How vapid were the early 2010s?

[Florian]

That's because film and television ceased to be the primary mediums of audiovisual entertainment, replaced by streaming services like Netflix and video hosting sites like Youtube, Dailymotion, and TikTok

I think there is more going on.

Certain things used to have a more pronounced social/event character. That can range from public viewing of soccer games with other fans in a pub to one of my ex grilfriends and ehr best friend always rushing home from university to watch their most favoured show and discussing each episode on the phone after that. Or the way it became a cult event to watch Tatort on public television each sunday evening.

No judgement from my side, just pointing out that, say, watching Harper's Island in 09 was waiting for the day a new episode runs, having some snacks and giving it my full focus while sitting on the couch, while the last years, I simply kept Netflix running on my second monitor while coding (whereas I would simply have the radio on for some background noise earlier).

[Bohandas]

Well that's no great mystery. Of course TV is going to be less of a shared experience now - with hundreds of channels and half a dozen streaming services people might be watching - than it was back closer to the era when there were only 3 channels and they were all basically the same. And the event-like character has diminished because we're no lomger bound to watch on their schedule rather than ours.

[halfeye]

... when there were only 3 channels and they were all basically the same.

That was never true. There were times when there was not much on, but there were also times when there was great competition for viewers, and strong interesting programmes that people wanted to watch on one or the other, or annoyingly both/all three.

When Springbean sang "50 channels and nothing on" the nothing on was also a change.

[Vinyadan]

I think that the problem with films is that large studios are going for the big ones. Which means that they cost more to make, with means fewer movies overall, but the bad:good ratio hasn't changed (the big six made over 100 film a year in the late 90's, and just over 80 in 2019). The result is that there are fewer and fewer memorable films that reach the public (I am sure that there are many good small productions, but it's hard to hear about them, as hundreds of millions of dollars are put in marketing for a few big bets).

It doesn't help that Disney is happy to just coast along with rehashes and make money through name recognition (although name recognition is arguably behind Ford vs Ferrari, which, as far as I've heard, is really good).

I also feel that there is something odd going on with journalists, and it's hurting small studios. I understand giving the readers what they want, but I have a couple problems with pretending all big-budget superhero movies are that intellectually and artistically stimulating. Why give cover stories to films that are only costly, but bring nothing new or even especially good, when there is so much more out there? (name recognition I guess).

TV has been doing pretty well, however. Chernobyl probably being the top of the lot.

About music, I think pop is about as dead as rock'n'roll, but radio stations lack a suitable alternative, so they keep releasing the inferior waves of post-'80s material (again, with the problem of the industry betting big on a few artists and smothering out the others), while other genres, where artists have (or just take) more freedom to choose their own direction, are doing pretty OK on a creative level.

[Aedilred]

That was never true. There were times when there was not much on, but there were also times when there was great competition for viewers, and strong interesting programmes that people wanted to watch on one or the other, or annoyingly both/all three.

Depends what you mean by "basically all the same" I guess. Back in the 50s and early 60s when there were just two channels in the UK, there probably wasn't a lot to choose between them in general terms: both would broadcast dramas, comedies, the news, light entertainment, and children's programmes, at broadly similar times of day. Obviously you might well have a preference for one broadcaster's talent or particular shows over another, and there was the occasional smash hit that became a must-watch, but for the most part you could watch either and get a very similar experience. There might have been a slight difference in overall tone (Auntie slightly more starchy and establisment; ITV a little more populist) but a lot of that perception was also probably simple tribalism.

The argument is harder to make after 1964 because BBC2's remit was to show programmes that had less mass-market appeal than BBC1, and thus had a different character from the main two channels from the outset. (This may also be why such a high proportion of classic British sitcoms in particular are from the Beeb, as BBC2 allowed for more experimental shows).

Of course, that development was nearly 60 years ago. I can't imagine many people on this forum are old enough to remember it. But the history of British broadcasting is a little odd because the proliferation of "free" channels happened extremely slowly for decades and then suddenly extremely quickly, with it taking until 1997 to get five terrestrial channels and then Freeview launching only five years later. And anecdotally at least, the penetration of satellite/cable subscription models (basically just Sky, at that point) was not that great. I suspect this has a distorting effect on recollection for those old enough to remember the transition. It's easy to wonder how we coped with only four channels but their output was in fact by the late 80s at least reasonably diverse; we're just spoiled for choice now.

