Odd, isn’t it? The pundits keep harping about how the viewership is down, ratings are falling off and more reality shows are about to hit the fan......well is there any wonder why???  The crap that gets put on the tube by the so call experts is just that....crap. Most of my friends are turning off the t.v. because of the lack of good programing. All of them HATE the reality mess.  And why aren’t the great gods of programing making at least a feeble attempt to get the audience over 50? There are alot more Boomers out there then pin-headed 20 and 30 year olds whose life revolves around “Brit”, “Hilty” and someone who has died. And by the way maybe the writers should pick up a book once in a while to get a fresh idea instead of re-making old films.

@ Veronica -
Miss your “Murder, She Wrote” and “Golden Girls” reruns, huh?  Smart shows like The Office, House and Pushing Daisies too complex for your AARP mind?

The audience - particularly the 18-49 crowd - has shifted to online video. The shift was already happened, the strike just accelerated it a bit. From comScore: # of video streams was greater than # of searches for Dec 2007 - I wrote about it here:
http://mefeedia.com/blog

While a small percentage of the younger audiences are watching online video, it’s not enough to call it a major audience shift by any means.  Television still, by far, receives the highest level of participation than any other form of media.  The younger viewers have always been drawn to non-traditional forms of media, and have been consistently difficult to measure using the antiquated diary system used to measure television viewership.  My bet is that there are a lot more watching than are being measured, as will remain the case until Nielson catches up.

As far as programming goes.  The programmers buy, and the station airs, what people watch.  Want to know that fastest way to get a bad program off the air?  Simple: don’t watch it.  A program that no one is watching gets no ratings, and will find itself short-lived.  If people are watching it, then the ratings will reflect such and the program will stay on the air.

I’m annoyed by people who complain and complain about the poor quality of television.  It’s because people like to watch crap that there’s crap on the air.