Is the golden age of television over already?

[Missourian]

I find myself rewatching older shows instead of watching new programming...because I can't find anything worth watching.

The Boys season one wasn't bad, and I had high hopes...but season two went directly off the rails.

I believe that was the last new show I tried.

I rewatch NCIS, Lost, BSG, Dark Matter, Castle, Firefly, The Expanse, Sherlock, might start TWD again...although I never finished it.

I used to wonder why my folks watched old B&W episodes of The Rifleman and Bonanza...but I think I get it now.

Perhaps as I age out of the Key Demographic...shows just don't resonate with me anymore.

Anyone else noticing this?

If not...what are you watching?

 

[Moonglow]

I watch old movies I don't care much for 99% of TV and I've been that way since the early 1980's. I also watch a lot of science and history shows produced online.

 

[JLW]

I can agree with you in part. I do like older shows as well as some not so older shows like The Office.

Some of the new shows are very good. I liked the Boys. I also enjoyed the Queen's Gambit and Black Mirror is a favorite.

 

[Sunsettommy]

I find myself rewatching older shows instead of watching new programming...because I can't find anything worth watching.

The Boys season one wasn't bad, and I had high hopes...but season two went directly off the rails.

I believe that was the last new show I tried.

I rewatch NCIS, Lost, BSG, Dark Matter, Castle, Firefly, The Expanse, Sherlock, might start TWD again...although I never finished it.

I used to wonder why my folks watched old B&W episodes of The Rifleman and Bonanza...but I think I get it now.

Perhaps as I age out of the Key Demographic...shows just don't resonate with me anymore.

Anyone else noticing this?

If not...what are you watching?

I long noticed it, the decline in creative writing is everywhere.

The Movies are not so good either with numerous repeats of the first movies. Do you really want to watch 8 versions of Fast and furious, which are for the most part tabloid material.

I watch mostly Discovery, History and National Geographic channels with some sports, the rest I ignore most of the time, avoid the "news" reporting channels entirely.

Now considering dropping TV completely, have to work on moving into a homesteading set up in the next couple years.

 

[norwegen]

I think the most recent TV show I really liked was "The Big Bang Theory." After that, television seems to have finally and completely jumped the shark.

 

[JoeMoma]

It's over.

 

[Meister]

Watch very little TV on the big 3 stations. Do like the Travel Channel and Discovery.
The last couple of years I have been spending a lot of time watching film noir on TCM.

 

[JOSweetHeart]

The only shows still in production that I care for are Blue Bloods, Young Sheldon, and Last Man Standing which is said to be in its last season already.

God bless you always!!!

Holly

P.S. To me, the best ever comedy is Perfect Strangers and the best ever drama is the A&E network show named The Glades.

 

[Pogo]

I find myself rewatching older shows instead of watching new programming...because I can't find anything worth watching.

The Boys season one wasn't bad, and I had high hopes...but season two went directly off the rails.

I believe that was the last new show I tried.

I rewatch NCIS, Lost, BSG, Dark Matter, Castle, Firefly, The Expanse, Sherlock, might start TWD again...although I never finished it.

I used to wonder why my folks watched old B&W episodes of The Rifleman and Bonanza...but I think I get it now.

Perhaps as I age out of the Key Demographic...shows just don't resonate with me anymore.

Anyone else noticing this?

If not...what are you watching?

I'm watching nothing, because TV is nothing. A Bernaysian system of mass mind control with no redeeming social value and no inherent potential. It sits the viewer down in a totally passive position, takes over all of the senses and dick-tates its story/propaganda, in a fake two-dimensional scripted artificial envirionment, and it does so just so it can hypnotize its victim into ingesting advertising, which is the practice of persuading people to buy shit they don't need. And that's literally all it is. An advertising/propaganda gimmick.

Walk into a room where people are watching TV and instead of joining them, watch the watchers. Sitting still, like zombies, obediently taking in whatever the telescreen dick-tates, with no input at all. Sponges. Just what the telescreen wants.

So there is no "golden age" possible. The phrase "vast wasteland" was coined exactly sixty years ago, it was as true then as it is now. There's a nostalgia to anything that ages, even negative things, and that's as close as "golden age" gets.

Kill your TV. No negotiation, no exceptions, no argument. Just kill it. Strangle it by the cable until it is dead, dead, dead.

 

[Daryl Hunt]

I think with the revenue never going away, there are no real incentives to write lasting shows.. Our Film and TV copyright laws are archaic and mean spirited compared to the rest of the world (Thanks Disney and Sonny) And a program will run well past it's sell date. With no real decent concepts in the wings for replacement, we are stuck with the week after week of the same damned thing. I mean, common, just how many FBI and 911 shows can we have beating our senses before we shut off?

