In theUnited States, there have been periods of time described as having such a number ofhigh quality, internationally acclaimedtelevision programs, that they should be regarded as theGolden Age of Television. One such period stretched roughly from 2000 to 2023, with a subset of this era also known asPeak TV orPrestige TV.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7]
Named in reference to the originalGolden Age of Television of the 1950s,[8] more recent periods have also been referred to as the "New", "Second", or "Third Golden Age of Television". The various names reflect disagreement over whether shows of the 1980s and early-mid 1990s belong to a since-concluded golden era or to the current one.[19] The contemporary period is generally identified as beginning in 1999 withThe Sopranos,[20][21] with debate as to whether the age ended (or "peaked") in the mid-late 2010s[20][22][23][24][25] or early 2020s (to the point of calling its replacement "Trough TV"),[26][27][28][29] or remains ongoing.[30][8][31]Multichannel linear television, such as cable and digital satellite, reached its peak in 2014 and has declined in viewers, reach and new content rapidly since then;[32][33] overall new series creation peaked in the early 2020s, following a years-long competitive period known as thestreaming wars, cresting shortly before the2023 Hollywood labor disputes.[34]
The recent "Golden Age" is believed to have resulted from advances in media distribution technology,[9][13]digital TV technology (includingHDTV,online video platforms,TV streaming,video-on-demand, andweb TV),[35][9] and a large increase in the number of hours of available television, which has prompted a major wave ofcontent creation.[36]
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French scholar Alexis Pichard has argued that television enjoyed a Second Golden Age[37] 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 thecable channels (especiallyHBO) in the 1990s.[38] Film directorFrancis 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.[39]
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The new Golden Age brought creator-driven tragic anti-heroic dramas of the 2000s and 2010s,[40] including 1998'sSex and the City, 1999'sThe Sopranos (named the greatest TV show of all time byTV Guide[41] andRolling Stone[42])[43][44] andThe West Wing; 2001'sSix Feet Under and24;[45][43] 2002'sThe Wire (voted as the greatest TV show of the 21st Century by BBC in 2021)[43][46] andThe Shield;[43] 2004'sDeadwood,[47][43]Lost[48] andBattlestar Galactica;[43] 2005'sGrey's Anatomy andAvatar: The Last Airbender;[49] 2006'sFriday Night Lights andDexter;[43] 2007'sMad Men;[43] 2008'sBreaking Bad;[50][43] 2010'sThe Walking Dead;[51] 2011'sGame of Thrones;[14][52][53] 2013'sHouse of Cards[54] andOrange Is the New Black;[55] 2015'sBetter Call Saul,[56] and 2016'sThe Crown.[57] Others appear in theWriters Guild of America 2013 vote for 101 Best-Written TV Shows.[58] Production values got higher than ever before[59] on shows such asBand of Brothers,[60]Mad Men,Breaking Bad, andHomeland to the point of rivaling cinema, while anti-heroic series likeThe Sopranos andThe Wire were cited as improving television content thus earning critical praise.[61]
Stephanie Zacharek ofThe Village Voice has argued that the current golden age began earlier with over-the-air broadcast shows likeBabylon 5,Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (both of which premiered in 1993), andBuffy the Vampire Slayer (1997).[17] TV critic Alan Sepinwall cites shows such asBuffy andOz (which both first aired in 1997) as ushering in the golden age.[43]Will Gompertz of theBBC believes thatFriends, which debuted in 1994, might stake a claim as the opening bookend show of the period.[18] Matt Zoller Seitz argues that it began in the 1980s withHill Street Blues (1981) andSt. Elsewhere (1982).[15] Kirk Hamilton ofKotaku has said thatAvatar: The Last Airbender (2005) should be considered a part of the golden age of television, and recommended "the sophisticated kids show" to others.[62] With the rise of instant access to content onNetflix, creator-driven television shows likeBreaking Bad,The Shield (2002),Friday Night Lights (2006) andMad 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,[9][13]digital TV technology (includingHDTV,online video platforms,TV streaming,video-on-demand, andweb TV),[35][9] and a large increase in the number of hours of available television, which has prompted a major wave ofcontent creation.[36] 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 andHulu investing heavily in original content. The number of shows aired by online service increased from only one in 2009 to over 93 in 2016.[63][64][65][66][67][68]
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An increasing reliance onrebooting andreviving existingfranchises led to widespread belief that the Golden Age of Television was ending in the late 2010s,[23] with the caveat that some of these reboots (such asDuckTales,[69]Girl Meets World,[70]One Day at a Time,[71][72]X-Men '97,[73] andShōgun[6]) share the positive reception and mature character development of original shows of the era.
