Television, then streaming
Broadcast schedules give way to on-demand, and attention fragments.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 57 years
- Known to
- ± 5 years
- Era
- Contemporary, Holocene
Television becomes near-universal in industrialised countries through the 1950s and 60s, creating shared national moments — moon landings, funerals, finals — watched simultaneously by most of a population. Cable, then the internet, then Netflix's shift to streaming from 2007 dissolve the schedule. What is lost is simultaneity: the common reference points that mass broadcasting produced are largely gone.