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Looking through and old tabloid newspaper from the early '80s I was amazed to see that the TV listings was just a bare half page showing the names of the progra

Looking through and old tabloid newspaper from the early '80s I was amazed to see that the TV listings was just a bare half page showing the names of the programmes, and that was it. Nowadays you have endless recommendations and reviews of what's coming up, and endless analysis of what's been on (e.g. just last night was reading the House Of The Dragon episode recap in the Guardian). What was most striking is that I don't remember TV being so low-key in the culture, nor how it crept up in importance, despite living through the change. Edit: Briton here.

ghaff 4y ago
>What was most striking is that I don't remember TV being so low-key in the culture, nor how it crept up in importance, despite living through the change. TV was anything but low-key in culture. In fact because everyone watched a show at the same time, there was much more cultural synchronization/watercooler talk with respect to shows like MASH or Seinfeld. What did change beginning with maybe the Sopranos was that (a limited slice of) TV became more high culture and displaced film to a certain degree in that regard. (And streaming enabled the sort of serialized drama that was hard to pull off in a fixed time slot broadcast world.) >the TV listings was just a bare half page showing the names of the programmes, and that was it. True, but in the US, TV Guide magazine was I believe the most subscribed to magazine in the country. That's where a lot of people got more detailed (though relatively still quite limited) information from.
exikyut 4y ago
> What was most striking is that I don't remember TV being so low-key in the culture That is really interesting. For want of a better way to put it, I also agree that it had a "long-tail" quality to it; it was just implicitly part of the status quo. Communication nowadays seems to be broadly impacted by disproportionate focus on explicit definition, disambiguation, structure, etc, but in such a way that abolishes and shuns implied cohesion. Constantly trying to define and underline the way things should be instead of just getting on with letting things be the way they already are. My current chicken-and-egg "hmm" is whether this came before or after the worldwide obsession around security and safety (which arguably started just before the turn of the century - I once read the "no no stay inside" thing started in America circa 1998). From this perspective I definitely think TV occupied more of the "tribal knowledge" side of written vs implied culture, than it does today - both in terms of production and societal impact. Kind of weird, that; it had more of an impact when it wasn't trying to shoehorn and corral. Heh. I lastly wouldn't say that TV "crept up in importance" so much as turned into a vacuous foghorn contest to see who can bellow the hottest air the furthest :P (AU here, aka UK Lite Edition)

ghaff 4y ago

>What was most striking is that I don't remember TV being so low-key in the culture, nor how it crept up in importance, despite living through the change. TV was anything but low-key in culture. In fact because everyone watched a show at the same time, there was much more cultural synchronization/watercooler talk with respect to shows like MASH or Seinfeld. What did change beginning with maybe the Sopranos was that (a limited slice of) TV became more high culture and displaced film to a certain degree in that regard. (And streaming enabled the sort of serialized drama that was hard to pull off in a fixed time slot broadcast world.) >the TV listings was just a bare half page showing the names of the programmes, and that was it. True, but in the US, TV Guide magazine was I believe the most subscribed to magazine in the country. That's where a lot of people got more detailed (though relatively still quite limited) information from.

exikyut 4y ago

> What was most striking is that I don't remember TV being so low-key in the culture That is really interesting. For want of a better way to put it, I also agree that it had a "long-tail" quality to it; it was just implicitly part of the status quo. Communication nowadays seems to be broadly impacted by disproportionate focus on explicit definition, disambiguation, structure, etc, but in such a way that abolishes and shuns implied cohesion. Constantly trying to define and underline the way things should be instead of just getting on with letting things be the way they already are. My current chicken-and-egg "hmm" is whether this came before or after the worldwide obsession around security and safety (which arguably started just before the turn of the century - I once read the "no no stay inside" thing started in America circa 1998). From this perspective I definitely think TV occupied more of the "tribal knowledge" side of written vs implied culture, than it does today - both in terms of production and societal impact. Kind of weird, that; it had more of an impact when it wasn't trying to shoehorn and corral. Heh. I lastly wouldn't say that TV "crept up in importance" so much as turned into a vacuous foghorn contest to see who can bellow the hottest air the furthest :P (AU here, aka UK Lite Edition)