Doc Searls Weblog

Colbert’s cancellation looks political, but it’s not. The show was a ratings winner, but a money loser. And the ratings for all of late night, like all of live TV, have been in decline for decades, along with the question, “What’s on?”

We live in the Age of Optionality now. Watch or listen to whatever you want, whenever you want, on whatever you want.

Except for sports, news, and Saturday Night Live, live programming is disappearing from radio and TV. Meanwhile, radio and TV themselves are being sidelined by apps on phones, flat screens, smart speakers, and CarPlay/Android Auto.

Fact: The only thing that makes your TV a TV is the cable/antenna jack in the back. Otherwise, it’s a monitor with a computer optimized for clickbait and spying on you. The clickbait is the (often spying-based) “for you” shit, plus what the industry calls FAST (Free Ad-Supported Streaming Television) channels: old westerns, local TV from elsewhere, looping news from services you never heard of, hustlers selling junk, foreign language programs, a fireplace that doesn’t go out, plus other crap.

Broadcasting has devolved from Macy’s to Dollar General.

But live programming is still with us. It’s just not on TV or radio, just like food trucks aren’t in buildings. At this stage what we have are pop-up shows with very high harbinger ratings and uncertain persistence. Here are a few I just looked up:::

Newsletter Writers

• Casey Newton (Platformer)
• Matt Taibbi (Racket News)
• Heather Cox Richardson (Letters from an American)
• Anne Helen Petersen (Culture Study)
• Emily Atkin (Heated)
• Puck News team (e.g. Dylan Byers, Teddy Schleifer)

Influencers (Mostly on TikTok and Instagram)

• Tinx
• Chris Olsen
• Bretman Rock
• Tabitha Brown

Celebrities (on YouTube, Substack, TikTok, X Spaces, etc.)

• Andrew Callaghan
• Marc Maron
• Hank Green
• Elon Musk & David Sacks

Writers

• Tim Urban (Wait But Why)
• Bari Weiss (The Free Press)
• Douglas Rushkoff (Team Human)

Since I’m not on TikTok and barely on Instagram, I know none of the influencers I just listed with a bit of AI help. If I have time later, I’ll add links.

Meanwhile, the writing isn’t just on the wall for live old-school broadcasting. The wall is falling down, and new ones are being built all over the place by creative voices and faces themselves. Welcome to Now.