Golden Age of Television (2000s–present)

French scholar Alexis Pichard has argued that television enjoyed a Second Golden Age[31] starting in the 2000s which was a combination of three elements: first, an improvement in both visual aesthetics and storytelling; second, an overall homogeneity between cable series and networks series; and third, a tremendous popular success. Pichard contends that this Second Golden Age was the result of a revolution initiated by the traditional networks in the 1980s and carried on by the cable channels (especially HBO) in the 1990s.[32] Film director Francis Ford Coppola thinks that the second golden age of television comes from "kids" with their "little father's camcorder", who wanted to make films like he did in the 1970s but were not permitted to, so they did it for television.[33]

The cast of Firefly reuniting at a San Diego Comic-Con panel

The new Golden Age brought creator-driven tragic dramas of the 2000s and 2010s, including 1998's Sex and the City, 1999's The Sopranos[34][35] and The West Wing; 2001's Six Feet Under and 24;[36][34] 2002's The Wire (voted as the greatest TV show of the 21st Century by BBC in 2021)[34][37] and The Shield;[34] 2004's Deadwood,[38][34] Lost[39] and Battlestar Galactica;[34] 2005's Grey's Anatomy and Avatar: The Last Airbender;[40] 2006's Friday Night Lights;[34] 2007's Mad Men;[34] 2008's Breaking Bad;[41][34] 2010's The Walking Dead;[42] 2011's Game of Thrones;[12][43][44], 2012's Girls (HBO), 2013's House of Cards[45] and Orange Is the New Black;[46] and 2015's Better Call Saul.[47] Others appear in the Writers Guild of America 2013 vote for 101 Best-Written TV Shows.[48] Production values got higher than ever before on shows such as Mad Men, Breaking Bad, and Homeland to the point of rivaling cinema, while anti-heroic series like The Sopranos and The Wire were cited as improving television content thus earning critical praise.[49]

Stephanie Zacharek of The Village Voice has argued that the current golden age began earlier with over-the-air broadcast shows like Babylon 5, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (both of which premiered in 1993), and Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997).[15] TV critic Alan Sepinwall cites shows such as Buffy and Oz (which both first aired in 1997) as ushering in the golden age.[34] Will Gompertz of the BBC believes that Friends, which debuted in 1994, might stake a claim as the opening bookend show of the period.[16] Matt Zoller Seitz argues that it began in the 1980s with Hill Street Blues (1981) and St. Elsewhere (1982).[13] Kirk Hamilton of Kotaku has said that Avatar: The Last Airbender (2005) should be considered a part of the golden age of television, and recommended "the sophisticated kids show" to others.[50] With the rise of instant access to content on Netflix, creator-driven television shows like Breaking Bad, The Shield (2002), Friday Night Lights (2006) and Mad Men gained loyal followings that grew to become widely popular. The success of instant access to television shows was presaged by the popularity of DVDs, and continues to increase with the rise of digital platforms and online companies.

The Golden Age of television is believed to have resulted from advances in media distribution technology,[7][11] digital TV technology (including HDTV, online video platforms, TV streaming, video-on-demand, and web TV),[29][7] and a large increase in the number of hours of available television, which has prompted a major wave of content creation.[30] The increase in the number of shows is also cited as evidence of a Golden Age, or "peak TV". In the five years between 2011 and 2016, the number of scripted television shows, on broadcast, cable and digital platforms increased by 71%. In 2002, 182 television shows aired, while 2016 had 455 original scripted television shows and 495 in 2018. The number of shows are rising largely due to companies like Netflix, Amazon Video and Hulu investing heavily in original content. The number of shows aired by online service increased from only one in 2009 to over 93 in 2016.[51][52][53][54][55][56]

