20 Years of TV History
Thursday, June 2, 2016 at 2:00PM 
what TVs looked like in the 90s (history of sets here)Here's a must read for the day. Over at HitFix, Alan Sepinwall has reached his 20th anniversary as a TV journalist/critic . It's a fascinating piece on 20 years of writing about TV and how much has changed in that medium since 1996. It's a fun history and nostalgia ride, particularly if you're interested in serialized TV (the best assett of TV but it took decades for TV to get there). I love most of the article and I'll save the highlights for your reading there.
But I do want to vehemently disagree with this statement I've bolded below even though the general idea now that "everything is better with TV" is totally true.
I can appreciate nostalgia for those days, if for no other reason than that the beat was easier to cover when there weren't 400+ original scripted series airing every year. But nearly everything about watching and writing about TV is so much better now than it was 20 years ago. The technology is better, giving us stunning imagery (imagine Lost or Breaking Bad shot for standard-def in the old aspect ratio) and easy access not only to the best of what's on now, but most of recorded TV history.
As someone who likes to curate my own viewing experiences, rather than leave the programming to the fancies of contracts/conflicts between studios with both Netflix and Amazon, I am growing increasingly frustrated with acccess to both movies and television. It's getting worse not better (especially with movies) as everything splinters with "exclusivity" and things either stream or are just not available since physical media is going the way of the dinosaur. Many TV shows I've tried to watch for research purposes or silly side pieces over the past few years have been unavailable to stream anywhere with prohibitively expensive DVD prices (if they're on DVD at all) like, oh, say Emmy favorite "Family" (1976-1980) or even something as recent as the failed CW show "Tarzan (2003)" which I had hoped to include in the Swing, Tarzan, Swing! series we've been doing on weekends. That's just two examples that have come up recently. But lots of times when we're considering a Centennial series on a famous star, their TV work is unavailable, period. Not one bit of it. That's especially true of telefilms which seem to evaporate as soon as they air, unless they were made in the last 15 years when everyone starting taking TV more seriously. When we were celebrating Mercedes McCambridge recently it felt like the exception and not the rule that I was able to rent her appearances on both "Bewitched" and "Charlie's Angels". Hell, even if you just want to watch something from last season (like "American Crime" S2) often streaming services will only let you watch the last few episodes aired and not the whole season, so if you're late to a show you probably have to wait a year or two until one of the streaming services picks it up.
But enough complaining. What are you most grateful in the evolution of this medium?
Reader Comments (15)
Ugh, I agree! Or when the streaming service only has tons of clips of the show and maybe one season. Why tease me?
Although it is not convenient, have you tried NYPL for media? They have Family, for instance. They even let you ship the item to your closest location if it's in circulation. I worked in a large academic library in college, and it was great to be able to easily check out obscure titles. Not everyone has that privilege!
Most thankful for THE GOLDEN GIRLS... Still the only show from the 80's I watch to this day. I could quote full passages of it unsolicited. lol
Hulu is particularly guilty of only having a few episodes of a show available at a time, so I feel your streaming woes. Also, although I don't buy a lot of them now, I'm still sticking with Blu-Ray/physical purchases. Something about owing a physical copy of something makes it more tangible.
Anyway, although it's a blessing and a curse, I'm very thankful for DVR. It hasn't been that long since I got one - '06 or '07? - but I can't imagine keep up with shows without it. The problem, unfortunately, is that there's too much TV and it gives you this false sense of optimism that you can watch twice as many shoes as you used to, lol. A close second would be HD... Although I'm sure actors probably feel quite differently.
I would echo Daniel in it being a DVR, though so much of that is to record movies off of TCM, so I don't know if it counts.
TCM is probably the thing I'm most thankful, but as that is cheating, the creation of the multi-character drama that has become so popular in the past few decades, with Game of Thrones, Mad Men, and especially Lost standing out. Though I'm always thankful for Lost, still the greatest show of all-time.
Small bit of continued complaining: The exclusivity piece is huge to this, because you also need to subscribe to so many platforms now that it's cost prohibitive and frustrating figuring out which platform has which programs. And that's for true for shows that are currently airing, let alone older material I still want to catch up with.