I can't speak to the history of American programming though.

I think that the problem with films is that large studios are going for the big ones. Which means that they cost more to make, with means fewer movies overall, but the bad:good ratio hasn't changed (the big six made over 100 film a year in the late 90's, and just over 80 in 2019). The result is that there are fewer and fewer memorable films that reach the public (I am sure that there are many good small productions, but it's hard to hear about them, as hundreds of millions of dollars are put in marketing for a few big bets).

This isn't a new issue, exactly. Ticket sales, and volume of films produced by Hollywood, peaked in the mid-20th century, albeit most of those movies weren't very good. The recent contraction is a relatively small one compared to that which already happened during the 60s. The circumstances weren't entirely dissimilar either: increasing concentration of production into the hands of a few mega-studios... although today's studios have yet to reach the same levels of oligopoly that the Big Five did then, for various reasons. Faced with declining ticket sales, Hollywood did something similar to what we're seeing now, cutting the number of releases, and increasingly pinning their hopes on big, hugely expensive tentpole releases.

The good news, if history is repeating itself to an extent, is that it didn't last. As it became apparent the model was unsustainable (and helped along by a few big-budget flops) the late 60s and 70s saw more chances taken, a shift in control from producers to directors, and the emergence of the New Hollywood which gave us some of the greatest directors - and greatest movies - of all time.

But that's also to limit our gaze to Hollywood. The volume of movies actually produced now worldwide is much higher than at any point in the past; it's just that most of them aren't American. Bollywood and Nollywood are the highest-volume sources, and most of those are low-quality churn in the manner of Studio System Hollywood, Hong Kong cinema may be (but hopefully isn't) functionally dead, and mainland Chinese film can be difficult to take seriously as good cinema, but Europe and Japan never stopped producing interesting movies and Korea has also joined the party in a significant way. It's probably not a coincidence that we've recently seen the first foreign film take Best Movie at the Oscars at a time when Hollywood is contracting its own output.

[Manga Shoggoth]

Of course, that development was nearly 60 years ago. I can't imagine many people on this forum are old enough to remember it. But the history of British broadcasting is a little odd because the proliferation of "free" channels happened extremely slowly for decades and then suddenly extremely quickly, with it taking until 1997 to get five terrestrial channels and then Freeview launching only five years later. And anecdotally at least, the penetration of satellite/cable subscription models (basically just Sky, at that point) was not that great. I suspect this has a distorting effect on recollection for those old enough to remember the transition. It's easy to wonder how we coped with only four channels but their output was in fact by the late 80s at least reasonably diverse; we're just spoiled for choice now.

Well, me for one - I was born in '64 and grew up on the three.

I remember going out to work in the states for a few months and dealing with the enormous number of channels out there compared to BBC1, BBC2 and ITV (I think channel 4 had not long started). Given the sheer amount of choice it may seem a little strange that my reaction was ultimately "how can they have so many channels and still have so little on worth watching!".

[tomandtish]

Well, me for one - I was born in '64 and grew up on the three.

I remember going out to work in the states for a few months and dealing with the enormous number of channels out there compared to BBC1, BBC2 and ITV (I think channel 4 had not long started). Given the sheer amount of choice it may seem a little strange that my reaction was ultimately "how can they have so many channels and still have so little on worth watching!".

Oh yes.

52 here. When i was young there was CBS, ABC, NBC, PBS, and two local stations. We got cable in the early 80s.

FOX started as a "local" station in 85 (they were in 6 cities including Houston area where I grew up). I believe it was 87 when they went national.

[halfeye]

Depends what you mean by "basically all the same" I guess. Back in the 50s and early 60s when there were just two channels in the UK, there probably wasn't a lot to choose between them in general terms: both would broadcast dramas, comedies, the news, light entertainment, and children's programmes, at broadly similar times of day.

