watching the world go by

[johncomic]

Yesterday, during one of our "feeling our age" chats, my boss mentioned those times that she will be talking to a group of students and drop a reference to Gilligan's Island or Hogan's Heroes and draw an utter blank.

I realized that those old shows are still being shown somewhere... and a big part of our life was about watching syndicated reruns over and over for years and years... but also realized that this isn't what people do anymore, so much. Hanging around "seeing what's on TV" isn't how people kill time anymore. It isn't even how they watch shows anymore. People record them or download them and binge-watch, which ten or so years ago wasn't even really an option. You never get exposed to an old series anymore unless you deliberately go out of your way to track it down -- and why would you?

And so a lot of old cultural touchstones are falling by the wayside. Namedropping Sgt Schultz now is becoming like namedropping "Begin the Beguine" -- it used to mean something to everybody, but now not so much.

TV as I knew it, as a cultural concept and construct, is dying. But the weird part is that I never saw it coming.

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[ginsu.livejournal.com]

Hey nineteen
That's 'Retha Franklin
She don't remember the Queen of Soul
It's hard times befallen
The sole survivors