TV Networks' Audiences Slow to Return After Writers' Strike
The media industry publication Advertising Age reports that viewers are not returning in hoped-for numbers to the TV shows they watched before the writers' strike interrupted the television season, even though new episodes are airing.
The Advertising Age article suggests that the convergence between broadcast and cable TV audience levels may be even greater than in recent years. This bodes well for audiences, as it further undermines the power of the big networks and portends a possible increase of consumer choice as competition makes the networks more resonsive to their audiences' preferences.
This won't necessarily bring on a Golden Age of Television, as long as the most popular cable and broadcast networks are owned by a small cartel of media conglomerates, as they are today. Nonetheless, anything that further breaks up the networks' oligopoly is good for the public at large. Something good may thus come from the writers' and producers' mutual greed.
