When Mark Lopez of the Pew Hispanic Research Center hears the term “fractured culture,” he thinks about young Latinos. “[They’re] straddling two different cultures,” Lopez says. “They’re straddling the culture of their immigrant roots, but an American culture as well.”
American culture is sliced up in so many different ways that what’s popular with one group can go virtually unnoticed by another. Univision, for example, is watched by millions of Latinos in the U.S., but millions of other Americans couldn’t tell you what channel it’s on.
What makes us laugh on TV isn’t as broad-based as it once was. At its peak in the mid-1980s, The Cosby Show had 30 million viewers. Today’s top-rated sitcom, Two and a Half Men, gets more like 15 million.
Read the entire article at NPR.