The Rise and Fall of Television

With the advancement of technology over the past few years the television industry has been competing with different technologies in order to keep the viewer’s attention towards the television. Viewers start to draw their attention away from television and to the new changes in technology, which creates a problem for television because the television ratings start to fall as the new technology ratings start to rise. One problem with the rise in technology vs. television as stated in the article by Michael Curtin, was the growing competition between television and video entertainment online. This created a problem because with the new release of a popular video game the ratings for males who watch television dropped and the ratings for online use rose because of the amount of males who were online playing the new video game. This became a problem for the television industry because they now had to figure out a way to draw back the focus of males and raise their ratings. 

In the article Michael Curtin uses the writers strike, which took place November 5, 2007, as a way to show the television industry realizing they could use electronic media to their benefit. The television industry came across this idea when the writers strike ended February 2008. When the writers strike ended, the television industry had a difficult time picking back up where they had left off before the strike because many of the viewers had turned their attention away from the television during this time and focused their attention elsewhere. The television industry had a difficult time getting their viewer’s attention back and realized they could use the internet to their advantage in showing that television was still a dominant leader. 

Since the strike in 2007-2008 the television industry has taken a more serious matter in maintaining their status to make sure television remains a leader. According to Michael Curtin, “…they needed to recalibrate daily practices, audience-measurement techniques and revenue sharing formulas, but at a deeper structure level they needed to rethink the spatial logic of electronic media” (pg. 12). With the rise of technology, especially these days, television has been able to remain a leading industry and manage to keep the attention of viewers towards television.