This is a key point that I worry is hard for modern users of the Internet to wrap their heads around: In that era, TV channels were a tightly-regulated, very-r

This is a key point that I worry is hard for modern users of the Internet to wrap their heads around: In that era, TV channels were a tightly-regulated, very-rare resource, and as a result the information carried upon them rapidly diffused to everyone because there simply weren't that many alternatives to turn to for information. In terms of the attention economy, attention was relatively cheap if you could get onto the channel; you had a completely captive audience with few distractions if they were using television at all. LeVar Burton once opined in an interview on NPR's Fresh Air that the most special thing about the miniseries Roots was that because of its timing, it's one of the last dramatizations on racism that more-or-less an entire generation of Americans experienced. Once cable brought the number of channels from dozens to hundreds (and HDTV later pushed it into the thousands), the cost to fixate a message in front of every household skyrocketed. There's more content than ever to experience, but the odds of any two people having experienced similar content have commensurately gone way down. It's entirely possible that the era of the cultural touchstone is nearly over (though firms like Disney certainly make a go of it with 300-million-plus dollar movie investments).