And it would be easy to find shows that were on at the same time as the above that were not worth watching.
Example:
Hill Street Blues - started in 1981.
Mr. Merlin - started in 1981.
What, you don’t remember the subtle brilliance of Mr. Merlin? What are you, some kind of cultural philistine?
Most television is crap, and it always has been, but in recent years, I think there has been an unprecedented plethora of outstanding shows including Mad Men, The Wire, Breaking Bad. Other more debatable but generally high quality shows include The Simpsons, 30 Rock, The Office, etc. There’s a lot of time in a week to fill up with television, so the majority of it will tend to suck, but there’s absolutely nothing from the 1950’s, 60’s, 70’s, or 80’s, or possibly even 90’s outside of television mini-series like Roots and possibly some children’s programming (Mr. Rogers, Sesame Street) that can hold a candle to the high-quality programs on television over the past decade.
I’ll give you Twilight Zone, assuming you’re talking about the original and not the crappy revival. But, comparing Doogie Howser to House is laughable.
No doubt a great show, but mostly because it was so far ahead of its time. Taken out of that context, it doesn’t compare as well. Actually, just the fact that Twin Peaks is considered ahead of its time shows how far dramatic television has come.
Besides, it only ran 30 episodes.
It’s true that there are always both good and bad shows on TV, the issue is the ratio. Which seems to be about 9 to 1 in favor of crappy.
The thing is that ratio hasn’t really changed. People seem to remember the good shows, forget the real bad shows, and are nostalgic for everything in the middle. Then, they go on about how much better TV was x years ago, and how TV going downhill.
Maybe you just have a short attention span.
Wow. Other than Lost, Twin Peaks and Gilligan’s Island, I’ve never seen any of the other shows mentioned in this thread. I’ve heard of Mythbusters, but only because it’s been discussed in other threads. I’ve also heard of I Love Lucy and Get Smart, but haven’t actually seen these shows.
I have no opinion on whether or not television has always been crap, but not much of it seems worth my time currently.
I get all of my news from NPR, other than Rachel, Jon Stewart, and sometimes Keith, all of whom I watch in online rebroadcasts. I watch Lost on ABC.com, Heroes on NBC.com. and other shows I like on similar online broadcast outlets, including Hulu.
There is a program I watch on HGTV that, as far as I know, I can’t get online, so I do watch that on TV, but that’s pretty much it, other than the weather channel every so often.
I’m just about ready to bite the bullet on cable as I’ve become convinced of late that I won’t miss it in the slightest. …plus I can use the 50 bucks per month on something more worthwhile.
You mean you never saw the scenes after the closing credits where House is typing in his comptuer diary, wondering why people don’t like him?
Watch more PBS.
(Although, I gotta admit I’m a little disappointed in Neil De Grass for somewhat dumbing-down “Nova Science Now” He’s better than that!)
Law & Order, CSI, Southland
Big Love
Psych, Monk, Burn Notice
I’m having trouble coming up with analogs for this shmaltzy crap.
And you found the above shows entertaining? Really?
I nailed it, either you A) Don’t like TV or B) Remember yesteryear’s puerile crap fondly. In your case it’s D) All of the Above.
I specifically didn’t mention ‘The Wire’ anymore because it’s no longer making new shows. But yeah, if you open it up to include the last decade then there are orders of magnitude better shows that were made in the last decade than were made in the entire history of Television combined up to that point.
Television at its best really is better, smarter, more complex than in the past: see Steven Johnson’s Everything Bad Is Good for You.
Sturgeon’s Law. (“Ninety percent of everything is crap.”)
With way more “air time” to fill than back when TV consisted of CBS, NBC, ABC, and maybe PBS, it’s to be expected that the volume of crap today is greater.
“Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.” -H.L. Mencken
Reality TV is cheap and guarantees a certain number of asses. It’s filler, it’s the cheetos of the genre. So what?
There is enough quality on the air that you could spend 24/7 watching ONLY quality shows.
Can I ask for some cites to back up that assertion?
For a long time, I had digital cable- the package where it’s pretty much every channel except the movie channels, like HBO, Showtime, etc. It was up to $70 a month. I tried to go without tv and just watch Netflix and Hulu, but it wasn’t really feasible. I don’t watch tv that much, but when I want to watch tv, I want to watch tv, dammit. So, anyway, I ordered DishNetwork. I don’t get some of the regular cable channels, like Bravo, but I do get all the movie channels free for a few months. It’s 10.99 for the first 6 months, plus I got the first month free because they screwed up the installation. I paid the bill today, and got a little thrill of being able to pay 10 bucks instead of 70 for a month’s worth of tv. Whee!
Even when it goes up to the regular price, it’ll still be less than my cable bill.
TV has always been a depressing wasteland. That’s nothing new.
I’ve had great success with abandoning all broadcast television, and just watching shows I’m interested in via Netflix, Hulu, etc. Our laptop has an HDMI connection to the HDTV, and the video quality is excellent.
On-demand TV is the only way to go, and is by far the best way to filter through the endless crap. Sure, you have to watch some shows the day after their initial broadcast, but big deal. That’s hardly different from recording to watch later, in the first place.
I’ve done the same thing by connecting a DVI-D to HDMI cable from my Macbook Pro to my TV and, you’re correct, the video quality is amazing.