. — connects to: Reality TV revived the rural content motif that networks had abandoned in the 1970s — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 836

Broader Connections

• Reality TV revived the rural content motif that networks had abandoned in the 1970s #exemplifies (0.80) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 836