For almost 60 years Americans have been conditioned to go to bed by The Tonight Show: Steve, then Jack, then Johnny, then Jay. For much of the show's run, the audience would stay awake as late as 1 am. But wait, there's more! Late Night (Letterman) was created, and working America, particularly younger America, was up on weeknights till 2 am. This was a bit much, even for TV networks, whose concern for the welfare of their audiences is like the farmers' concern for their livestock. Thus, to forestall audiences from dropping off before Late Night, NBC shortened The Tonight Show by a half hour.
NBC's failed experiment to move Jay Leno to prime time had sound reasoning: broadcast network primetime is being killed by cable programming. Lower ratings mean lower add revenues. The Tonight Show has much lower overhead than the drama series which traditionally filled the prime-time 10 slot. So, the thinking went, moving The Tonight Show to 10 would help compensate for the network's primetime revenue hit. And it did. Trouble is, audiences who ended their TV watching by Jay at 12:30 am, continued to end their TV watching by Jay, resulting is a huge drop in audience levels for local network affiliates and their 11 O'Clock news broadcasts.
Lost in the network's calculus is the fact that ending the working weeknight at 11 pm is simply better for the audience than ending it at 12:30 or 1:30 am. Alas, better and more profitable have never been synonymous in the mind of network television, nor, for that matter, in the mind of business in general.
One of the greatest errors in the history of American governance was the decision to make broadcasting commercial. Commercial television has corrupted everything it has touched, including the family, politics, education, sports, the arts. It has replaced excellence with mediocrity and merit with money. Television and its cognate, the Internet, have deliberately addled, dumbed down, isolated and enervated the American public, in order to deliver brains to advertisers. Monolithic commercial media has atomized society, leading to the decline of fraternal and civic organizations through which individuals could empower and protect themselves from media's depredations.
And now, with the triumph of American capitalism and its morally bankrupt but seductive cult of the individual, the rest of the world is falling in line. Instant gratification, self-indulgence, narcissism, selfishness, disengagement. Perhaps the future of the world would be brighter if dominated by the Chinese.
