Quick Hit: Gunsmoke's Strength is Old News

I've been talking about it for more than two years!

In Matt Belloni’s What I’m Hearing… Puck email tonight his top “Data Of The Week” citation is from an LA Times article that discusses the success of Gunsmoke today. The article is here but I’m not a subscriber so I have not read it but I don’t really need to.

As many of my former colleagues know this is old news that I have been discussing for years because it demonstrates how Broadcast television’s perennial series are incredibly popular today since, at their core, they tell great stories with great characters that are imminently rewatchable, drama and comedy. Their self-contained nature is comforting, satisfying and easy to view.

A lot of TV viewers look down on Broadcast TV and only watch streaming originals but the business truth is the library value of streaming series - how much money they can make by other platforms purchasing them and using them in the “off-net” marketplace - is limited. This is because 1) most streaming series have a low number of episodes 2) they are serialized 3) they have been binged by the subscribers of that platform and 4) have little rewatch value since their ultimate resolution is known.

Work I have done in the past showed that Gunsmoke was the #6 most-watched show in all of TV in 2024, linear+streaming combined, and no streaming originals were in the top 50. This is because shows like Gunsmoke are popular on streaming and on the still very vital linear environment of cable and digi-nets. They run non-exclusively on multiple outlets because they have many episodes and people want to watch them. Streaming originals only run on streaming.

Long-running Broadcast series will continue to be very lucrative for both streaming and linear platforms for the long haul because of that rewatchability. I would easily wager that people would rather tune into Gunsmoke in 2030 then sit through Dahmer, Inventing Anna or even Ted Lasso again to pick a few random popular shows from the recent streaming past. The DNA of streaming makes people say “Oh, I’ve seen that already”, but the DNA of linear evergreen series makes them say “Oh, I love that show, I’m so glad I found it again.”

You may argue that only “old” people watch shows like Gunsmoke but there will always be old people and just because someone grows up watching SVOD doesn’t mean they won’t watch shows from the past. They discover them all the time and will continue to do so because they are so easy to find now and because they are well-written, well-acted, and satisfying.