TV Is Dead. Now What?

[Commentary] In mid-century America, with the entire country tuned in to the same three networks -- and with social and economic pressures keeping ABC, CBS and NBC all in a zone of centrist consensus -- broadcast television put the mass in mass media. Naturally, this made it a tremendous platform for political campaigns to reach an enormous audience with one message. Today, though, the mass audience is dwindling, TV audiences are shrinking by the day, and the result is an upheaval for those in the business of winning elections using ads no less subtle than Johnson’s. But as the utility of TV wanes, savvy campaigns are adapting in a way that’s transforming their relationship to voters -- they’re treating supporters less like targets and more like participants. The fragmenting that disrupted broadcast television is now happening to cable TV. Committed voters, the ones who didn’t turn off TV news and read the political Internet avidly, used to be the ones a campaign could take for granted. They would always show up and always vote the party line. Now, though, they are becoming a critical media asset, a way to reach the ones -- and there are more every year -- who ignore the news in favor of the latest YouTube viral hit and never ever watch the ads now that they don’t have to.

[Shirky is professor of new media at New York University]