The ghosts of old shows are the scariest things on TV

It’s 2am on a Wednesday and the whole world is asleep — the only sound is the hum of the refrigerator and the laugh track of “The King of Queens” wafting out of your TV.

Dated sitcoms are a nostalgic portal to the past and a fixture of TV’s present, with reruns typifying the expected content on today’s cable channels.

But those channels are struggling: most have lost the majority of their audiences and nearly given up on creating new content, per The Associated Press.

Between 2014 and 2023, Nielsen data shows that:

• MTV’s average prime-time audience dove from 807k to 256k.
• USA Network’s audience shrank 69%.
• AMC’s viewership plunged 73%.

Even the Disney Channel, which has cranked out pop and movie stars for decades, went from 1.96m viewers in 2014 to 132k in 2023 — a 93% drop.

The streaming takeover

At its peak, 100m+ households subscribed to cable. Today, ~70m households subscribe.

The dip makes sense, given that the amount of new, original content on cable has dwindled; the number of original scripted shows has fallen 39% since 2015.

And streaming platforms have become the norm for many viewers. A January survey found that 73% tune in to a streaming service before cable when watching TV — up from 42% a year prior.

Amid all the change…

… some networks have learned to evolve and embrace the streaming wave.

FX’s “The Bear” just won an Emmy and streams on Hulu; Bravo’s shows are a top draw for Peacock’s 31m+ subscribers; and the Hallmark Channel is actually growing, with an average prime-time audience of 929k in 2023, up 12% from 10 years ago.

So, perhaps we are at the perfect intersection in media where you can pay for cable as well as six different streaming services to watch all your shows. Lucky us.