ATLANTA — Oh sure, there’s plenty of evidence to support the soothsayers who are predicting the slow, inevitable death of live television. And there’s plenty…
ATLANTA — Oh sure, there’s plenty of evidence to support the soothsayers who are predicting the slow, inevitable death of live television.
And there’s plenty of proof to bolster theories about the NFL’s slipping popularity.
But when it comes to clicking away from Super Bowl Sunday — forget about it.
Whether streaming it digitally, firing up the cable box or heading to a friend’s house for chips, dip and commercials, it’s a good bet that cord cutters, antenna owners and everyone in between can be found right where they always are on this day — gathered in front of the TV set in massive numbers.
Exactly as they were 40 years ago.
Exactly as they were 20 years ago.
Almost certainly as they’ll be 10 years from now.
Fact is, despite today’s rapidly fragmenting modern-day viewing audience, most people want to watch their sports live. The Super Bowl is the biggest event of the year. As such, it is, by almost any measure, the last bastion of nationwide communal TV-watching we partake in anymore.
Of the 10 highest-rated television programs in U. S. history, nine were Super Bowls and one was the finale of “M. A. S. H.”
“It’s an outlier because, unlike pretty much everything else, it’s not an event we think of as being disrupted by streaming,” said Vince Gennaro, who studies America’s viewing habits as a dean at the NYU Preston Robert Tisch Institute for Global Sport.
Or disrupted by anything else.
And so, just as the increased choice brought about by cable couldn’t do anything to deter Super Bowl viewing, neither, it seems, will streaming, cord cutting or the Roku-ization of the American public — not even among the younger audience.
