On May 6, 2004, 52.5 million people watched a group of young friends, or “Friends,” wrap up their professional and romantic adventures.
“Friends” was a huge hit for NBC, and it lives on as new generations of fans hit its target demographic, but at the time, the finale was seen as a harbinger of the cable-induced drop in the audience for network television. The “M*A*S*H” finale in 1983 scored CBS 106 million viewers, “Cheers” on NBC in 1993 attracted a whopping 80.4 million and “Seinfeld’s” swan song on NBC in 1998 was watched by more than 76 million. None of these shows cost ungodly sums to produce, and all spawned massive profits for their networks. So did the last episode of the first season of “Survivor”: 51.7 million viewers.
That was then. On a Sunday night in May, “Succession,” an HBO show with huge buzz and massive media interest, scored 2.9 million viewers for its season finale, a huge number for 2023 and yet only about 5% of the people who watched “Survivor” in 2000. And most Netflix shows garner a fraction of that viewership.
