2020 Changed What TV Is For
Viewers didn’t care about “good” or “bad” television this year. Maybe the distinction never mattered.
“When television is good, nothing—not the theater, not the magazines or newspapers—nothing is better. But when television is bad, nothing is worse.”
Nearly 60 years ago, the FCC chair Newton Minow delivered an excoriation of television that was officially titled “” but would be remembered, among the broader American public, as the “vast wasteland” speech. Minow’s indictment of TV—its perky game shows, its formulaic sitcoms, its violent dramas—was cutting (one of his accusations against the newish medium was that it channeled “sadism”). And the radiant impact of his criticism helped shape the conventional wisdom that was dominant as I was growing up in the ’80s and ’90s: the notion that television was something to be a little bit embarrassed