To address burnout frombinge watching and concerns that the practice of releasing full seasons at once makes television more disposable and forgettable, streaming providers returned to a more traditional model of releasing a new episode per week in the early 2020s. Ashowrunner 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.[24] By 2024, Netflix had also begun splitting its seasons of new content to limit binge-watching, fearing that it was contributing to a phenomenon where viewers would subscribe for a short period to binge-watch their favorite show only to cancel their subscription when finished.[74]
In theWatchmenwriters' room, we would play this game calledIs 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 creatorDamon Lindelof[75]
Ed Power of theIrish Examiner opined that "the sun began to set" on the golden age between 2013 and 2015, with the finales ofBreaking Bad andMad Men, and "Since then, television has reverted to its older tradition of quantity over quality."[20] Siobhan Lyons ofThe Conversation believes the 2022finale ofBetter 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.[27]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 ofDisney+ (which NPR attributed to the company's strong brand recognition), were seeing diminishing quality and, particularly in the case of Netflix, declining popularity.[76] A May 2023 essay inHarper'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.[77]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 made small or no profits, even if they drew new subscribers.[75]The New Yorker concurred in November of the same year, declaring the Golden Age to be over after aregression toward the mean; based upon several books on the topic, the article essentially argued that the same dynamics that drove the death of earlier Golden Ages in media (such as television's first Golden Age and theNew Hollywood of the early 1970s) were also affecting the early 21st-century Golden Age of Television, namely that the technology innovations that had allowed highbrow programs to flourish were being capitalized upon by more profitablefranchise products able to crowd out riskier projects for attention from financial backers.[78]
Around 2019, a period of intense competition began for market share among streaming services, a period known as thestreaming wars. This competition increased during the first two years of theCOVID-19 pandemic as more people stayed home and watched television.[79] 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 onfranchises that are less likely to garner awards), and the rise ofindependent films winning major film awards within the last six years, resulted in a historical first—the first film from a streaming service to win theAcademy Award for Best Picture:Apple TV'sCODA overNetflix'sThe Power of the Dog at the94th Academy Awards.[80]
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.[81]HBO Max made a substantial cut to its library in August 2022, mostly to itschildren's television series, out of concerns that the quantity of content on the service (especially with its pending merger withDiscovery+) was becoming overwhelming and difficult to find, and that the children's programming was not driving subscriptions or views on the service.[82] 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+ (Disney had historically followed a similar model with physical media, known as theDisney Vault, which it had initially suspended in the early months of Disney+[83]) andParamount+.[84] 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.[85]
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 the2023 Hollywood labor disputes.[86] This led to fewer shows ordered by studios and streamers as the WGA strike ended[26] and fewerspec scripts being offered by writers to the studios, anticipating the cutbacks.[87] In a January 2024 story titled "Peak TV Is Over",The Hollywood Reporter said that the number of ordered television series' seasons in the United States decreased from 633 in 2022 and 2021 to 481 in 2023, and that the number was not likely to increase in 2024.[34]
That audiences clearly prefer the films of the past has been an inconvenient fact for the streamers who tout themselves as the future of entertainment.
