TV-Watching Culture

:bademoticon: If there's one invention that's had a HUGE impact on modern culture, it's tv .  However I noticed, based on things I heard happening in households after the 1950s, that the way people watch tv, and how they view it, has also changed with the times not just the shows themselves.  I remember talking about some of the classic shows with my parents  (they were there when the shows were being broadcast at the time) and what they liked or disliked about them.  Sometimes I had not watched the show in question (with good reason :bademoticon:) and had to hear from mom or dad how it was.  The biggest problem I have with some of these older tv shows, is the fact that I'm a 21st century person , and the stuff that's on these shows doesn't have the same effect on me as they would a person that was living at the time such shows were popular.  I mean, I watched a little bit of I Love Lucy, for example, and I asked myself, "How on earth did people find this funny?"  Or I watched a little bit of Gilligan's Island (what little I could stand), and thought "Good GOD this show is dumb!  It took Gilligan FIVE MINUTES to figure out his ass was on fire!"  Again, I asked myself, "How could anyone have enjoyed such a show?"  I also took a look at the oldest sitcoms, and thought, "Wow, that show is really lame.  Remind me why this was popular again?"   

There are a few exceptions to the old classics.  Some shows actually are still good, despite their age.  Some of the ones I watch from time to time include:

Star Trek (1960s)
I Dream of Jeannie
M*A*S*H
Kolchack: The Night Stalker
Battlestar Galactica (1970s)

 So I asked my parents, why would people watch the stupid, lame shows too?  I know for a fact that the same complaints people made decades ago about certain tv shows still are being made by anybody who watched them in today's generation.   

Mom's default answer was "They were CLASSICS!!!"  That answer didn't really work for me. :bademoticon: It doesn't really explain anything, and really, what's she saying is, "I can't really explain it."  Dad's answer made more sense.  For one thing, tv was not available 24 hours a day until the 1970s.  Many channels had snow during the night, and the few stations available came on at certain hours of the morning, and went "off the air" after certain hours of the night.  Also, such shows were often the only thing on, and the concepts were new at the time.  Dad's explanation was, people watched the shows "because they were there."  It was also a family and friends affair , with everyone gathering around the set to watch some shows for fun and to hang out.  (This is something some families still do today ).  It's a distant echo of what families used to do around the radio  between the 1920s and the end of WWII.  It was considered "cool" to watch some show, whether you liked it or not, and then talk about it with family, friends, classmates, and co-workers the next day or even all the next week after the new episode had aired.  If you hadn't watched it, you weren't in the loop, and either you weren't considered "cool," or a friend filled you in on what you'd missed.  

It's a concept that's difficult for today's people to grasp (especially kids and teenagers) because we're so spoiled today by nearly 1,000 channels available on tv :bademoticon: (and our computers for that matter), lots of things to pick and choose from, movies on demand, and streaming programs like Netflix, Acorn TV, and Hulu.  DVD's  have also made it easy to just watch the show you want without commercials (YAY!!!  )  Plus, you can watch shows that you missed out on parts of.  However, in taking a look at what tv's like today, I find it irritating  that we have over 900 channels (many of which we DON'T pay for, with good reason), and only 4 or 5 have anything good on.  So many things have changed over the past half century, with the internet being the biggest game-changer when it comes to tv shows.  Due to all the crap they have on tv today, I've become very picky as to what I watch, often falling back on the older stuff I enjoyed back in the 90s and early 2000s.  But once in a while, it's nice to go back to the classics (if they're any good) and enjoy them too.