Worst Decade For Television

[RichDante]

What in your opinion was the worst decade for television?

Cartoons were really lousy Scooby Doo ripoffs with cheap limited animation. Live action wasn't much better, they were really corny cookie cutter sitcom drek, seriously watch The Love Boat and tell me that it isn't the most corniest **** you've ever seen. There were a handful of good anime being made during that time but a majority of them have not held up and are really dated by today's standards.

[AndrewCrossett]

The 1870's was a pretty terrible year for TV.

Seriously, maybe the 2000's. Specifically that zone between the end of cool syndicated genre shows and the beginning of "peak TV." There was a time there when TV was just dominated by reality shows, paint-by-number procedurals and derivative suburban-family sitcoms. There were some good shows in there, but good luck finding them.

Nowadays we still have dumb reality shows, procedurals and sitcoms, but now there are plenty of much better options with streaming and cable.

[Jokerz79]

00's and reality TV.

[Immortal Weapon]

Echoing the noughts being dominated by reality shows and sitcoms. That era of TV lead me to consuming my media on the internet and never looked back.

[RichDante]

The 1870's was a pretty terrible year for TV.

Seriously, maybe the 2000's. Specifically that zone between the end of cool syndicated genre shows and the beginning of "peak TV." There was a time there when TV was just dominated by reality shows, paint-by-number procedurals and derivative suburban-family sitcoms. There were some good shows in there, but good luck finding them.

Nowadays we still have dumb reality shows, procedurals and sitcoms, but now there are plenty of much better options with streaming and cable.

There were problems but honestly the era youre talking about gave birth to a lot of great innovative shows, some could argue that that are better than now. The 70's however hardly had any of that, theres hardly any noteworthy series from the seventies worth remembering, unless someone gives me 20 shows from the 70s that are ACTUALLY worthy of being standouts, then the 70s is honestly the worst decade for television

[AndrewCrossett]

There were problems but honestly the era youre talking about gave birth to a lot of great innovative shows, some could argue that that are better than now. The 70's however hardly had any of that, theres hardly any noteworthy series from the seventies worth remembering, unless someone gives me 20 shows from the 70s that are ACTUALLY worthy of being standouts, then the 70s is honestly the worst decade for television

Obviously it's going to be a matter of opinion...

All in the Family
Kung Fu
Barney Miller
The Mary Tyler Moore Show
The Carol Burnett Show
Maude
M*A*S*H
The Dukes of Hazzard
Sanford and Son
Monty Python's Flying Circus
The Muppet Show
The Odd Couple
Hawaii Five-O
Saturday Night Live
The Bob Newhart Show
SCTV
Happy Days
Taxi
The Rockford Files
WKRP in Cincinnati
Columbo

[RichDante]

Obviously it's going to be a matter of opinion...

All in the Family
Kung Fu
Barney Miller
The Mary Tyler Moore Show
The Carol Burnett Show
Maude
M*A*S*H
The Dukes of Hazzard
Sanford and Son
Monty Python's Flying Circus
The Muppet Show
The Odd Couple
Hawaii Five-O
Saturday Night Live
The Bob Newhart Show
SCTV
Happy Days
Taxi
The Rockford Files
WKRP in Cincinnati
Columbo

Only half the shows you posted are really anything that is worth substanstial, the others are extremley dated and cheesy with really corny acting, stock plots and cliched characters, seriously have gone back and watched Happy Days, Sanford and Son, Dukes of Hazzard, Maude, The Carol Burnett Show, The Odd Couple, The Bob Newhart Show and Odd Couple they are the really dated and cheesy, good for their times but have not held up as well. The others Iagree but most of the good ones have been perfected both in comedy an drama in the decades succeeding it.

As for the previous decade like I said during this time we had airing at one time or another (I'll just consider latest 90s as 1999): The Sopranos, The Wire, The Shield, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, Six Feet Under, Lost, Deadwood, 24, Freaks and Geeks, Dexter, Battlestar Galactica, The West Wing, Oz, Homicide: Life on the Street, the X-Files, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Friday Night Lights, Firefly, Damages, ER, Sons of Anarchy, Veronica Mars

Some of those shows are definitely better than others. Some are the most ground breaking to air and paved the way for the shows we are watching now. Yes, some of those shows either were ending or dying during this period or just starting or got worse as time went by. There are also many other shows I could list from this period and I didn't even touch comedies, which they are a ton of too.