 

[AMart]

Have not watched a sit com since cheers vanished. Did watch some of Seinfeld because it was funny. Have not watched really anything on the networks, ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX since The X Files back in the 90s. There is a lot of good content on the streaming sites. I am watching Pennyworth now. EPIX | Hit Movies, TV Series and More

 

[toobfreak]

I find myself rewatching older shows instead of watching new programming...because I can't find anything worth watching.
Anyone else noticing this?
If not...what are you watching?

WAY ahead of you Missouri!

Many years ago I saw this all coming and designed and built a movie/program storage system for HD and SD programming, movies, TV shows, comedy, sit coms, specials, documentaries, etc., the best of the best, about 2000 movies and whatever else was worth seeing more than once.

You name it, I got it. On top of that, hundreds of DVD-Rs filled with programming, plus the usual DVDs, Blue Rays, SSHDDs, and much more. All accessible at the press of a button fully indexed with a listing of everything alphabetized by category.

Do I still watch live TV? Of course, for free off digital antenna OTA. Stations like MeTV, Quest, Decades and H&I which show reruns of classics, and some new stuff worth watching like Star Trek Discovery on CBS, Cosmos Possible Worlds on Fox, Penn & Teller's Fool Us, even some WWF wrestling on Fox.

TV has been dying since roughly the 1970s a slow death with the rise of TV commercials which used to be 2 minutes every quarter hour to now where commercials run for 5 minutes or longer every 5-10 minutes. THE ONLY WAY to watch TV now is with a DVR where you time shift by programming it to tape what you want to see then play it back at your convenience and skip over all the commercials.

 

[Moonglow]

I find myself rewatching older shows instead of watching new programming...because I can't find anything worth watching.

The Boys season one wasn't bad, and I had high hopes...but season two went directly off the rails.

I believe that was the last new show I tried.

I rewatch NCIS, Lost, BSG, Dark Matter, Castle, Firefly, The Expanse, Sherlock, might start TWD again...although I never finished it.

I used to wonder why my folks watched old B&W episodes of The Rifleman and Bonanza...but I think I get it now.

Perhaps as I age out of the Key Demographic...shows just don't resonate with me anymore.

Anyone else noticing this?

If not...what are you watching?

I long noticed it, the decline in creative writing is everywhere.

The Movies are not so good either with numerous repeats of the first movies. Do you really want to watch 8 versions of Fast and furious, which are for the most part tabloid material.

I watch mostly Discovery, History and National Geographic channels with some sports, the rest I ignore most of the time, avoid the "news" reporting channels entirely.

Now considering dropping TV completely, have to work on moving into a homesteading set up in the next couple years.

The creative writing is declining because the only thing they will produce has to be financially appealing to get off the ground, so art is forsaken for profit.

 

[HenryBHough]

Open question as to whether TV created streaming or streaming killed TV.

Around the country conventional systems are shutting down - trying to get people to pay them for applications to be able to select only the "channels" they want to see rather than paying for "bundles" consisting mostly of shit very few want.

True, the "major" networks aren't available for free but more and more people are discovering that antennas work.

Anybody want to try cord-cutting enough that there should be a thread about ways to do that? If so, PM me and I'll start one based on 50+ years of work in TV broadcast engineering.

 

[Flash]

I haven't watch very many network shows in many years.

I haven't seen a sitcom in ages that was worth watching. The earlier years of Law and Order, CSI, Lost and Battlestar Galactica were OK but not much since then.

The TV show and movies have gone way overboard on diversity nowadays and become unwatchable. Far too many Negroes and other minorities in lead roles, interracial relationships and homosexuality.

The other thing for network shows is the tremendous amount of commercial time. Sometimes you have to endure 11 commercials during a break. I understand economics and there ain't no such thing as a free lunch but if I can't record it and skip through the commercials then it is not worth my time to view it.

The cable and streaming channels have turned out some things worth watching like Cobra Kai but it seems like entertainment in general has taken a nose dive. I suspect those Hollywood writers have lost touch with the real world. They live in the LA world of rap music and Illegals and don't understand America.

 

[BlueGin]

Most recent new shows I have checked out were:

Outlander .. writers are obsessed with rape made it thru season 3 and gave up. Show is trash.

Lost in space...it was okay...took it forever to come back...so I lost interest.

Cobra Kai...very good...but not interested in rejoining Netflix to finish it.

There is plenty of old stuff to watch on Roku,YouTube,And Xfinity free streaming.

