TVP wants to conquer the hearts of teenagers with a sitcom. Who will be watching?! [OPINIA]

Mateusz Matyszkowicz, quoted by the portal, boldly admitted that this was “the first attempt in years to create a series for teenagers on TVP”. He also noted that televisions in Poland gave up creating content for young people because they stopped watching television, but as he said: “The more we accepted this fact, the less there was. At some point it had to be cut.”

TVP wants to regain teenage viewers. It has no right to go (that way).

The remedy for the lack of a young audience is to be a new sitcom entitled “Only not Friday”, which is to try to attract a similar group of recipients as the once popular “Rodzinka.pl”. The president of Telewizja Polska justified the return to this type of format by saying that “new online tools” and the dedicated Alfa TVP channel allow for the creation of a “family sitcom” that can “aggregate the offer for teenagers”. So far, the plot and cast of the series are unknown. It is only known that 26 episodes will be shown in the fall.

However, in my opinion, this is a move overdue by at least ten years. Why? The word “sitcom” reminds me of sitcoms that were very popular around 2010. I belong to the generation of children who sat in front of the TV after school and watched series such as “Hannah Montana” with Miley Cyrus, “Wizards of Waverly Place” with Selena Gomez, “Sonny Sunny” with Demi Lovato, “There’s No Place Like a Hotel” with the Sprouse brothers or “iCarly” with Miranda Cosgrove. And today, there are not too many series of this type in the offer of streaming services, and even more so TV stations. The era of teen sitcoms is over.

When the above-mentioned actors grew up, no new series of this type achieved success or promoted a new star. Not counting Zendaya, who had a role in the Disney Channel sitcom “Shake It Up”, and later starred in big productions such as “Euphoria” and “Dune”. Young people on streaming services are no longer looking for such content, and TV stations have somewhat returned to their roots, as they broadcast more animated productions than live-action series.

Therefore, I believe that this type of production will not gain the popularity it could have gained ten or 15 years ago. And at that time, many young people hoped that one of the native broadcasters would create a Polish version of the sitcom following the example of those from across the ocean. Unfortunately, no one took such an initiative and the teenagers sailed away, as noted by Mateusz Matyszkowicz. Anyway, the same is true of radio stations, which have ceased to be attractive to young people and are trying more to satisfy the tastes of middle-aged listeners.

Traditional media can still fight for young viewers. You just have to do it with your head

Examples from abroad show that TV or radio broadcasters can still compete with streaming services. The problem is that the offer of Telewizja Polska for people of this age has never been progressive, and what’s more interesting, programs like “Rower Błażeja” fell off the air because they were too “controversial”. I’m afraid that the latest series can also be very imitative, and its plot may significantly differ from the realities of young people today. TVP promotes traditional and Catholic values, with which few young people assimilate today.

As an example that a TV broadcaster can still try to attract a young audience, I will cite the example of BBC Three. The channel ceased traditional broadcasting in 2016 and since then has been available only as part of the VOD service on the BBC iPlayer platform. However, the British public service broadcaster noted that this form of broadcasting may not reach the poorer inhabitants of smaller towns and in 2022 BBC Three was restored as a terrestrial television channel. For example, tonight there is a live broadcast of the Glastonbury Festival music festival – one of the largest music events in the world, and later the reality show “Ru Paul’s Drag Race UK”, in which viewers follow the struggle of participants for the title of the most interesting and talented drag queen.

I realize that at the moment there is no chance for TVP to create such an offer for young people. But I really believe that in the future someone will notice that broadcasting Open’er or creating your own reality show as opposed to mindless content from TikTok would make more sense than reaching for something that has already passed. I’d rather turn on the TV then.