📺 Does anyone still watch daily serials or is it all web series now

My mother plans her whole evening around her 2 serials. Dinner is early so she's done by 8. I haven't watched a daily serial in years. I watch web series on my phone in bed. Last Sunday I told her about a series I thought she'd love, with a good story and only 8 episodes. She listened politely and then asked if it comes on every day at 8. I said no, you can watch it whenever you want. She said, then how will I remember? That was a better point than it sounds. She doesn't want a show, she wants an appointment. Something that's waiting for her at the same time, whatever kind of day she's had. My series just sits in a list and I forget about it for weeks. A few friends say the same about their parents. They try the new apps and drift back. One friend set up a streaming account for his father. He used it once, for 4 minutes, and asked to switch back. I get it now, even though I used to roll my eyes at serials. When I visit her, I sit and watch for 10 minutes and get pulled into the drama every time. Last week a woman on the screen got slapped, the music went up and I said oh no out loud. My mother looked at me and smiled and said nothing. I think she felt she'd won. Is daily TV really dying like people say online, or are the viewers just older and quieter? Maybe I only see it from my side of the phone screen.

Worked at a production house years ago that still makes daily soaps, and the sheer logistics surprised me, entire scripts written and shot within days of airing each episode. Most web series productions would consider that pace completely unmanageable given how much lead time they typically build in before anything reaches viewers on the actual channel, even now with all the new tools available.

Think this generational split gets framed unfairly online, as though older viewers are somehow behind rather than just valuing something different from what younger viewers want out of a show right now. My grandmother would say the exact same thing about people switching between five shows instead of finishing just one properly, start to end, without ever getting distracted along the way.

My mother watches two serials back to back every evening without fail, and has said more than once that missing either one throws off her whole day in some small way she cannot quite explain properly to anyone else, myself included on most occasions. Web series simply do not offer that same fixed daily anchor in quite the same reliable way for her.