Thread by @noahchestnut

After 81 years (!) The NYT is finally cutting the cord on publishing TV Listings nytimes.com/2020/08/28/ins…

👇 a few thoughts about why TV Listings lasted for so many decades, where the NYT (and others) are today, and what could be worth investing in going forward

to be clear:

it's Sunday and I'm waiting for water to boil so please note this is all stream of conscious and tbh not that urgent or important (esp not important) but I'm feeling nostalgic for the days when I'd stare at grids and tables in the paper

TIL: In 1938, the NYT ran TV listings as part of its recurring summary of radio listings!

For decades to come, the NYT would get broadcast schedules (lots of PR folks started off with this job) and go from producing lists to creating tables with succinct summaries of what's on

Since the NYT (and many other papers who produced/syndicated TV Listings) was as much an aggregator as a publisher... many people relied (in part) on their newspaper to tell them what to watch.

The paper structured + distributed data.

tbh - sounds more like Google > NYT

Now... well... the algorithm killed the TV listings star (woof, sorry!)

But kinda?

Streaming/on-demand + algorithmic suggestions + data aggregators (search, social) nullified the need for viewers to rely on their newspaper to tell them what's on tonight.

👆 all of the above is probably obvious (and tedious) to most people reading these tweets. I'll cut to it.

I find the NYT's pivot to "criticism" and "recommendations" as a last gasp effort to stay in a game they've already lost.

It was good business for the NYT (and other papers) to structure + package + distribute TV listing data.

- Cheap to produce
- Leveraged their distribution advantages
- Solved a core problem for subscribers

The NYT (and many others) have lost this part of their business.

How have publishers replaced their TV Listings?

- Episode recaps
- Critic's Reviews (solo or bundled into updated lists)

I personally love these (esp the AV Club & Vulture) but I also know they aren't exactly booming businesses (or even that cheap to sustain, sadly!)

If anything... the demise of NYT Watching (still a great newsletter, but the actual standalone investment didn't work out) helps provide some evidence that this is a hard business (at the moment)

I've got a 1/2 baked idea: publishers should try structuring data (again)!

Huh? WTF "publishers should try structuring data again?"

Well... I look at the growth of @presubscribe, Onlyfans/Cameo, Twtich, etc... and think about how an entire generation(s) is discovering + consuming media in entirely new ways.

How can a newsroom help navigate this?

I can squint and see an outcome where the successor of the TV Listing could be a...

- Leaderboard (with editorial oversight) for the thousands of creators all over the internets
- Schedule charting a creator's prior and upcoming work
- Map showing connections between creators

(clearly the water is already boiling and I'm feeling guilty... gonna end this)

I'm a huge fan of TV criticism, but I see the future business more in the hands of journalists like @loudmouthjulia & @Lucas_Shaw reporting out how the entertainment industry is constantly changing

also something something metaverse (does that get me some bot attention?)