With the O.J. Simpson thing settling down, some have been asking the question on whether there has been anything learned from the debacle.
One writer, when pondering what may have been learned from all of this, said, "maybe not a whole lot." I would have to disagree with him there.
We have to remember that Rupert Murdoch has built his empire based upon pushing the envelope as far as he could to grab eyeballs, no matter what medium he's been in. This was obviously a check on how far he could go.
But more than that, I think the public has only so much it wants to look at in reference to the shock factor stuff. Eventually it gets tired of it, as I think it is now, and rejects the overall concept. The O.J. situation simply brought out what had been simmering for awhile.
Another example for News Corp. (NWS-A), would be their new network "MyNetworkTV." It's based upon the popular format used in Hispanic TV, that offer TeleNovelas to their audience. The concept has performed horribly and will probably have to be changed into something totally different than what was originally intended.
The point is that these shows were also based upon racy content that was expected to be embrace by a much larger audience.
I do think there is something to be learned from all of this by the networks, and that is this type of fare is only tolerated so much before people get tired of it. I think we may have reached that place and the public will pretty much reject overall that type of show being overly promoted across the networks.
I remember years ago when someone commented that as TV got less and less viewers, the networks would attempt to show this type of show more and more to gain viewers. The problem is that this type of viewer has all of this they want to watch. What about the rest of the potential viewing public that wants something different? The networks have a problem seeing the value of this audience.
Creating more shows that try to take things into even more scandel and outrageousness, can only decrease viewers, not gain them. How many of these can people watch without abandoning the concept? We may be at the point of finding out.
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