Viewership patterns during the pandemic shifted rapidly towardreruns,[79] a trend that continued into 2023 as the streaming providers shifted away from original content and became open to nonexclusive licensing deals allowing popular archive shows to appear on multiple platforms.[89] A 2021 interview of social media influencers noted that theteen sitcoms andteen dramas from the early Golden Age, driven by continued presence in reruns and video-on-demand platforms, have stronger followings amongGeneration 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.[25]Suits was the most-streamed TV show of 2023,[89] and especially popular with Gen Z, despite new episodes ending in 2019 and being neither,Slate wrote, "a cult classic or a critical darling".[90] The magazine stated that the show and similar "glossy, lightweightprocedurals" were idealsecond screen content:
They're just about extremely attractive people doing their jobs exceptionally well, then blowing off steam by having extremely attractive sex. In other words, they're what, for the vast majority of the medium's life span, was known simply as "TV."[90]
Even as the pandemic waned, cable television in particular—which suffered a 30% decline in viewer reach between its peak and 2023—increasingly relied upon reruns and other archival programming. Compared to a peak of 214 original cable series in 2014,The New York Times noted that number had fallen 39% by 2022, and further in 2023. TheTimes dubbed this phenomenon "zombie TV," in that the channels retained a shell of an established cable brand, but without any of the original programming that had defined the channel's identity, as an undead zombie continues to function but without the soul or personality of its host body.[33] TheTimes also commented thatgeneral-interest cable networks such asTNT,USA Network andTBS were particularly hard-hit, with TNT and TBS's combined original series output dropping from 17 series to 3. USA suffered a near-complete loss of its original scripted programming, though this was also partially due to the networkabsorbing more sports programming from the closure of sister networkNBCSN, which helped keep USA's ratings among the highest on cable. Such cable networks have increasingly relied upon all-daymarathons of acquired rerun programming to fill their schedules.[33] This has coincided with an even more dramatic decline in viewership, with general-interest cable networks and several of the more established niche networks losing over half of their viewing audiences in the same period; David Bauder of the Associated Press noted that the corresponding declines in viewership and original programming were triggering avicious cycle, and that by the mid-2020s, cable television had lost its ability to create "appointment television" events, instead relying on "ghost" programming such as low-quality, low-cost reality fare and reruns.[32] By 2024, only three cable series –Yellowstone,Hallmark Channel's original seriesWhen Calls the Heart andThe Way Home — averaged more than 1.5 million viewers.[91]
The streaming wars were also a factor in a shift towardfree advertising supported television initiatives (FAST) in the early 2020s. FAST services typically rely on archival programming for the majority of their content, allowing the services to operate for free to the end user while splitting advertising revenue with the program owners (or profiting directly if the program and FAST service areowned by the same company).Tubi, the advertising-supported video on demand service owned byFox Corporation, acquired the streaming rights to much of the content that HBO Max had jettisoned in 2023.Pluto TV relies on the extensive archival libraries of Paramount and its numerous acquisitions.[92]
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Characteristics of this golden age are complicated characters who may be morally ambiguous orantiheroes, questionable behavior, complex plots, hyperserialized storytelling, diverse points of view, playful explorations of modern-day issues,one-shot takes[93] and would-be R-rated material.[94][95][96][97]
Genres of television associated with this golden age includedramas (especially ones originating on cable and digital platforms; some being called "peak bleak" due to the extremely pessimistic nature of shows likeSuccession andGame of Thrones[98]);sitcoms (especially ones that usecomedy-drama which some critics would call "sadcoms"),[99] andadult animation;[100]sketch comedy (especially series linked toalternative comedy and, in the case ofDocumentary Now,mockumentary[101]); andlate-night talk shows (especially ones that emphasizenews satire). Such were the shows' popularity and buzzworthiness thataftershows—talk shows specifically created to discuss a specific television program—were created and scheduled in thelead-out slot following Golden Age shows on linear networks.[102]
