Remember TV?
Remember commercial breaks? Remember the remote control? I’m exaggerating, I know, but I’m going to respectfully ask you to close all tabs if your answers to those questions were more than two No’s. Television is alive and well, but how long for?
This strapping young thing called Netflix moved in a few blocks down, and it might be causing trouble for our old friend the television.
I’m looking at you right now Generation Z. You’re probably too financially challenged to afford a rich supply of good TV that doesn’t involve Lizard Lick Towing and Storage Hunters. If you’re not, Dara O’Briain’s head is dominating television screens near you. So where do you go to escape? Netflix.
Not to mention that it costs roughly the same as a Big Mac meal with a large Fanta per month, so taking all of these things into account Generation Z, if you’re still watching TV… you’re probably still posting #StopKony2012 on your Facebook timeline every week.
Now, I’m going to touch on a subject that might make you cringe uncontrollably, but it’s a problem for this generation, but much like asking for “tap water” at Nandos or public farting…we all do it.
Spawned from the hellish depths of ghetto-Instagram, a trend known only as ‘Netflix and Chill’ plagues our Twitter timelines and Whatsapp group chats in the form of memes. It describes the act of making love with perhaps an episode of American Horror Story Season 2 playing blissfully in the background.
Now this isn’t to say that teens haven’t been doing it in front of TV screens since shoulder-pad jackets and ozone-eating hairsprays; but it seems we have an epidemic on our hands.
Parents, if you are reading this on your way upstairs to query your innocent 17-23 year old children into explaining this trend, please reconsider. They are (probably) not guilty of committing such an act. Not to mention that this term is almost synonymous with the “dating” app that everyone pretends they don’t have. Tinder. But that’s a different story.
Enough about teen sex, let’s talk statistics. CEO of Netflix Reed Hastings believes he can pull the plug on the idea of traditional television within the next two decades. In the first quarter of 2023, Netflix yielded around 2 and a half million new subscriptions internationally, exceeding its own expectations and blowing its competitors out of the water… and probably boosting Durex sales. And, as of the beginning of 2024, became available in South Africa, Burundi, and many, many more. Netflix is eating television alive.
So, Generation Z, 20 years from now you could be looking at a livestream of a public burning of Freeview and Sky+ boxes through an app on your smartphones rather than watching it after an onslaught of GoCompare and John Lewis Christmas adverts on your televisions. As the dust descends on the smouldering wreckages of turtle-back televisions and Blackberry mobile phones – just remember it was me who predicted the future one night 20 years ago while 8 out of 10 Cats was on. Food for thought.
