Do you prefer the television programs of the mid-90s or today?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Ummm... one could say that though for many, many art forms (if we consider TV an art form - Heresy to some, I know). Compare the bestselling books or most watched films of the 1960s and 1970s to now and it is very, very depressing... (to take one example).

Of course. And - for the most part - the reasons are the same! (as an aside, a big factor with that changes wrt books, at least in Britain, was deregulation in the early 1990s).

[Tetro Kornbluth]

Ummm... one could say that though for many, many art forms (if we consider TV an art form - Heresy to some, I know). Compare the bestselling books or most watched films of the 1960s and 1970s to now and it is very, very depressing... (to take one example).

Of course. And - for the most part - the reasons are the same! (as an aside, a big factor with that changes wrt books, at least in Britain, was deregulation in the early 1990s).

Not allowing for changes in popular taste? Hmm... I'm not sure of that. 

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Not allowing for changes in popular taste? Hmm... I'm not sure of that. 

Popular taste (whatever it is) does not exist in isolation.

[cannonia]

Babylon 5 by itself is enough for me to vote for mid-90's TV.

"Syfy" by itself is enough for me to vote against today's TV.

[Lief 🗽]

Today's TV, obviously.

Breaking Bad, Mad Men, Parks and Recreation, 30 Rock, The Office, Community, Adult Swim, How I Met Your Mother, House, most of the stuff on HBO (True Blood, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Flight of the Conchords), most of the stuff on Showtime (Weeds, Dexter).

Meanwhile, in the mid-1990s, all the shows on TV were either police procedurals, uninspired laugh-track sitcoms, or something about doctors and how hard being a doctor is.

[Joe Biden 2020]

I chose Mid-90s, but only barely.  The Mid-90s had Home Improvement as the main show I watched and there were the police dramas.  Now, we have a bunch of hospital and police dramas.  In reality, both eras really sucked as far as quality television programming.  That's primarily why I spend most of my time watching CNN, ESPN, or The Weather Channel, or our local NBC affiliate news.  The only two shows I will watch occasionally are NCIS and L&O SVU.  I do like shows reality shows like Big Brother and Biggest Loser, but other than that the programming really is shotty at best.