Is TV better than it used to be?

[Blarg]

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I doubt there's one hospital show pre-St. Elsewhere that stands up anymore.

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MASH is pre-St. Elsewhere, no? Stands up.

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Not as well as you think. For one thing, it's not really a medical show, and two, the canned laughtrack is really, really, really annoying. If I were reissuing the show on DVD, I'd redo the soundtrack without the canned laughter, it'd be SOOOO much better. The other problem is the last few years of the show are virtually unwatchable. It's starts of really great, continues on at a decent mix of good and bad, and then becomes retitled "The World According to Alan Alda Starring Alan Alda, Written by Alan Alda, Directed by Alan Alda, and Conceived By Alan Alda. Did I Mention Alan Alda Is On This Show?".

No show can survive being hijacked by its star like that, no matter how good it started.

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Agree that that show became extremely awful some years before its end. It made the show more about Alan Alda than about anything else -- and he is one smarmy, mealy-mouthed guy.

[maryfield48]

I've posted this before, but it's relevant here too. Years ago I read an Economist article that posited (not surprisingly, given the source) a market-driven theory. This theory was that the different business models of advertising-driven versus subscriber-driven TV have a lot to do with the increase in 'quality'.

Broadcast TV was in business to deliver audiences to advertisers. The bigger the better. So anything edgy or quirky or potentially polarising is a bad idea. Middle of the road light entertainment is optimal.

Cable stations, on the other hand, need to persuade subscribers to sign up and re-up. So they try to produce shows that have 'hooks', and create buzz about them - people will stay with you if there is one show they really love.

These are generalizations, of course. It doesn't mean broadcast TV never produced anything quirky, or that all original cable series are high-end. Just that those were the inevitable tendencies of each business model.

[Deorum]

I suppose it depends on what exactly you mean by quality. The major change that has taken place recently is a shift in the preferred genre. In the 80s and 90s, most of the wildly successful television shows were sitcoms. You had Frasier, Friends, NewsRadio, Married with Children, Dharma and Greg, Mad About You, Family Ties, Ally McBeal, 3rd Rock from the Sun, Home Improvement, Fresh Prince of Bel Air, Blossom, Roseanne, Drew Carey, Seinfeld, Wings, Full House, Alf, etc. Those were the types of shows that dominated primetime.

Then came along The Sopranos. The success of The Sopranos was widely due to the fact that it was one of the only good dramas on television at the time. That is not to say that The Sopranos was not a very good show by itself. But its popularity was significantly due to its uniqueness. With the success of The Sopranos, television stations looked to capture similar success by making similar shows, and new dramas began to rise. The genre of interest had begun to shift from sitcom to drama.

Now television is dominated by great dramas. The Sopranos has taken a lot of heat lately for not being as good as it used to be. While the quality of the show has certainly declined somewhat, one cannot deny that much of the criticism is born not from the decline in quality of the show, but by its being shadowed by all of the other great dramas on television today. There were few other decent dramas during The Sopranos' early seasons (X-Files and later ER come to mind). But now we have shows such as Law and Order, House, Grey's Anatomy, Lost, 24, Heroes, Smallville, The OC, Alias, Nip/Tuck, etc. These dramas now dominate primetime and the sitcoms have more or less bowed out.

So has the overall quality of the shows changed? Again, that depends on what you mean by quality. Has the value of production and writing increased? Maybe, I do not know. It is hard to tell because the goals of the two genres are different. The sitcom is concerned with making the characters likeable to the audience and putting them in difficult situations in which everything they do seems to be wrong. It is designed to allow the viewers to sit back and laugh at the situations in which the characters are placed and how they try to get out of them. "Tune in next week to Saved by the Bell to see what crazy situation Zack gets himself into this time!" Dramas still focus a lot on the characters, but are more concerned with a good, continuous storyline than sitcoms are. The viewer becomes engrossed in the story and that is what keeps them watching. I think this is the major difference you see.

[Mr. Orange]

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Then came along The Sopranos. The success of The Sopranos was widely due to the fact that it was one of the only good dramas on television at the time. That is not to say that The Sopranos was not a very good show by itself. But its popularity was significantly due to its uniqueness. With the success of The Sopranos, television stations looked to capture similar success by making similar shows, and new dramas began to rise. The genre of interest had begun to shift from sitcom to drama.

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I agree with what your saying about saying about the shift from sitcoms to dramas, although I don't really think you can give Soprano's the credit. The change was already under way when the Soprano's started. It's a great show don't get me wrong but I think it was really shows like ER and NYPD Blue in mid 90's that got the ball rolling and started the shift long before the Sopranos came around. Soprano's wasn't even the first good HBO show. Oz was.

[Deorum]

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Then came along The Sopranos. The success of The Sopranos was widely due to the fact that it was one of the only good dramas on television at the time. That is not to say that The Sopranos was not a very good show by itself. But its popularity was significantly due to its uniqueness. With the success of The Sopranos, television stations looked to capture similar success by making similar shows, and new dramas began to rise. The genre of interest had begun to shift from sitcom to drama.

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I agree with what your saying about saying about the shift from sitcoms to dramas, although I don't really think you can give Soprano's the credit. The change was already under way when the Soprano's started. It's a great show don't get me wrong but I think it was really shows like ER and NYPD Blue in mid 90's that got the ball rolling and started the shift long before the Sopranos came around. Soprano's wasn't even the first good HBO show. Oz was.

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Point taken. I had forgotten about NYPD Blue and Oz was a very good drama too.

[Blarg]

Hill Street Blues was also a highly respected one that had the characters evolve.