When We All Went Off to See the Wizard

I remember being asked as a kid in school what my favorite holidays were. I answered without hesitation – my favorite holidays were Christmas, and the day The Wizard of Oz was on TV.

In my early childhood, we had three primary television networks – ABC, NBC, and CBS. There was a local PBS station that no one watched after 10:00 a.m., and we’d heard stories about something called cable, but none of us knew anyone who had it. All of America essentially tuned in to one of three viewing schedules every evening. And once every year on CBS, that schedule included The Wizard of Oz.

I considered it a holiday because the afternoon before it came on, that’s all we’d talk about at school. We’d share favorite scenes, debate favorite characters, and brag or complain about parents that either would or wouldn’t let us stay up to finish the movie. Then the next day, most of us a little sleepy, we’d talk again about how exciting it was when the flying monkeys appeared and lie about how none of us feared the witch anymore. I always felt a little sad that I’d have to wait another year before I could see it again (little did I know that the VCR would change all of that in a matter of a few years).

There were only a few kids in each class who didn’t watch Dorothy skip down the yellow brick road, for one reason or another. Back then The Wizard of Oz drew nearly a 50% audience share – equivalent to modern day Super Bowl figures. Other shows like the miniseries Roots, a made-for-TV movie called The Day After, and the final episode of M.A.S.H. drew audiences that far exceed today’s Super Bowl figures by viewership percentage.

We were all watching the same programs then, and the same commercials. We all got the same messages, repeated until they were cemented in our brains. For better or worse, knowing the lyrics to the Happy Days theme song gave us all some common ground.

Forty years ago, the 83 million households with a television had three programs to choose from during primetime. That meant there was a one in three chance that your friend, coworker, neighbor or passerby on the street watched the same program as you at the same time.

Today, there are approximately 120 television networks that we could be watching at any given time – for those of us watching any of them at all. Most of us are watching Netflix, which typically has around 6,000 program titles available in the U.S.. Or Prime Video with 24,000 titles, Hulu with 4,000 titles, Max with 2,500, Disney+ with 1,200 or Apple TV+ with over 100. There’s now a one in 37,920 chance that your friend, coworker, neighbor or passerby on the street watched the same program as you at the same time. You could adjust that for demographics, regional preference, or several other factors but it still would likely end up being less than a one in a thousand chance.

If you were born in the last twenty or thirty years, the idea of having only three primetime programs to choose from seems like an element of some dystopian society, which you’d watch a series about – on Netflix, of course.  Your life has been filled with an unprecedented number of choices creating an unbelievably diverse pop culture.

But more than 60% of us were alive then, and had to choose between Cheers, Simon and Simon, and Glitter on a Thursday night (sorry Aaron Spelling, none of us chose Glitter). Now we get ecstatic when we find someone else who watched Obliterated. As silly as it may seem, that’s a pretty significant change in the feeling of connectedness to those around you.

Many of those that lost that sense of connection are anxious to rediscover it. They look for others who appreciate and yearn for a time of shared messages, straightforward choices, and less nonsense. For them, it was a time when America felt great. And together, they want to feel that way again.

Exploring the causes of how we became such a divided, divisive culture is something I’m researching for a current project. And if you haven’t seen Obliterated on Netflix, you’re missing out.