Is the golden age of TV over?

ahalpert

ahalpert

Major Contributor
I've begun to feel like many of the streaming shows or made-for-streaming movies I see are increasingly derivative and formulaic. Especially on Netflix. And that was before reading all the recent news about canceled shows and downscaled programming.

Is the latest Golden age of TV over? In 2007, the Sopranos had its finale and Mad Men had its premiere. The next year, Breaking Bad premiered. Game of Thrones in 2011. What are some shows of equal caliber streaming today? Am i off base?
 
DLD said:
What's your knowledge of the television programs from the 1960s-1980's?
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I know that star trek tng started in the late '80s. I think Columbo ran in the '70s.

My parents denied us any form of TV service because they thought it was bad for our education. We only had vhs and later dvd. Most of the TV I've seen has been streamed.

I know there was a prior "golden age of television" and since your questions are always pointed, I thought maybe it happened during the period you referred to. But wikipedia tells me it is "generally recognized as beginning in 1947 with the first episode of the drama anthology Kraft Television Theater[SUP][2][/SUP] and ending in 1960 with the final episode of Playhouse 90[SUP][3" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Age_of_Television

So, why do you ask?

By the way, it seems I'm not the only TV pessimist in the room. Here's an article from Slate that actually dates back to 2019:

[/SUP]if you like having new stuff to watch, you will have a lot of new stuff to watch—so much, in fact, that it may take a while to notice that much of it is not that great. The Golden Age of TV, the halcyon period that dates from the premiere of The Sopranos in January 1999, has been drawing to a close for a while now, but as the streamers lay out their plans for the 21[SUP]st[/SUP] century’s third decade, it’s increasingly clear that it’s well and truly over.
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https://slate.com/culture/2019/10/golden-age-of-tv-is-over-streaming-wars.html
 
A lot of older TV shows are broadcast on various "classic TV" networks. When I had a TV antenna working, I watched quite a few shows that preceded my arrival in the US (1979), Other classics like MASH, All in the Family, Saturday Night Live (1975-79), the Bob Newhart Show, Leave it to Beaver, Happy Days I watched in reruns back in the day.

My take is that comedy peaked in mid-late 1980s-early 90's with Cheers, Seinfeld, Married w/Children, the Simpsons, Roseanne, Home Improvements, Murphy Brown, In Living Color, Who's the Boss, the Cosby Show, Family Ties, Night Court, the Wonder Years, Fresh Prince of Bel Air, Doogie Howser, etc. After that, the fourth network (i.e., Fox) and the huge syndication fees earned by sitcoms watered down the available talent. It's not that top writers disappeared, it's that having two-three of them instead of six-eight per show diluted the product. And many top writers like the Glen & Les Charles simply retired because they already made hundreds of millions off Cheers and preferred to lay low in Santa Barbara while leaving the hustle and the headaches of Hollywood to someone else.

Drama probably peaked slightly but, not much, later. One could blame Les Moonves for stacking the same CSI show into every available time slot but all he had to do is to look at the ratings and go with what brought the biggest audiences.

I happen to watch sports more these days instead of sitcoms but, once in a while while flipping through the channels, I stop for a few minutes on a scripted program. Some comedies simply shouldn't be on the air, Ted Danson or not. Action-dramas likewise offer quality visuals and, simultaneously, poor dialogue, that sounds like an article written by by a sophomore for college newspaper. Compared to the 70s and the 80s, it's not of the same class. Not even close.

PS. And SNL should have been canceled long ago. And it would have been, had it not been so profitable.
 
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DLD said:
. After that, the fourth network (i.e., Fox) and the huge syndication fees earned by sitcoms watered down the available talent. It's not that top writers disappeared, it's that having two-three of them instead of six-eight per show diluted the product...

Drama probably peaked slightly but, not much, later. One could blame Les Moonves for stacking the same CSI show into every available time slot but all he had to do is to look at the ratings and go with what brought the biggest audiences...

. Action-dramas likewise offer quality visuals and, simultaneously, poor dialogue, that sounds like an article written by by a sophomore for college newspaper. Compared to the 70s and the 80s, it's not of the same class. Not even close.

PS. And SNL should have been canceled long ago. And it would have been, had it not been so profitable.
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I somewhat agree. But the thing is - there was a broad consensus that we were in a golden age of TV from 1999 to at least 2015, which means that a lot of people thought TV peaked much later than you do.

With sitcoms I think it's tricky to compare to today because the genre itself probably had its peak of cultural relevance during the 70s-90s. And during that time, the writers refined the format to a science.

There have been some smash hits sitcoms since then, such as the office, family guy, arrested development. Those shows are genuinely funny. And their style and content is much more relatable to me for being more recent. Season 5 of curb your enthusiasm (wherein Larry David gives a kidney to Richard lewis) aired in 2005 and was simply a masterpiece.

But I agree that most TV writing I hear just sucks. Certainly, that's what's wrong with the star trek: Picard series. One wonders how the dialogue made it out of drafts.

But that's a counterpoint to the golden age gems like Sopranos, breaking bad, mad Men, game of Thrones -- each of which was known for its excellent writing.

I think that the glut of production is seriously weighing on the quality of these shows. For example, Bryan Fuller was the original showrunner for star trek: discovery, the first show of the recent spate of trek reboot shows. It premiered in 2017. But he was splitting his time between that show and American Gods. Production was falling way behind schedule, so CBS axed him.

