The Death of Television in the USA
https://www.tvguide.com/new-tonight/
Even when it's not summer, most of the programs listed here are "Reality," "Sports," or "Talk & Interview." Why is there so much less scripted comedy and drama? I think "Reality" is much less expensive.
The highest rated TV "series" of the 2023-2024 season^1^ are (American) football. After that comes Tracker, NCIS, Young Sheldon, and FBI. All of those scripted shows are on CBS. All the other networks have had good programming in the last 20 years, but now it's almost all gone.
So what's the next step after "Reality"? I think it's animation created with "AI." This could even be almost photo-realistic animation. I expect the sound track will be AI-generated, as well as the video. I also expect the programs to be written by "AI." The only human involvement will be writing a prompt like, "Create a sitcom set in Los Angeles involving high school students." Eventually, of course, even that human labor will be eliminated, and the computer software will look at the ratings and write its own prompts.
But what about "Reality" TV? Well, that can also be done by software. Perhaps they'll called it "Artificial Reality." Computer generated people sitting around talking for hours about nothing I could possibly care about.
Game shows? That can be artificial too, with artificial contestants, and games invented by software.
News? Well as I mentioned in another recent post of mine, news is already being written by software. The software is even inventing events to report about and inventing reporters to report on it^2^.
I've been watching more TV from other English-speaking countries.
#television #television-programs #television-series #tv-series #reality-tv #ai #tv
^1^ https://variety.com/2024/tv/news/most-popular-tv-shows-highest-rated-2023-2024-season-tracker-survivor-1236015844/
^2^ https://www.reuters.com/technology/top-news-app-us-has-chinese-origins-writes-fiction-with-help-ai-2024-06-05/