I took "basically all the same" to mean there was nothing anyone wanted to watch on them. That certainly wasn't true. What there was to watch may have been similar between the channels, on Saturday afternoon if you didn't like footy you were generally speaking out of luck, but most potential viewers did want to watch what was available. ITV was dependant on advertising for revenue, and the BBC was funded by the TV licence (as it still is), and needed to maintain a viewer base to make that acceptable, so there was strong competition for viewers. Soaps came along early, first on radio, then Coronation Street on ITV, which is still around.

[Bohandas]

Depends what you mean by "basically all the same" I guess. Back in the 50s and early 60s when there were just two channels in the UK, there probably wasn't a lot to choose between them in general terms: both would broadcast dramas, comedies, the news, light entertainment, and children's programmes, at broadly similar times of day. Obviously you might well have a preference for one broadcaster's talent or particular shows over another, and there was the occasional smash hit that became a must-watch, but for the most part you could watch either and get a very similar experience. There might have been a slight difference in overall tone (Auntie slightly more starchy and establisment; ITV a little more populist) but a lot of that perception was also probably simple tribalism.

Exactly. I don't know specifically about Britain or the 1950's, but I know that as long as I've been around ABC, NBC, and CBS have been more-or-less interchangable

And admittedly the channels I usually watch are mostly interchangable with each other, but none of them are interchangable with the three ancient channels. Nor are they interchangable with the channels my father watches, which are, again, interchangable with each other but not with the big three or with my channels.

[Manga Shoggoth]

Exactly. I don't know specifically about Britain or the 1950's, but I know that as long as I've been around ABC, NBC, and CBS have been more-or-less interchangable

And admittedly the channels I usually watch are mostly interchangable with each other, but none of them are interchangable with the three ancient channels. Nor are they interchangable with the channels my father watches, which are, again, interchangable with each other but not with the big three or with my channels.

Oh, BBC1, BBC2 and ITV had very different characters.

BBC1 and ITV were the two mainstream channels. BBC1 was more restrictive on what it would transmit (the starchy maiden aunt image came from this time), and ITV was somewhat more open (and had advertising, which was absolutely verboten on the BBC to the level that logos on batteries were masked out in certian programs). BBC2 had a somewhat more artistic bent. When Channel 4 came on stream it was a far more experimental channel.

We also had regional television as well - ITV had local companies, and the BBC had "regional variations" to its programming.

[Glorthindel]

I took "basically all the same" to mean there was nothing anyone wanted to watch on them. That certainly wasn't true. What there was to watch may have been similar between the channels, on Saturday afternoon if you didn't like footy you were generally speaking out of luck, but most potential viewers did want to watch what was available. ITV was dependant on advertising for revenue, and the BBC was funded by the TV licence (as it still is), and needed to maintain a viewer base to make that acceptable, so there was strong competition for viewers. Soaps came along early, first on radio, then Coronation Street on ITV, which is still around.

I think that's the point; not that there was nothing interesting, but rather, it didn't matter which channel you were watching, the "theme" of the shows on was broadly the same. As you point out, if you didn't like Football, saturday afternoon was dead, saturday evening was game shows, religeon had sunday morning, with antique shows, family drama, or sport again in the afternoon, and weekdays comprising news, drama, kids shows, soaps, then sit-coms in that order. Even though 2 and 4 were more experimental, they still put the news on at the same time as everyone else, and didn't tend to wander too far off-theme in the prime slot times. Me and my wife have joked in the past that she was a "bbc kid" and me an "itv kid" because if you wanted childrens shows, both channels slotted them in the exact same time window, so you watched one or the other, rarely both.

[halfeye]

I think that's the point; not that there was nothing interesting, but rather, it didn't matter which channel you were watching, the "theme" of the shows on was broadly the same. As you point out, if you didn't like Football, saturday afternoon was dead, saturday evening was game shows, religeon had sunday morning, with antique shows, family drama, or sport again in the afternoon, and weekdays comprising news, drama, kids shows, soaps, then sit-coms in that order. Even though 2 and 4 were more experimental, they still put the news on at the same time as everyone else, and didn't tend to wander too far off-theme in the prime slot times. Me and my wife have joked in the past that she was a "bbc kid" and me an "itv kid" because if you wanted childrens shows, both channels slotted them in the exact same time window, so you watched one or the other, rarely both.