Costumes from Babylon 5, Supernatural, and The Vampire Diaries

An increasing reliance on rebooting and reviving existing franchises led to widespread belief that the Golden Age of Television was ending in the late 2010s,[20] with the caveat that some of these reboots (such as DuckTales,[57] Girl Meets World[58] and One Day at a Time[59][60]) share the positive reception and mature character development of original shows of the era. To address burnout from binge watching and concerns that the practice makes television more disposable and forgettable, streaming providers reduced their reliance on the practice in the early 2020s by returning to a more traditional model of releasing one new episode a week. A showrunner for an unnamed series on Netflix, a platform that has been especially aggressive toward releasing full seasons at once as a company policy, commented that the volume of existing content has made it more difficult to devote the time to binge watching.[21] A 2021 interview of social media influencers noted that the teen sitcoms and teen dramas from the early Golden Age, driven by continued presence in reruns and video-on-demand platforms, have stronger followings among Generation Z than contemporary shows; they feel that the latter are more geared toward pre-teens or adults instead of teenagers, try too hard to appeal to current trends, and lack a sense of familiarity compared to shows that have been around since they were born. This is attributed as a cause for the increasing number of reboots and revivals of shows from early in the era.[22]

In the Watchmen writers' room, we would play this game called Is It a Show? Somebody would name a title, logline, and one of the actors, and we'd have to guess whether it was real. But the joke was it was always a show. Some were in their second or third seasons, and none of us — supposedly television professionals — had ever heard of them.

— Lost creator Damon Lindelof[61]

Ed Power of the Irish Examiner opined that "the sun began to set" on the golden age between 2013 and 2015, with the finales of Breaking Bad and Mad Men, and "Since then, television has reverted to its older tradition of quantity over quality."[18] Siobhan Lyons of The Conversation believes the 2022 finale of Better Call Saul marks the end of "the last of those defining, golden age shows," in a time increasingly oversaturated with streaming content and viewing options.[24] NPR noted in May 2022 that although television executives had predicted a peak in television series since the mid-2010s, the number of series continued to grow into the early 2020s, from 400 original productions across broadcast, cable and major streaming outlets in 2015 to 559 in 2021. The network noted that the major streamers, with the exception of Disney+ (which NPR attributed to the company's strong brand recognition), were seeing diminishing quality and, particularly in the case of Netflix, declining popularity.[62] A May 2023 essay in Harper's Bazaar declared the era of the time to be the "Age of Mid Television," noting that mediocre programs were gaining popularity due to the escapism they provide in an age where the real world brings greater anxiety.[63] Vulture expressed similar views in June 2023, speaking of Peak TV in the past tense and noting that the more artistic shows that marked the Golden Age of highbrow programming were also expensive and not particularly profitable, even if they drew new subscribers.[61]

Around 2019, a period of intense competition began for market share among streaming services, a period known as the streaming wars. This competition increased during the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic as more people stayed home and watched television, even as viewership patterns during the pandemic shifted rapidly toward reruns.[64] Many services attempted to compete on quality. The streaming wars, combined with the decline of the popularity of mainstream films (along with said films increasingly relying on franchises that are less likely to garner awards), and the rise of independent films winning major film awards within the last six years, resulted in a historical first — the first film from a streaming service to produce an Academy Award winner for Best Picture: Apple TV's CODA over Netflix's The Power of the Dog at the 94th Academy Awards.[65]

The streaming wars were largely recognized to have ended in 2022, as the major streaming services lost subscribers and shifted their focus to profit over market share by raising subscription fees, cutting production budgets, cracking down on password sharing, and introducing ad-supported tiers.[66] HBO Max made a substantial cut to its library in August 2022, mostly to its children's television series, out of concerns that the quantity of content on the service (especially with its pending merger with Discovery+) was becoming overwhelming and difficult to find, and that the children's programming was not driving subscriptions or views on the service.[67] By the summer of 2023, other major streaming providers had begun to remove short-lived series from their catalogues and make them unavailable afterwards, something that had previously been a rare occurrence; this was particularly true of Disney+ and Paramount+.[68] This also coincided with an increased emphasis on business models that draw revenue from both advertising and subscriptions, prompting streaming providers to focus on productions that have mass appeal while also reducing investment in high-risk projects targeting niche audiences.[69]

The COVID-19 pandemic and its aftermath saw major reductions in the workforce and cancellations of multiple productions to save money on basic residuals and music licensing costs, which led to a worsening condition for writers and actors, setting the stage for the 2023 Hollywood labor disputes.[70] This led to fewer shows ordered by studios and streamers as the WGA strike ended.[23]