The original post: /r/television by /u/CoffeeNWhiskey44 on 2024-08-27 16:57:21.
Everyone seems to call this or at least the last 10 years or so the “Golden Age of Television”. I disagree. If there was a golden age of tv I would suggest it took place in the late 90s through 2000s and into the early 2010s. But the last 10 years has been anything but great. Yes we have had some great shows, but I don’t think that means television as a whole has been great. If anything it has been on a steady decline since 2015ish to the point where we are today. Thanks mostly due to streaming services and the no ads monthly price model.
Most seem to equate good television with big $ budgets, high quality production and seemingly well written shows because they are serious, and dark and gritty and realistic. However, I think this fundamentally misses what TV is. TV is like food, if all you ever eat are the fanciest of fancy meals, where every meal is treated like some monumentous event that deconstructs every aspect of your culinary experience and subverts all your expectations in an attempt to redefine how you view food as a whole. You will quickly become over whelmed, bored, worn out, and just want a damn delicious cheeseburger or other simple comfort foods.
TV is supposed to be the same. Yes there can be high budget critically acclaimed shows that offer in depth commentary on the world and our lives. But every show can’t be like this. What most studies have forgotten is that for a lot of people when they get home at the end of a long work day or find them selves with a rare free 30-60mins to sit down and watch tv. That most don’t want to have to sit and concentrate on something dark and gritty and realistic filled with antiheros with complex subplots filled with back stabbing and terrible people. Most just want something fun and entertaining to unwind to at the end of a long day.
Everyone loves to complain about how bad tv shows like The Big Bang Theory, or Friends, or NCIS or Greys Anatomy are and how they are cheap, stupid, mindless shows and garbage tv. But there is a reason these shows got such high ratings when they were on air, and ran for 10+ seasons. Sometimes people like and want to watch shows like these. It’s also the reason why today, if you look at the Nelsien raitings for tv shows have the most watch hours each month on the streaming services, the majority of the top 10-20 shows are mostly older shows from the 90s, 2000s and early 2015s (and even older shows). People want these types of shows and are tired of only having “prestige television” when they also want fun popcorn comfort tv too. So for me the golden age of TV was when we had shows like Big Bang Theory, along side shows like Breaking bad. We had network sitcoms that were fun and easy to watch, along with gritty dark in depth shows on HBO. You could choose what you wanted depending on the mood you were in that day. Now we only have on type, and studios wonder why they keep spending $100’s millions on new shows and the viewer ship numbers never reach what they were 15-20 years ago.