Is it really the end of mass media experiences

One of the changes that is happening as a esult of the new media is that commentators are saying that with some much content to choose the end of the mass viewing experience is upon us.
The days when millions would sit in front of the TV,watching shows and talking about them the following day is over.In fact this experience is simply a blip in the history of communication and the 21st century will see a return to the pre Tv and radio days of small groups or individual entertainment.
I am not so sure,this weekend saw the x factor and Scrictly come Dancing phenonoma which has heralded a return at least to the Saturday night staying in habit.
The Christmas Tv schedule is upon us and again the viewers even demand the shared experience.
Nicholas Barber in yesterday's Independent on Sunday reviews the schedule and the event that goes hand in hand with it,the publication of the double Radio Times

"It's a mind-boggling phenomenon. Now that the TV schedules are available in every newspaper, and on a computer screen near you at the click of a mouse, it's odd - in a very British way - that a listings magazine which has 14 days' coverage instead of the usual seven should be such a landmark. But then, there's something eccentric about Christmas television as a whole. "

He arguesthat this is indeed a hark back to former days

"The fact is, Christmas television makes no sense. In an age of Wi-Fi broadband connections, it's still tracing around the template which was drawn in the 1960s and 1970s, back when Morecambe and Wise's script-writer, Eddie Braben, remarked that the Great British Public would judge the success or otherwise of their Christmas holiday by the quality of Eric and Ern's frolics. In those benighted days before the internet, before satellite and cable and VCRs, there were just three channels to choose from, and even these had the test card on them for half the day. TV dramas had wobbly wooden sets and wobbly wooden acting. News programmes had the tone of a stern headmaster. The only way to see a Bond film, after it had left the cinema, was to wait - and wait - for it to be shown on television. In that environment, the Christmas TV schedule came as a feast after the rest of the year's famine. But it's almost irrelevant now that we're stuffed to the gills with multi-media goodies on a daily basis. Like our Christmas dinners, there's far too much of it, it's not good for us, but we can't resist over-indulging anyway.

"And that's seasonal television's main attraction. It's the Ghost of Christmas Past. In years gone by, we might have had an uncomplicated appreciation of a fortnight's TV which was like a bulging hamper, but now it's the sheer anachronistic wrongness of it all which is the point. Today's festive output, by sticking so perversely to the contours of the 1970s, is more in keeping with the British family Christmas than ever. After all, not many of us plough fields for a living so there's no particular need to take time off when it's dark outside, just as there's no need to sustain ourselves with a midwinter feast now we've got central heating and global warming. Christmas TV is just as illogical. For me, its delight is in the way it harks back to an earlier, simpler time."