Monday, February 24, 2014
Why House of Cards is Not Actually Popular-Meg Mickelsen
In modern society one may often find a buzz around certain television shows. What is the most written about show today? Girls. What is the most tweeted about show? Pretty Little Liars. What, today, is the most talked about show? House of Cards. Yet, strangely, NCIS is the most popular show. NCIS has a viewing audience as big those other three shows combined and then doubled and there is a very specific reason why. HBO and Netflix make there money from subscribers not viewers, which allows them to air more esoteric television programing, but ordinary old cable makes money off of advertising, which requires eyeballs. Thus, cable caters to mass audiences, which apparently like shows like NCIS, shows that are so boring the media entirely ignores them. Pop culture is really only a slice of popular culture. The shows I hear the most about are practically obscure when it comes to audience numbers, and when looking at numbers, cable is still king. The average American simply doesn't watch the sophisticated, complex television provided by Netflix and HBO. While I find this truth a bit depressing, it is also fascinating, because the media still seems to want to pretend that we do. find this article at http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/02/is-i-house-of-cards-i-really-ahit/284035/
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byron otis- what a bummer. This is actually interesting, though, and it makes me give thanks for netflix and non-cable programming. Endless nights of NCIS would drive me insane. And Meg, you want to be part of that niche crowd. Watch House of Cards.
ReplyDeleteI never thought about TV popularity this way. It's interesting that this topic has been brought up because Girls and House of Cards are two of the most talked about shows these days. Maybe soon they will be considered in the same standards as NCIS and other network TV shows.
ReplyDeleteugh this is so sad because literally everyone ever needs to watch Orange Is the New Black
ReplyDeleteI agree with Leslie OITNB is the best show ever. I think I'm more surprised at the numbers that actually watch the TV shows on cable though. (Meg- Byron is right. Just started House of Cards and it's really fantastic.)
ReplyDeleteI agree, it's very disappointing that more sophisticated shows seem to be unavailable on cable channels. It's interesting to find out about the statistics about different shows, and I think it really says a lot about the fans who watch them. Especially how Pretty Little Liars was the most tweeted about, since the type of people who you would expect to watch that would also stereotypically be the same type of people who would use twitter a lot.
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