The original post: /r/television by /u/Potter1612 on 2024-09-07 10:35:02.
I’ve always been a bit of a television snob, but I think everyone would agree that we’ve moved out of the Golden Age of Television into a new era. So I’d like to see if we can collectively identify when the Golden Age began and ended.
I’m only 20-something, but I’d personally argue that it began in the mid 90’s when shows like Seinfeld, Friends, and other sitcoms became insanely huge phenomenons. I think it continued into the early 2000’s with the rise of Teen shows like Buffy, 90210, and Gilmore Girls. Not to mention the reality tv show juggernauts that were Survivor and Big Brother. Then we saw some fantastic procedurals dominate the scene, like House, NCIS, and Bones. Followed by a slew of amazing dramas that defied traditional genre stereotypes, like Game of Thrones, The Walking Dead, Breaking Bad, etc. But I think things started to go downhill with advent of streaming, and by 2019 it was over.
So in my mind the Golden Age was 1995-2019. What do you all think?
I’m open to it being earlier, because I know shows like MASH and Dallas also had major cultural impacts, but I’m just a little too young to fully appreciate them.