1. No One Is Watching
Tuesday night, during Trump’s State of the Union address, a friend of mine tweeted a reminder that almost no one under 40 was actually watching it on TV, and that the vast majority of people in that age cohort would, if anything, possibly see a meme of the event flash by on their Instagram feed, but that was about it.
The numbers proved him to be correct—early Nielsen ratings have live viewership at around 28 million people. Which sounds impressive, until you realize that in 1993, 67 million people tuned in to watch Bill Clinton’s State of the Union at a time when the US had 80 million fewer people.
The “why” isn’t too hard to fathom either: in the days of the monoculture, the State of the Union address was hard to ignore: it pre-empted everything that was on prime time TV that night, so there was no way you could avoid it. And so even if you chose not to watch it, you were still very aware of its existence: it was a part of the rhythm of life.
But fast-forward to 2026 and the Age of Feudal Media, and there’s nothing for it to pre-empt. At least not for most people under 35. That’s not a guess either, while this year’s numbers are not in yet, in 2024, as per Nielsen again, 74% of those watching the State of the Union live were over 55 and just 5% were under 35.
And yet the national media does not acknowledge this fact and natters on as if nothing had changed in the slightest.
Don’t mention the war, Manuel.
Why It Matters
One of the things I hammer home about Feudal Media on a regular basis is just how disconnected all of the various bubbles are from each other.
Meaning that when I say “many people don’t follow the news” I don’t mean “oh, they listen to Hasan Piker or Candace Owens instead of Anderson Cooper.”
I mean that it is not on their radar at all.
People, there is a reason that “Did Joe Biden drop out?” was the most searched term on Google the week of the election in 2024.
That this is traceable to the demise of the monoculture is not much in dispute.
As noted, back in 1993, your Wednesday evening likely consisted of turning on your TV set at 8pm and settling in for an evening on prime time TV. And so, on the 17th of February, you would not have been able to watch Home Improvement, Doogie Howser or Law & Order because Bill Clinton was delivering the State of the Union address and so you would have, at the very least, been somewhat annoyed by this while also being forced to recognize that a State of the Union address was happening.
I mean hell, you might have even watched the first 10 or 15 minutes before tuning out.
Whereas in 2026, in the absence of anything resembling a monoculture, you can remain blissfully unaware of the very existence of a State of the Union address unless a Trump-related meme happens to cross one of your social media feeds.
And only then if the meme-maker bothers to include its provenance.
To be clear, I am using politics as an example because it’s easy, but the lack of a monoculture impacts just about everything we’d like the great mass of Americans to know about: new movies, new songs, new product launches.
All of these things now happen in various feudal media bubbles and while something may occasionally appear to break out and pierce the national consciousness, the reality is that the impact is never as widespread as in monoculture days and likely only spread through the “chattering classes”, the sort of people who subscribe to both the New York Times and HBO and have very strong opinions about Pilates.
What You Need To Do About It
If you are in the mainstream media you need to process that most people, most younger people anyway, well, they’re just not that into you.
They don’t know who you are. That you have a show on cable news. Or a column in a highly respected national newspaper. They’ve never heard of the magazine you used to work for.
They know memes and the TikTokkers and YouTubers who are stars of their particular Feudal Media bubbles, but that’s about it.
And you need to stop imagining the world as if that’s not true.
If you are a studio executive or a brand marketer your challenges are equally as daunting: you’ve got to find your audience from amidst all these bubbles, turn their passion into evangelism, make their tribe your tribe.
It’s a whole new skill set but you’re going to have to learn it.
Soon.
And if you’re in politics? You’ve got the same exact set of challenges as to how to get your message out there to an electorate who don’t all subscribe to a single version of the truth and who are isolated in their own little bubbles too.
Like I said, it’s a whole new skill set.
2. Colbert, The FCC And The Great YouTube Workaround
So last week the late night TV host Stephen Colbert did something both remarkable and very much in keeping with the gestalt of Feudal Media.
The FCC’s Grand Poobah Brendan Carr signaled that if Colbert ran an interview with Democratic Texas Senate candidate James Talarico, it might not qualify for what’s known as the “bona fide news exemption” of the FCC’s Equal Access Rules.
Said exemption says that if a candidate appears in a "bona fide news interview" the station (or the late night talk show) doesn't have to offer equal time to the other candidates. The logic being that it would be quite onerous if every interview with a politician triggered an obligation to put every other candidate on the air for the same amount of time.
What Carr is implying however is that he sees interviews with Democrats as “partisan entertainment” rather than legit news.
Hence his invocation of the Equal Access Rule.
So what did Colbert do?
He put the seven-minute Talarico interview up on YouTube, where the long tentacles of the FCC no longer reach.
Why It Matters
Carr was using monoculture-era thinking: the audience on linear TV is vast and those internet views are nothing.
Which, of course, could not be farther from the truth.
Colbert averages around 2.5 million live linear viewers each night, most of them elderly. On YouTube however, he has around 10.6 million subscribers of all ages and nationalities, and his clips, as per Tubular Labs, average around 1 to 2 million views per clip.
The Talarico clip however, has garnered close to 9 million views already and over 70K comments, the most popular one, with almost 100K likes, simply states that “I'm watching this because my government tried to hide this from me.”
Talk about plans backfiring.
The craziest piece of this is that Carr chose to take on late night TV, a genre that is already dying due to factors largely unrelated to the death of the monoculture.
Americans just don’t stay up that late anymore, certainly not on a school night: Colbert does not come on until 11:35pm. Meaning that at a time when many Americans are worried about the amount of sleep they are getting, there’s an actual health-related reason to watch the clips on YouTube the next day.
What’s notable too is that Carr’s decision is par for the course for so many of the people running both the media and the government, few of whom seem aware of how little their world currently matters to the vast swaths of the population that are oblivious to cable news and New York Times op-ed columns.
There’s an argument that much of that chatter trickles down to the masses via X and the general media ecosystem, but that only goes so far. The fact remains that what was once highly relevant is now invisible to much of the voting populace.
What You Need To Do About It
If you are Brendan Carr, no more self owns. (Google that one if you don’t know what it means.)
You need to understand that while linear broadcasts and their ratings do indeed matter to your Audience Of One, they are increasingly irrelevant for the rest of the world and increasingly being replaced by shorter clips and memes on social media.
Two things you are unable to regulate under current law.
If you are in the greater media ecosystem, you need to make sure you don’t confuse “increasingly irrelevant” with “gone in a year or two.”
That is not the case.
As I have noted numerous times over the past decade, linear TV is like a slow-leaking tire and has many more miles left on it before it goes completely flat. Think AOL or even Yahoo and how they are still very much viable businesses long after being left for dead.
In other words, linear TV is not Blockbuster Video.
If you are a programming executive at a major network, think about launching your next “late night style” talk show on YouTube, where you can do a combo of live and clips.
It's a worthwhile and popular genre.
It’s just not worthwhile and popular enough to stay up until one in the morning for.
Alan Wolk is co-founder and lead analyst at the consulting firm TV[R]EV. He is the author of the best-selling industry primer, Over The Top: How The Internet Is (Slowly But Surely) Changing The Television Industry. Wolk frequently speaks about changes in the television industry, both at conferences and to anyone who’ll listen.
Week in Review is an opinion column. It does not necessarily represent the opinions of StreamTV Insider.