Lately I’ve been watching:

Starsky and Hutch
S.W.A.T (70’s version)
Charlie’s Angels
David Cassidy: Man undercover ( spin off of a police story episode ? )
Jessie Stone ( 9 made for tv movies)
Beast (short lived Patrick Swayze cop show)
Star Trek ( original)
Voyager
DS9
Silk Stalkings
And
Perfect Strangers

With a few old movies thrown in.

 

[Daryl Hunt]

Open question as to whether TV created streaming or streaming killed TV.

Around the country conventional systems are shutting down - trying to get people to pay them for applications to be able to select only the "channels" they want to see rather than paying for "bundles" consisting mostly of shit very few want.

True, the "major" networks aren't available for free but more and more people are discovering that antennas work.

Anybody want to try cord-cutting enough that there should be a thread about ways to do that? If so, PM me and I'll start one based on 50+ years of work in TV broadcast engineering.

In the days that TV was new (and this all happened in my lifetime) there was a fierce fight for certain slots. Today, not so much. In that battle, you had to be great or the other network would pull in the millions of veiwers and the products and service that was being hocked for the winners would mean success. Not so much these days. Saturday Night used to be a place where they sent programs to die. Today, it's just another night for TV.

 

[jackflash]

I find myself rewatching older shows instead of watching new programming...because I can't find anything worth watching.

The Boys season one wasn't bad, and I had high hopes...but season two went directly off the rails.

I believe that was the last new show I tried.

I rewatch NCIS, Lost, BSG, Dark Matter, Castle, Firefly, The Expanse, Sherlock, might start TWD again...although I never finished it.

I used to wonder why my folks watched old B&W episodes of The Rifleman and Bonanza...but I think I get it now.

Perhaps as I age out of the Key Demographic...shows just don't resonate with me anymore.

Anyone else noticing this?

If not...what are you watching?

Television was certainly a fabulous invention as was the telegraph. Unfortunately both appear to have suffered the same fate. With news channels pumping out everything negative as they can get negative, sitcoms about as humorous as a truck load of burnt babies, science shows skewed to left wing global warming/climate change kookology, human relationship shows that are fast tracked to racism, riots, wars, death & destruction like who wants to watch downer/bummer television shows anymore?

 

[Pogo]

I find myself rewatching older shows instead of watching new programming...because I can't find anything worth watching.

The Boys season one wasn't bad, and I had high hopes...but season two went directly off the rails.

I believe that was the last new show I tried.

I rewatch NCIS, Lost, BSG, Dark Matter, Castle, Firefly, The Expanse, Sherlock, might start TWD again...although I never finished it.

I used to wonder why my folks watched old B&W episodes of The Rifleman and Bonanza...but I think I get it now.

Perhaps as I age out of the Key Demographic...shows just don't resonate with me anymore.

Anyone else noticing this?

If not...what are you watching?

Television was certainly a fabulous invention as was the telegraph. Unfortunately both appear to have suffered the same fate. With news channels pumping out everything negative as they can get negative, sitcoms about as humorous as a truck load of burnt babies, science shows skewed to left wing global warming/climate change kookology, human relationship shows that are fast tracked to racism, riots, wars, death & destruction like who wants to watch downer/bummer television shows anymore?

I don't see a "same fate" at all. The telegraph at least had a constructive purpose, that being fast and far communication. The only reason it faded was that technology evolved into more effective methods to do the same thing, up to and including satellite relays and internet, but it's the same constructive purpose being served.

Television on the other hand never had any positive purpose at all. In fact your descriptions above from "truckloads of burnt babies" to "death and destruction" illustrate exactly why that is, since NONE of that value system is new.

 

[sealybobo]

I find myself rewatching older shows instead of watching new programming...because I can't find anything worth watching.

The Boys season one wasn't bad, and I had high hopes...but season two went directly off the rails.

I believe that was the last new show I tried.

I rewatch NCIS, Lost, BSG, Dark Matter, Castle, Firefly, The Expanse, Sherlock, might start TWD again...although I never finished it.

I used to wonder why my folks watched old B&W episodes of The Rifleman and Bonanza...but I think I get it now.

Perhaps as I age out of the Key Demographic...shows just don't resonate with me anymore.

Anyone else noticing this?

If not...what are you watching?

I was watching mixish yesterday. Tv show about rainbow from blackishs childhood. She grew up in the 80s. So the narrator says, “in the 80s families used to watch tv shows together”.

Doesn’t seem like families watch tv shows together anymore.

Everyone in the family could enjoy the dukes of hazard, Archie bunker, the jeffersons, bonanza, green acres, cheers, the a team. So many shows that mom dad sister and brother could all watch together.