But other than reality TV and it's effect being correct like you said, I think most would describe this period as the complete opposite of what you said and say it is one of the best periods of television, not the worst

[Scott Taylor]

1980s

It was a sea of sameness, greed, shallow morality and colorful jackets. The only good thing about the entire decade in TV was Winnie Cooper.

The 1990s took all of that crap and basically nullified the entire era on the strength of just the Carlton Dance.

[Jim Kelly]

Gee, other than now where, with streaming and specialty services, you get a lot of quality shows, I would have thought the 1970s was the most obvious for quality TV shows from the three networks.

I remember on NEWHART, Peter Scolari's character was depressed because the commerrcial TV shows he loved from the 1980s, like MANIMAL and THE A-TEAM, had been replaced by quality programming and Bob consoles him by saying these things come around and soon all this quality programming willl go away and the crass commercial shows will make a come-back.

[Cyke]

Only half the shows you posted are really anything that is worth substanstial, the others are extremley dated and cheesy with really corny acting, stock plots and cliched characters, seriously have gone back and watched Happy Days, Sanford and Son, Dukes of Hazzard, Maude, The Carol Burnett Show, The Odd Couple, The Bob Newhart Show and Odd Couple they are the really dated and cheesy, good for their times but have not held up as well. The others Iagree but most of the good ones have been perfected both in comedy an drama in the decades succeeding it.

I agree about the 1970s being perhaps the worst for television overall (lots and lots of junk sitcoms, bad fashion, and pointless variety shows), but almost all those shows listed were groundbreaking or instrumental in their own way, several of them being watershed moments in TV history.

I also wouldn't say many of them are that dated, either. But even if they were or they aged badly, that doesn't mean they didn't make some kind of impact or leave some positive impression on the landscape. All in the Family was topical. Barney Miller melded TV and stage production aesthetics. Mary Tyler Moore, Carol Burnett, and Sanford and Son brought diversity in a white male dominated industry (and Carol Burnett *just* got a lifetime achievement award named after her by the Golden Globes). The Muppet brand is still running strong. M*A*S*H is one of the gold standards of sitcoms that studios still try to reach to this day. Hawaii 5-0, the Rockford Files, and Columbo helped spawn today's thrillers and procedurals (Columbo even had a brief, but funny, crossover with Alias!). And more than enough literature's been written about SNL, SCTV, and especially Monty Python. The Odd Couple showed that TV adaptations of big movies can work, and the Bob Newhart show may not have been the first show to star a stand-up comedian, but it was among the biggest to show that a TV show can be an extension of their stand-up, setting an example for Seinfeld and the like. Cheers follows in the same vein as Taxi, and WKRP showed that the workplace comedy can apply to non-conventional settings.

And to be clear, the worst period of television is still bound to create some gems. They shouldn't be written off like the rest of trash television.

[RichDante]

Just like the 00's and the 70's rocked and I say that as some not alive than.

Can you explain why you think this way?

[WestPhillyPunisher]

In my opinion, the 00's which helped to usher in so-called "reality TV" (TLC is rife with all sorts of this trash) makes that the worst decade for me.

[GozertheGozarian]

Add me to the 00 reality era.

[RichDante]

In my opinion, the 00's which helped to usher in so-called "reality TV" (TLC is rife with all sorts of this trash) makes that the worst decade for me.

You do realise reallity Tv isnt the only peice of televisiion right? theres still a bunch of scripted shows on the air

[Jim Kelly]

It's the old apples and oranges.

Television in the 1970s, in the USA, was limited to three major networks and otherwise lots of local programming and public televsion. The amount of money available for production wasn't a lot. Out of that pool of programming, which was largely cheap, there were some truly great things being produced and the quality of those programs influenced a whole generation to go on to create more good things.

Today, the amount of programming is exponentially larger and the production budgets for some programs are huge. If you took everything into account, the amount of pure garbage now being generated every day is so much more than it has ever been in history--but there's also a lot of good stuff being produced.

Does the good outweigh the bad?