> Sturgeon's Law applied then as it does now; 90% of everything is crud. Go back 20-30 years, and the shows you remember as great are only a tiny fraction of th

> Sturgeon's Law applied then as it does now; 90% of everything is crud. Go back 20-30 years, and the shows you remember as great are only a tiny fraction of the total output. Some (like Monty Python or Brass Eye) were extreme outliers. I want to back up and support this point: just pull up a list of shows on Wikipedia from any TV channel you can remember, ideally one with a long history and just go through the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, 00s, 10s etc. You're going to find a lot more cream the further forward you go into the future, and maybe, depending on the channel and your own personal tastes, a drop off in the last 10 to 15 years. Most TV was just bad, but old TV especially. For every "All in the Family" or "Cosby Show" or "The Wire" or "Frasier"; or to make this more British: "Sherlock", "Doctor Who", "Monty Python's Flying Circus", there's just dozens upon dozens of terrible shows. They each had their audiences, the ones that weren't cancelled (and even some of the ones that were), but it's like, nobody remembers the dirt underneath the flower, but they remember the flowers that they liked.