Comment by teawrecks

This looks like statistics being wielded poorly to arrive at the opposite conclusion from reality.

Consider if the whole of media were an iceberg: It seems to me that in 1977, almost the entire iceburg was poking up out of the water. Today on the other hand, while there is a much larger visible chunk sticking out of the water, it's just a tiny insignificant prick compared to what's going on underneath. The number you actually want is the size of the rest of the berg in 1977 vs today.

Because it seems to me that as popular as the things I watch are, if I went and asked random people on the street about them, 99% of them would have no idea what I'm talking about. But if I were to do the same thing 50 years ago, more people would be familiar with the same smaller set of shows and movies and books.

To me this is most evident based on the viewership of tv show finales. To this day, the most watched tv finale of all time is MASH at over 100 million viewers. Modern shows, even GoT don't even come close. I believe this is because there is so much content out there being produced that our attention is much more spread out. The "top 20" means less and less as the proportion of people who actually consume that stuff goes lower and lower.