I'm most grateful that the storytelling "rules" and prudishness about content have evolved. It's a huge reason why so many say that TV is better than film, but there has been more room to grow.
I think part of the point is that in the 80s and 90s there was a lot less options for catching up on ANYTHING you missed, unless you had a VHS tape and record button handy on your own. I would say it's a lot easier to find episodes of The Family in 2016 rather than 1996! (certainly easier to find episodes of LOST than it was in the 90s...almost as if the show hadn't existed)
The best thing about the "old” TV environment was that it was a shared experience. Not like everyone in a theater together, but at work the day after the night before.
Whether it was the crash of Col Henry Blake on Mash, or Who Shot JR? or Murphy Brown’s baby, we all lived in the same capsule of time. I miss having everyone in the conversation with the same immediacy.
Leslie19 -- that was something. I was obsessed with DYNASTY as a kid and you could always count on discussing it with friends who watched it Thursday at school ;)
I am most grateful for the Internet and the end of (nearly all) commercials in my life.
I think you would love American Crime S2.
I'd have to say the DVR although like John T. I use mine mostly to record from TCM. But it is great for the few regular shows I do watch since it follows them no matter whether their regular time slot is moved or not.
I agree about the loss of access to older programs. There were so many good TV movies made during that format's heyday and unless you find them on YouTube you can forget about seeing them. Also many, many older series, even the nostalgia stations only run a meager assortment and often repeats from one station to another. I mean M*A*S*H and I Love Lucy are great shows but they're on three different stations while other decent series like The Bold Ones, The Courtship of Eddie's Father, the aforementioned Family and so many others you can forget about.
I do miss the shared experience of everyone watching the same big shows, but shows like Game of Thrones are a bit like that now. Thank God for the dvr and dvd box sets, there really is just too much content available these days.
Nathaniel - If you were into Dynasty (and those shoulder pads) please tell me you were also a fan of Designing Women. One of the smartest and sassiest shows of the 80's. A forerunner of Sex and the City, there was nothing like a good old Julia Sugarbaker rant!
I miss: shared family experiences, when there were only a handful of channels, and everyone watched Mutual of Omaha Wild Kingdom, or Good Times, or Wonderful World of Disney on Sunday nights together (Now we try to do Black-ish, Fresh Off the Boat, or Chopped together, usually streaming, but someone is always on their phone...)
I love: long-form, rich storytelling, binge-worthy shows on streaming sites (e.g., OITNB, Mozart in the Jungle, Happy Valley, Broadchurch, The Americans). But also getting annoyed with the decentralized access.
I've discovered some older shows (mostly UK or European ones) on DailyMotion, France's answer to Youtube.
I despise streaming services and everything that they stand for - so much music, film and television has been erased from history.
In the UK, I am SO GRATEFUL for the BBC and Channel 4 - Sky, Netflix and Amazon streaming are wholly resistant to films not in the English language or made before 1970.
I still keep all of my music in MP3 format and will never switch - I refuse to have my choice to listen to Purple Rain removed by whether or not Prince fell out with Apple/Spotify.
In some ways the difficulty of avoiding spoilers online forces people to watch something plot-driven like Game Of Thrones almost as soon as it airs, so those water-cooler next-day conversations still happen for the big "essential" shows... But I definitely feel like I'm constantly chasing up friends to watch this or that lower-profile show I know they'd love and because I neeeeeed to talk about it with them and vice versa - my "to watch one day..." list is intimidatingly long at this point.
However, I absolutely agree with you, Nathaniel, about how disappointing and frustrating it is that in this day and age of much-trumpeted availability of content, there are decades-worth of movies and tv shows that seem to have disappeared from the face of the earth. Many of these never garnered the cult cache or critical reputation to guarantee that many people would demand their resurgence, but there are some serious gems buried in there, especially for those of us for whom a great performance in an otherwise lesser piece holds significant sway. Joel6 makes such a good point about all those star-vehicle TV movies from the 80s/90s - some of my favourite actresses paid into those with their prime years and if those highlights were available to stream I know I'd be prioritising them ahead of anything on my current Netflix queue!