Gen Z are watching 1970s game shows together online. The future of TV looks more familiar than you might think. 

In a turn of events nobody saw coming, Twitch, a platform built ostensibly for gamers to live stream to an audience, has seen a sharp uplift in creators hosting interactive broadcasts of old TV shows, with engagement rates 4.5x higher than the creators’ regular content.

These broadcasts are often watch-alongs of soft edged game shows like The Price is Right, Family Feuds or Supermarket Sweep, provided by ‘TV 3.0’ startup Gaggl. Some episodes are more than twice the age of the average Twitch audience, who interact with the creator and each other by commenting in real-time or playing along. It’s a slightly unexpected but altogether wholesome development in the way young people engage online.

Zooming out on this trend, we see a clear desire from Gen Z and Gen Alpha for a more interactive relationship with content. Passive scrolling can be a Sisyphean task fraught with isolation and choice paralysis (as any Millennial will tell you). Community viewing at scheduled times is simply more fun – even if that community happens to be on the other side of a screen. 

We’ve seen hints of this already with the rise of reaction videos, but broadcasting in real-time, as the creators on Twitch do, adds the joy of a collective experience lacking from on-demand or algorithm-based content platforms. It’s a true return to ‘appointment to view’ TV.

Nostalgia is another important layer here. Old TV shows invite viewers to enjoy the abstract warmth of ‘a simpler time’, free from today’s divisions, crises and suffocating news cycles. It’d be no surprise to find that the young people watching these streams feel more comfortable looking to the past than the future. 

So where do brands fit into the world of interactive broadcasting?

• Firstly, all brands should understand that people crave connection through shared experiences, even online. This is not a new idea, but one that has perhaps been forgotten as one-way broadcasting became the norm for advertisers online. 
• There is a huge opportunity for brands to collaborate with creators on nostalgia-tinged watch-alongs for specific fan groups, whether it be classic football matches, vintage catwalk shows or cooking segments. This demonstrates that your brand is part of a fan community and understands the history of that culture. 
• Brands can use these interactive broadcasts to provide a platform for voices within the fan community, inviting them to commentate and engage with their audience as the show goes on. Interactive TV just got even more interactive. 

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^{(Sources: CultureLab CultureIndex, August 2024)}