For years, we watched Channel 7 news to see whom Bonds would berate next. Then, we watched to see whether he'd be doing the news drunk. Sometime last year, we were becoming bored. We aren't dolts. Talk to any bus driver, any waitress in a coffee shop, any car mechanic, any worker at the sanitation yard.
Most people are pretty smart.
You probably thought that going from one era to another involved lightning, trumpets, headlines and celestial voices from the sky. We're in the Iron Age. So get with it. In the post-Rudy era, we like watching real people. He was above retirement age, when everybody else on television was wrestling with post-adolescence.