A key characteristic of the golden age isserialization, where a continuousstory arc stretches over multiple episodes or seasons. TraditionalAmerican television had an episodic format, with each episode typically consisting of a self-contained story. During the golden age, there has been a transition to a serialization format. John R. Ziegler and Leah Richards note that the serialization format was previously already a key defining characteristic of Japaneseanime shows, notably the popularDragon Ball Z (1989), which distinguished them from American television shows at the time. Serialization later also became a key defining characteristic of American live-action television shows during the golden age.[103] Complicating this is the fact that streaming providers tend to order fewer episodes overall of a series (50 episodes is a common benchmark[104] compared to the traditional100 episodes sought for traditionaloff-network syndication, a threshold no streaming-exclusive series has ever reached[89]) and are more willing to arbitrarilycancel a show without warning nor clear criteria for renewal, leading to serialized shows often ending on unresolvedcliffhangers, a point of frustration for viewers.[105]
The era is not without criticism. The biggest criticisms of the era were the limited audience appeal of shows featuring unlikeable characters, and too many showrunners embracing the "10- to 12-hour movie" structure of stories,[106][107][108][109] resulting in "bloat."[110] Producer andThe Shield creatorShawn Ryan said, "You're seeing ideas that should've been movies being elongated into eight episodes, and they don't have the narrative engines to sustain them for that long".[75]Vulture said that "the expensive signifiers of prestige TV — the movie stars, the set pieces, the cinematography — became so familiar and easy to appropriate that it could take viewers six or seven hours to realize the show they were watching was a fugazi".[75] The number of original shows being produced has some, like FX CEOJohn Landgraf (the person who coined "Peak TV")[111][112][113][114] andTime's TV critic Judy Berman,[1] worried about overwhelming the viewing audience to the point of what the latter called "peak redundancy".[1][115] Author Daniel Kelley said that this was also the Golden Age ofbad TV with shows such asZoo,Under the Dome, andThe I-Land.[116]
Derek Thompson ofThe Atlantic stated that TV replaced movies as "elite entertainment",[117] but the focus on prestige TV prevented more broadly appealing programs from airing.Damon Lindelof said "TV has become very artisanal", usingSwarm as an example of a show that "everybody I know is watching" but his relatives have never heard of.[75]Vulture quoted a "top agent" as decrying the contempt TV people had for mainstream audiences' tastes; "[P]eople seem to really likeTwo and a Half Men, and none of my writers want to write that. They all want to writeBarry. And you know who watchesBarry? Nobody".[75] An executive said that while at Amazon Video she received an email every day with the top 100 films by minutes watched: "It was always a lot ofTom Cruise sci-fi movies, action movies from the ’90s and aughts, andTalladega Nights".[88]The Ankler stated thatShōgun was, by contrast, "prestige TV at its best: great television that people actually watched".[118]
Newton Minow, whose landmark 1961 speech "Television and the Public Interest" had highlighted the end of the original golden age of the 1950s, commented that the state of television in 2011, in the midst of the modern golden age and 50 years after the speech, had lost the sense of shared community that the live linear television dominated by a small number of networks had provided.[119][120][121] Rick Ellis writing forAllYourScreens.com points out that:[122]
We live in an increasingly niche culture world and that is driven in large part by a universe in which the viewers' screen time is split between everything fromTikTok andYouTube toHBO Max andShudder. Thatmass culture experience is increasingly a thing of the past and waxing sentimental about it begins to resemble those music fans who moan that the business was so much better when consumers were forced to purchase full-length albums.
Mary McNamara of theLos Angeles Times cited the golden age of TV as one of the reasons behind the2023 Writers Guild of America strike, which, along with the2023 SAG-AFTRA strike and the studios' use ofartificial intelligence, effectively halted most scripted television production in the United States.[123]
Prestige dramas have been criticized as being similar to one another;[124] most are bleak and grim,[125] withanti-hero qualities in the primary characters. Some journalists have opined that in recent years TV dramas have become cliché, with studios across the television industry creating shows with a familiar feeling.[126]
My former Variety colleague Michael Schneider, executive editor of IndieWire, captured perfectly the jaded response many had to last month's reboot news: 'Anyone else getting the sense that broadcast TV is embarking on its Farewell Tour by playing all the hits one last time?' he tweeted.
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