"The networks found themselves having to compete for an increasingly Balkanized audience"
About this Quote
Broadcast television’s old superpower was mass simultaneity: three networks, one national conversation, ratings so fat they could bankroll news divisions like civic institutions. Roger Mudd’s line captures the moment that gravity started to fail. “Found themselves” is doing sly work here, framing the networks not as bold innovators but as incumbents pushed into a new ecology. The passive phrasing hints at reluctance, even disbelief, as if fragmentation arrived like weather rather than policy, technology, and market choice.
“Compete” is the blunt, unromantic verb of the era: journalism and entertainment become less like public service and more like retail, with attention as the scarce commodity. Mudd’s real needle, though, is “Balkanized” - a term freighted with the history of political breakup and ethnic conflict. He’s not just describing niche audiences; he’s warning about splintered publics. Fragmentation isn’t merely a ratings problem, it’s a legitimacy problem. When everyone watches different things, the shared baseline of facts, faces, and priorities erodes. The anchor loses the old authority to say, tonight, this matters.
Contextually, Mudd is speaking from inside the network era as it gives way to cable abundance and later to digital micro-targeting: CNN’s 24-hour churn, Fox’s identity-driven programming, the long tail of channels, then algorithms. The subtext is elegiac and faintly accusatory: the networks once helped knit a civic “we,” and now they’re forced to chase ever smaller “us” - not because it’s better journalism, but because it’s the only way to survive.
“Compete” is the blunt, unromantic verb of the era: journalism and entertainment become less like public service and more like retail, with attention as the scarce commodity. Mudd’s real needle, though, is “Balkanized” - a term freighted with the history of political breakup and ethnic conflict. He’s not just describing niche audiences; he’s warning about splintered publics. Fragmentation isn’t merely a ratings problem, it’s a legitimacy problem. When everyone watches different things, the shared baseline of facts, faces, and priorities erodes. The anchor loses the old authority to say, tonight, this matters.
Contextually, Mudd is speaking from inside the network era as it gives way to cable abundance and later to digital micro-targeting: CNN’s 24-hour churn, Fox’s identity-driven programming, the long tail of channels, then algorithms. The subtext is elegiac and faintly accusatory: the networks once helped knit a civic “we,” and now they’re forced to chase ever smaller “us” - not because it’s better journalism, but because it’s the only way to survive.
Quote Details
| Topic | Technology |
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