A lot has changed since 2007. George Bush was President. The housing crash had not yet occurred. Apple released their first iPhone.
And The Big Bang Theory premiered on CBS.
Cable controlled the market of television content and the three major networks were the landing spot for most couch potatoes with a remote. The Big Bang Theory was the last major sitcom hit to take hold in the American viewing habits before streaming started to fragment the marketplace.
It all started in 2010, with Glenn Beck. Leaving Fox, Beck started the first solely streaming network called The Blaze and won the Tribeca Disruptive Innovation award.
Around the same time, Netflix dumped its DVD rental model and also adopted streaming as its sole source of providing content, expanding globally.
In 2011, Amazon Prime began providing streaming content.
Today there are over 200 streaming services, from YouTube to Sling to Philo to Roku, some sharing content, some with exclusive material.
Viewership of content has also changed from the television to now include the phone, tablet and computer. However, these technologies also include other entertainment options, like games, social media, dating apps, etc.
Television shows and movies are no longer competing with just eyeballs looking at the TV screen, but against every other distraction available on whatever device the consumer is using to watch it.
It’s this fragmentation why The Big Bang Theory will be the last great sitcom. Too few people are enjoying the same collective shared experience that network TV used to provide. Now, tribes of Netflix users or Amazon users or Apple TV users have shared experiences, but those on the outside rarely feel like they are missing out on something special, as their own streaming choices are providing their own exclusive content.
Another factor is the preference for story binging.
In 2007, through the shows end in 2019, there was no way to binge The Big Bang Theory. Everyone had to wait and experience each new episode at the same time. There was a connection that came with that communal experience that is now missing.
With shows being made available as a season in its entirety, consumers are able to indulge at their own leisure and few will actually binge the same show at the same time. TV has become individual experiences that sometimes overlap with the experiences of others.
It’s all these factors – changes to viewing habits, content streaming, binging, and the fragmentation of content providers, that makes it nearly impossible for a single show to gain nation-wide traction like The Big Bang Theory.
It existed at the transition period of technology and the internet and had attracted enough die hard viewers that, when the landscape changed, the viewers stayed glued to CBS once a week to watch the funny shenanigans of four geeks and their girlfriends.
I don’t foresee such a long running television series ever capturing that reach again.
Do you?