When I launched Mojo Supreme and WatchMojo.com, I joked that I did so, so that one day I could have enough pull to bring back the Montreal Expos. I was half-kidding. The point I was making was that you had to start a business, be successful to have pull. That was January 2006, less than two years after the Expos had packed up and moved to Washington to become the Nationals. As each summer season rolled by, I could not help but notice that there were lesser and lesser baseball diamonds in the parks. The impact over time was simple: kids growing up would play baseball less frequently, making the success of baseball in Montreal even harder. Today, my big reason for starting a company has not changed, though I doubt I’d totally go against the grain and try to bring back baseball to Montreal, even if I could.
The point I am making is that over time, people’s consumer habits change. In Montreal, after the Expos left, any real hopes baseball had for a return died a quick death.
What on bloody earth am I talking about? Glad you asked.
The television writers’ strike might go down in history as a small event. But something tells me that even if the writers come back, less and less people will be watching TV.
I came across this on Valleyway, according to TV Decoder, among viewers aged 25 to 54, The Daily Show is down 35 percent and The Colbert Report is down 28 percent.
Admittedly, this isn’t news, since both The Daily Show and The Colbert Report run very topical stories. This is obvious. Reading the comments in the Decoder, one comes away with the conclusion that once the strike is over with, then viewers will return in droves. While that micro-level phenomenon is quite plausible, the macro-level trend is that less and less people are watching TV to begin with… and all the strike does is make them realize is that they’re not really missing all that much.
Am I reading too much into this? Probably. Must be baseball-withdrawal… but the point is, TV’s entered a downfall that I’m not quite sure it will be able to recover from… like all of those missing baseball diamonds.
Subscribe: