Streaming TV shows have replaced the novel as a high-brow culture storytelling device. (Eric Thomas for Kansas Reflector)
As another evening arrives, the dishes are done, the kids are asleep and the laptop is shut. My brain needs a story before bed.
I don’t want low-culture garbage, I say to myself. Give me something polished and complicated, something refined and epic. Something complex but also entertaining.
Most evenings, where do I turn?
Like most Americans, I reach past the pile of books on my nightstand, titles I have been vowing — to myself and others — that I will read. The carefully curated stack of books features my favorite authors telling stories that I know I will like.
Instead, I snag the television remote and fire up a streaming service. Again.
The tug of war between books and television for our attention is a decades-old story. We constantly announce the newest competition for the novel: radio, movies, broadcast television, cable television and, recently, streaming television.
Over and over , we declare that novels have been replaced or — as media theorist Marshall McLuhan called it — obsolesced.
Is this the cultural moment when novels will be unseated permanently by streaming programming as the dominant high-brow storytelling?
One contemporary author thinks that moment is now, and her observation spurred me to write this column. In a recent interview, Danzy Senna, who knows the book market as a novelist and knows the prestige TV market as a television writer, made the connection. She was speaking about her new book “ Colored Television ” on the NPR show “Fresh Air.”
“I was really aware of how much my students, but also the other faculty, spent all of our time talking about (streaming prestige TV shows) ‘Succession’ or ‘White Lotus’ or ‘Insecure.’ And these were the conversations that everyone was having,” Senna said. “And I would sort of try to bring it back to novels. And I was thinking, have we been replaced by (streaming TV)? Is this the novel of our time, this other form which I love and I think has such amazing writing in it?”
The more I explored this connection between the novel and streaming TV, the more similarities I saw — and the more I realized the underappreciated importance of this media swap that we are making. To cite McLuhan again, “the medium is the message,” after all. This choice matters: our preference for streaming TV over the novel, a visual medium over a tactile one, audible words over the printed word. Our society will be shaped by this preference.
First off, the novel has lost the battle for our wallet. Consider these stats from Forbes about American spending on streaming television:
- “Americans pay an average of $46 a month for streaming services.”
- “On average, Americans pay for 2.9 streaming subscriptions every month.”
- “The video streaming industry is valued at $544 billion.“
- “Video streaming revenue is expected to reach over $43 billion in 2024.”
In contrast , the combined revenues of all book sales in 2023 was less than $13 billion. At a time when streaming revenues are climbing, sales of adult trade books (a close analog to novels) dipped.
Even more important, the novel has lost the battle for minutes and hours that make up our attention — and it’s not even close. While a majority of adult Americans still read a book each year, only one in three read five books — and many of those books are history or other nonfiction, not novels. Only 21% of the respondents to the same poll said they read literary fiction during 2023.
Streaming television, meanwhile, has dominated our entertainment choices. Last month, Forbes reported the average American watches three hours of streaming TV each day. Nielsen wrote this top-line summary of its recent viewership survey: “Americans streamed 21 million years’ worth of content last year.” Admittedly, many of those years — yes, years — of content are sports and other programming that doesn’t strive for the big cultural ideas and sweeping narratives of novels. Yet, if even a fraction of that time is prestige TV, then novels struggle to compete.
One cruel irony is how streaming TV, the very programming that is usurping the novel, is often based on novels. Three of the top 10 original streaming programs for 2023 were not all that original: “Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan,” “ The Night Agent ” and “ The Lincoln Lawyer ” are based on novels — or characters from novels. Together, those three streaming shows accounted for 39 billion minutes of viewership in one year.
The allure of streaming television is undeniable. As Senna mentioned in her interview, the quality of the prestige TV — with its virtuoso acting, gleaming production and crisp writing — convinces us that we aren’t watching the idiot box anymore.
When we choose prestige TV, we like to think we aren’t passively bathing in garbage. We see ourselves as studying high-brow culture that challenges us. We are watching Tolkien. We are watching a miniseries based on “Mildred Pierce.” We are binge-watching British period pieces fraught with moral complexity. (Should we choose “The Crown” or “Bridgerton” or “Downton Abbey” or “Victoria” or “Elizabeth”?)
After clicking our way through seasons of these shows, we have earned a sort of merit badge: we can discuss the shows with friends and family, perhaps a bit of a swagger in our voice at having watched so many episodes. When we ask what others are watching, we might be really asking if we can share our latest streaming conquest.
Sound familiar? It’s the modern book-brag, the bygone tradition of touting what you just read, not what you watched.
The way we previously shared books? Today we share streaming passwords to let someone watch what you’re watching.
The way we drifted off to sleep with a book? Substitute a remote in our hand.
The way we referenced characters in novels? Now we compare people to Marty Bird, Tony Soprano or Midge Maisel.
In these small ways, as Senna said, the novel has been replaced on its preeminent perch in American culture. A change this drastic in the way that we access stories will likely ripple out unpredictable effects for years. Looking forward, we might worry about the length of attention spans, our capacity for the written word and the diversity of stories that we understand.
But to find out how it turns out, we will likely just need to keep watching.
Eric Thomas teaches visual journalism and photojournalism at the William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here .
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