A Good Illustration How Much TV Has Changed From My Youth
I saw this story in my feed reader today:
the Dallas Cowboys cheerleader reality show — consider it the Hard Knocks of cheerleading — is back for its 15th season. CMT announced today it’s bringing back Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders: Making the Team for one of the more interesting seasons in show history due to COVID-19.
I have never even heard of this show, much less seen it, and it is on its 15th season**. In my youth, any show on its 15th season would have been known to all, whether one watched it or not. Fewer than 10 prime-time series before the year 2000 even made it to 15 seasons, and even the ones that made only 9 or 10 seasons were part of the national zeitgeist and familiar to about everyone (e.g. Gunsmoke, MASH, Cheers, Hawaii 5-0, Perry Mason, Beverly Hillbillies, etc.). It's amazing to me how niche shows can find an audience and continue to make economic sense today in a totally different way than used to be possible.
Modern music, of course, has been through roughly the same changes. Of the eleven albums with the longest runs as Billboard #1, only one (Adele 21) was released in this millenium and only one other after 1990.
Quick: According to Wikipedia, what is the longest running show on cable at 44 seasons? That is 5 more seasons than ESPN SportsCenter. I could not have named it if you had given me 200 guesses.
** I am not dissing the show or its audience. If you love this show, there likely is another example out there of a show on its 15th season of which you have never heard.
