{"id":371,"date":"2015-05-17T16:31:00","date_gmt":"2015-05-17T20:31:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/2015\/05\/17\/sterling-cooper-will-go-out-big-but-not-bigger-than-tool-time\/"},"modified":"2015-05-17T16:31:00","modified_gmt":"2015-05-17T20:31:00","slug":"sterling-cooper-will-go-out-big-but-not-bigger-than-tool-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/2015\/05\/17\/sterling-cooper-will-go-out-big-but-not-bigger-than-tool-time\/","title":{"rendered":"Sterling Cooper will go out big \u2013 but not bigger than Tool Time"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"clear: both;text-align: center\"><a href=\"http:\/\/mentalfloss.com\/article\/24673\/10-most-watched-series-finales-ever\" style=\"margin-left: 1em;margin-right: 1em\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" height=\"300\" src=\"http:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/-hq2oVoDKGEE\/VVj24b1uxqI\/AAAAAAAABpQ\/oezZ4U4K9xA\/s400\/tooltime.jpg\" width=\"400\" \/><\/a><\/div>\n<p>AMC&#8217;s breakthrough drama <i>Mad Men<\/i> ends tonight, eight years after its debut that put scripted basic cable television on the map. Despite the show&#8217;s cultural ubiquity(<a href=\"http:\/\/www.vulture.com\/2015\/05\/how-we-forced-mad-men-down-the-worlds-throat.html\">some would argue oversaturation<\/a>) the final episode likely won&#8217;t come even close to breaking records for most-watched finales. This has much to do with the ways we now watch television compared to decades ago; in fact, when considering the finales that made the greatest cultural impact \u2013 <i>The Sorpanos<\/i>, <i>Breaking Bad<\/i>, and even <i>The Colbert Report<\/i> \u2013 the most-watched finales in history seem downright silly.<\/p>\n<p>Take a quick look at <a href=\"http:\/\/mentalfloss.com\/article\/24673\/10-most-watched-series-finales-ever\">mental_floss&#8217;s list of the ten most highly rated television finales<\/a>. Somehow, <i>Home Improvement<\/i> makes the list, with other 35 million people watching Tim Allen&#8217;s last turn on as Tim Taylor. That has far less to do with the quality of <i>Home Improvement<\/i> than the network-dominated media environment that led it to massive popularity.<\/p>\n<p>We don&#8217;t mean to rag on the quality of some of these shows. The finales of <i>M*A*S*H<\/i> and <i>Cheers<\/i> are certainly all-time classics, but it&#8217;s startling to consider any show that would draw an audience of over 50 million viewers. We&#8217;re sure <i>Mad Men<\/i> will bring out a big following, but with current media consumption patterns, we expect most fans to watch it on Netflix or Amazon months later.\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>AMC&#8217;s breakthrough drama Mad Men ends tonight, eight years after its debut that put scripted basic cable television on the map. Despite the show&#8217;s cultural ubiquity(some would argue oversaturation) the final episode likely won&#8217;t come even close to breaking records for most-watched finales. This has much to do with the ways we now watch television [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[86,212,355],"class_list":["post-371","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-television","tag-controversial","tag-links-of-interest","tag-timely-things"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=371"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}