Here's to the Death of Broadcast

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Illustration by John Ueland; Stamos: James Stenson / NBC; Clooney: Pascal Le Segretain / Getty; Tierney: Paul Drinkwater / NBC; James Stenson: NBC

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Broadcast's new enemy is digital media, including venues like Hulu that were created by the networks themselves, which cut into their ad dollars. Last year Heroes creator Tim Kring gave a legendary rant about how viewers using TiVo or DVDs or downloading — legally or not — cut into the show's audience, leaving "the saps and dips____ who can't figure out how to watch it in a superior way" to watch live TV (which still counts most for ad dollars). In one sense he was right, if undiplomatic. But only half right, because technology also makes it possible for Heroes to exist at all. (See the 50 best websites of 2008.)

Before the Internet boom, elaborate mysteries like Heroes and Lost were rare and short-lived (think Twin Peaks). The reason: they ask a lot of you. You have to be attentive to tiny details. If you miss an episode, you're off the train. Now when fans can rewind and rewatch and discuss endlessly in blogs and chat rooms, these shows can be more challenging, sprawling and complex. And Internet buzz is crucial to their success. The Web taketh from Heroes, no question, but it also giveth considerably.

Purists may say that in an era of niche hits, we are losing our cultural lingua franca, our national watercooler. In the New York Times, SUNY Buffalo American-studies professor Elayne Rapping wrote that the fracturing of TV has created a "craving for the culture that used to unify us as a nation." But really the watercooler has just moved. Online, fans can bond with thousands of like-minded viewers rather than just a few co-workers. We don't all sit en masse for Must-See TV, but cultural moments — from late-night TV to the news to American Idol — are disseminated widely through YouTube and cable.

Our truly mass experiences — Olympics, elections, the Super Bowl — still play out on TV, even if "TV" now includes computers and phones. As for the loss of being able to make small talk with the mailman over who shot J.R. — I'll trade it for Mad Men and the ability to skip ads with TiVo. We'll find something else to talk about. (See the best and worst Super Bowl commercials of 2009.)

See, the irony of the nostalgia for TV's "golden age" is that it romanticizes the very things people used to condemn. Mass media were once homogenizing; now we miss how they unified us. Culture critics once said TV appealed to the lowest common denominator; now cable's ambitious niche shows cater to élitists. Some even romanticize commercials — commercials! — as making TV for the masses possible.

No doubt, TV is changing, and fast. Free TV will become more cut-rate; quality will cost, as movies and books do. There will be more rarefied TV and more craptastic dreck. There will be less middle-of-the-road TV for everybody but more venues for telling stories that don't have to please 30 million people. The old networks (and the people who make shows for them) will struggle to make a buck, but new outlets will rise and thrive. ER will pass, but hospital dramas have birth stories as well as death stories. Broadcast TV may be flatlining. But its offspring are doing just fine.

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