He oversaw the writing of the first 6 or 7 episodes, which are...the good ones. The beginning of Discovery held incredible promise. It was everything you could hope for from a golden age of TV reboot of trek. It was what the JJ Abrams movies should have been. It married the original philosophy and ethos of Trek to the best production and Cinematography available today. The writing was snappy. The characters were compelling. And it was edgier than any Trek before it.

After he left, the show rapidly devolved into a soap opera and it gained a terrible reputation amongst Trekkies. (CBS also ordered 2 extra episodes for season 1 to try to reduce the budget per episode, ie squeeze more airtime out of what they had already spent. It's really obvious which 2 episodes do nothing to advance the plot.)

So, I think it's possible that if the volume of production eases as there are fewer networks and streamers manically competing for marketshare, perhaps the average quality of writing will improve.

Then again, if the bean counters supreme at tech companies like Netflix prioritize controlling costs and meeting deadlines over creating timeless art, it's possible that **** writing is just the new normal
 
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How about the big action shows / car chase era? From about 1980-1986 we had a plethora of shows that weekly brought us huge stunts and massive car chases, never to be again on TV. Shows like Airwolf, Knight Rider, The Fall Guy, The Dukes Of Hazzard, Hardcastle & McCormick, Streethawk, The A-Team and Riptide brought us humor, oft-witty dialogue, slow motion explosions, airborne automobiles and great music. Shows like The Greatest American Hero (1981-83) brought us brilliant layered writing, stunts and great comedy. Most died in 1986, except for the A-team that hung on 'til '87. The Incredible Hulk wasn't really about the big green creature smashing stuff, it was about human issues and a man of character.

Sit-coms were far cheaper and easier to produce than big action shows like Airwolf. I haven't watched TV since the late 90s. Even if I had time now I wouldn't. However, I do hear from peers of various ages that TV in general isn't as good as it was.
Time may make the good 'old days and thus the good 'old shows seem better than they were until we see that old show again and it's not as good as we remembered..or now stupid....but is there something to be said of TV of yore?
A time when a man was a man? When standing for what was right even if it cost you was not portrayed as evil or mocked? When a hero wasn't a villain? When you didn't have to worry about what your kids might see when you weren't home? Less indoctrination, perversion and filth? I remember one of the big producers and writers talking about how a man of morals is no longer interesting. People like shades of gray or enormously flawed characters who are as much a villain as they are good (or more), he said. Gone are the simple cowboy days of TV. The Lone Ranger said you can't wave the flag now and look cool, but like it or not, society needs it's heroes.

https://youtu.be/fCmZRXvcMFU?t=1748
 
I watched the Office until its last year. Then I watched its last year over the last few weeks on Comedy Central. It was still a good show, Mindy Kaling's presence notwithstanding. And CYE was/is a good show too. But the reason the sitcoms were hot in the 80s through the 90's was because standup comedy got hot sometime in the late 1960's-early 1970's. In the 60's, the comedians still played in (small strip) clubs and coffee houses. Catch the Rising Star opened in 1972, as did the Comedy Store in LA. The LA location of the Improv premiered in 1974 and that gave young talent a chance to hone their skills and get noticed. That created a tidal wave of new stars - from Steve Martin to Jay Leno to David Letterman to Robin Williams and so on and so forth. Those who weren't good enough to become standup stars often became writers. At the same time, syndicated sitcoms became hugely profitable. The news of Danny Arnold making $50M (OK, it was a settlement vs. Columbia Pictures) for "Barney Miller" made the news in 1986. And, after that, every comedy writer wanted this kind of dough. And many made even more.

Personal story - in 1989-90 I was working at a medium-to-high end TV/electronics store on the Westside of LA. A family of five walks in. Husband and wife are in their mid-late 30's and their three young children are still wearing diapers. They take a look at a 31" Mitsubishi tube at $1,700. Then at a 27" for $1,000, also by Mitsubishi . The husband says something like, "Yikes, $700 extra for four inches of screen space". I feel bad for that and for their young kids, "Well, Mitsubishi is offering interest free credit terms via its bank". He nods, "Cool, let me fill out the app". So, he sits down and stars writing. The app is very short- job - Sony/Columbia pictures; salary : $470,000. As I look at his name and I realize that I remember it from some very popular 1980's sitcoms like the Golden Girls. As I get ready to call it in, his wife snaps at him, "Oh, Russ, just give him your credit card".

So, Russ was at Columbia on what was known as a "development deal". He wasn't even working for any particular show. And $470,000 was a lot of money back then. It still is.
 
Abe, I think your premise might be too broad. What is TV today? All of the shows mentioned like "The Sopranos" were not on TV, they were on Cable. Now we have streaming - whatever that means. To me, the difference is on cable and streaming they can cuss and show nudity. I think the wealth of decent things to watch is ever flowing. Way more than we had when I was younger in the 90s. Golden age? I think it started with "West Wing" (when cinema style production was applied to episodic television programming) and we are still in it.

1) We as a viewing block get more difficult to impress with each successful series that is completed. How did the 2nd Game of Thrones go over...?
2) Binge watching is killing the industry. They just can not keep up.
3) Streamers do not want to admit it but the numbers do not line up for the long term. They can't keep delivering a major level release movie quality episode in exchange for your $7.99 or so a month. Netflix is more but my point is that streaming has to increase it pricing to keep the quality up.

So I can see the formulaic approach being needed, but humans do well with things they know and and count on. Look at how successful "Law and Order", "CSI" and the Chicago series' are. Talk about formulaic! But your point is about high level quality (more in the writing and premise), not just financial success.
 
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