Streaming Entertainment Leaves Viewers Overwhelmed & Lonely

Broadcast media created a way of life: the mass culture that my parents were raised in. It defined a way of life for most Baby Boomers. It made many of them into middle-class collectors — of records, then CDs, of VHS tapes and DVDs. And this culture outlived them into my own childhood. It’s the culture that made legends out of Ray Charles and Johnny Cash and then made Oscar-bait movies about them as the Boomers got older. It was a mass culture in which the Oscars mattered in some way.

The Oscars made sense because people needed entertainment, so they went to the movies and had to select from what was available right then and there. Mass culture was something Americans experienced collectively, and they could render collective judgments about it. This broadcast culture made the Top 40 on radio matter. And even the Grammys and Emmys seemed as though they could tell you something about the mood of the time. Often enough, what they told you was that Americans were nostalgic for some earlier period of broadcast culture. Forrest Gump was 1990s nostalgia for all the decades that came before the Nineties.

About the Author

Michael Brendan Dougherty

Michael Brendan Dougherty is a senior writer at National Review Online.

Broadcast media created a way of life: the mass culture that my parents were raised in. It defined a way of life for most Baby Boomers. It made many of them into middle-class collectors — of records, then CDs, of VHS tapes and DVDs. And this culture outlived them into my own childhood. It’s the culture that made legends out of Ray Charles and Johnny Cash and then made Oscar-bait movies about them as the Boomers got older. It was a mass culture in which the Oscars mattered in some way.

The Oscars made sense because people needed entertainment, so they went to the movies and had to select from what was available right then and there. Mass culture was something Americans experienced collectively, and they could render collective judgments about it. This broadcast culture made the Top 40 on radio matter. And even the Grammys and Emmys seemed as though they could tell you something about the mood of the time. Often enough, what they told you was that Americans were nostalgic for some earlier period of broadcast culture. Forrest Gump was 1990s nostalgia for all the decades that came before the Nineties.