When TV united America: Friday marks the day nearly half of USA watched the same show
Forty-two years ago today, nearly half the U.S. population decided to take the same action at the same time, sitting down to watch the final episode of “M*A*S*H.’’
Is that even conceivable now?
A show about a fictitious mobile army surgical hospital during the Korean War galvanized Americans, bringing 106 million out of a nation of 234 million – more than 45% – in front of their TV sets.
Now at times it feels like only a major war or massive crisis would create unity, the way the 9/11 terrorist attacks did, as tribalism has taken over politics in a polarized country.
“M*A*S*H was a great example of a cultural touchtone everybody could agree on,’’ said Steve Caplan, an adjunct instructor of advertising and media at the University of Southern California. “I find it very hard to imagine in this environment that there could be a coming together culturally by any piece of content.’’
That’s not only because of the differences separating Americans, but even more so because of how much the media landscape has splintered since the show’s finale on Feb. 28, 1983.
M*A*S*H began its 11-year run in September 1972 on CBS, one of the nation’s three commercial networks at the time, along with ABC and NBC. Less than 10% of people had cable TV. The Fox network would not come along until 1986.
Neither binge-watching nor on-demand TV was available when the M*A*S*H finale – called “Goodbye, Farewell and Amen’’ – drew what remains the largest-ever audience for an American TV show, though it has been surpassed several times by Super Bowls. New episodes appeared once a week during the television season, starting in the early fall and running until May.
Video games, now a popular entertainment option, were fairly primitive. The World Wide Web, which launched the extensive use of the Internet, was not invented until 1989.
Lots of choices, but there's a down side
“Regardless of whether M*A*S*H was a better or worse show than (the HBO series) ‘Succession,’ and I think it was probably a worse show, what M*A*S*H had going for it is simply that everybody saw it,’’ said Gabriel Rossman, associate professor of sociology at UCLA. “You could ask your friends, ‘What did you think of M*A*S*H last night?’ in a way you can’t necessarily do with Succession.’’’
Rossman said consumers benefit from the plethora of entertainment choices available now, but common cultural references are often lost in the mix. That might have contributed some to the current polarization, though Rossman points more to the media’s evolution.
Under the three-network system, he said, there was an incentive for the broadcasters to take a centrist position to appeal to the widest possible audience. However, in 1987 the Federal Communications Commission under President Ronald Reagan repealed the Fairness Doctrine, which required stations to allow for contrasting points of view on disputed topics of public importance.
That made way for highly partisan talk radio from the likes of conservative firebrand Rush Limbaugh, whose show went national the next year. Fox News followed in 1996 as a conservative-focused TV outlet, stoking antipathy toward liberal points of view.
In the last decade or so, the growth of social media as a forum to vent discord and the political rise of a divisive figure like Donald Trump have fostered an extreme tribalism that has led to not only disagreeing with the opposing side but demonizing it.
“You can have that kind of strong partisanship and resentment even if the ideological differences are small,’’ Rossman said.
William Egginton, humanities professor at Johns Hopkins University and author of the book “The Splintering of the American Mind,’’ said those attitudes erode the common good. He blames much of them on the efforts by a cornucopia of media outlets to seek income by drawing niche audiences, often relying on algorithms.
Media's 'ravenous' pursuit of an audience
“The media’s economic driver is getting eyeballs, and the way you get eyeballs is to get your audience as riled up as possible by your story and by your take,’’ Egginton said. “And you’re going to get them to be as rapt in their attention as possible. It’s a vicious cycle. It repeats itself, ravenous, over and over again, and all it does is get worse all the time.’’
That hardly lends itself to the so-called water cooler effect – somewhat lessened by remote work – of co-workers chatting and bonding over common concerns and interests. Popular TV shows have long been among those safe topics of discussion, but with media fragmentation, they don’t draw the audience numbers they used to.
Egginton said coverage of some major news developments – such as the Notre-Dame Cathedral fire in 2019 – still provide a mass connection. More reliable than that are big sporting events, which are typically watched live instead of on demand.
Egginton said he could feel that commonality, on a global scale, during the 2022 World Cup soccer final, won by Argentina over France.
“You still had the sense you were living through a historic event in communion with other people around the world,’’ he said. “I do think there’s something about sporting events that allow that.’’
Super Bowl reigns supreme in viewership
In the U.S. the best example is the Super Bowl, which for long has been the country’s most-watched television event every year. The most recent NFL title game on Feb. 9 drew a record 127.7 million viewers, nearly 39% of the country's population.
Even there, the clashing points of view were not limited to fans of both teams. Jonathan Metzl, a professor of sociology and psychiatry at Vanderbilt University, noted the starkly contrasting reactions to the halftime show featuring rap star Kendrick Lamar, many of them colorfully expressed on social media.
Metzl saw a similar pattern while researching his latest book, “What We’ve Become: Living and Dying in a Country of Arms.’’ He said half the country reacted to mass shootings by calling for tighter gun laws, and the other half by saying more firearms are needed.
“It’s not just that we’re not having unifying experiences. It’s that when we see the same thing, we disagree about what it means,’’ Metzl said. “What was nice about M*A*S*H is we could have debated what it meant, but we all experienced it and there’s something very unifying about that. And now, for a variety of reasons, even when we all see the same thing, we are divided about it.’’