It was 1965 (and I was ten) when my family first had a TV. Then I went away, and TV was an evening thing, it was all about the shows; Dr Who was on the beeb, Batman was on ITV, Callan was on ITV, the Saint was on ITV, Tomorrow's World was on the beeb, Corrie was on ITV, Star Trek was on the beeb, channel switching was always happening.

[Bohandas]

I think that's the point; not that there was nothing interesting, but rather, it didn't matter which channel you were watching, the "theme" of the shows on was broadly the same. As you point out, if you didn't like Football, saturday afternoon was dead, saturday evening was game shows, religeon had sunday morning, with antique shows, family drama, or sport again in the afternoon, and weekdays comprising news, drama, kids shows, soaps, then sit-coms in that order. Even though 2 and 4 were more experimental, they still put the news on at the same time as everyone else, and didn't tend to wander too far off-theme in the prime slot times. Me and my wife have joked in the past that she was a "bbc kid" and me an "itv kid" because if you wanted childrens shows, both channels slotted them in the exact same time window, so you watched one or the other, rarely both.

This is exactly what I'm talking about. Each of those themes now has its own dedicated channel if you have a halfway decent cable package. Gameshows on GSN and Buzzr, Sports on the ESPNs, news on MSNBC, Kids shows on Nickelodeon, Disney Channel, HUB/Discovery Kids, and Cartoon Network, and so on

And the reason why TV no longer has the "event" character that Florian spoke of is because we don't have to wait for saturday morning for cartoons anymore, or for a certain time of day to see the news, or for whatever else time for whatever else, unless you're looking for a specific show. And if you have a video on demand package you can even get that specific show whenever you want, you only have to wait for specific episodes. We're no longer bound to their schedule


EDIT:
What is the proper use of commas in a list of lists? I feel like my first paragraph here maybe isn't punctuated right

[tyckspoon]

This is exactly what I'm talking about. Each of those themes now has its own dedicated channel if you have a halfway decent cable package. Gameshows on GSN and Buzzr, Sports on the ESPNs, news on MSNBC, Kids shows on Nickelodeon, Disney Channel, HUB/Discovery Kids, and Cartoon Network, and so on

EDIT:
What is the proper use of commas in a list of lists? I feel like my first paragraph here maybe isn't punctuated right

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_comma

The part you're feeling weird about is probably the doubled 'and' at the end of your list - you are treating both 'Cartoon Network' and 'so on' as the last item. Change it to "...Discovery Kids, Cartoon Network, and so on" and it should read much more naturally. The last comma is largely a matter of style choice - "Cartoon Network and so on" is perfectly valid. I personally find it measurably more comprehensible to include and prefer to use it.

[Bohandas]

My issue is that it looks like the "and so on" is being applied to the last sub-list, that of kids stations, rather than to the overall list. I actually changed it to "and so on" because the extra 'and' made it less ambiguous than "etc."

It would have been perfectly clear if the last list only had two items because then the commas would have clearly delineated the sub-lists, but the presence of more than two items in the last list necessitated its own internal commas, making the whole thing kind of a mess

[Peelee]

What is the proper use of commas in a list of lists? I feel like my first paragraph here maybe isn't punctuated right

I'm a fan of the EOSR method.

[tiercel]

“How vapid / fast-paced / meaningless / lost-our-previous-values have we become?”

I can’t but think, when have I heard this before; hm, how about… all of human history?

I’ll let the inimitable xkcd illustrate this with some selections from 100-150 years ago

https://xkcd.com/1227/

[Vinyadan]

“How vapid / fast-paced / meaningless / lost-our-previous-values have we become?”

I can’t but think, when have I heard this before; hm, how about… all of human history?

I’ll let the inimitable xkcd illustrate this with some selections from 100-150 years ago

https://xkcd.com/1227/

To tell the truth, most of those remarks strike me as reasonable, and they don't have much to do with values. It's about a world where travel and communication are becoming faster and faster, and the single message is thus less curated and more forgettable. And this pours into art, too: great art requires time. Sure, those are a selection of quotes merely expressing the negative side; we know that much was gained through it. But, even today, you will find quite a lot of people lamenting that customers expect you to perform on the same day jobs that used to take a couple of weeks.

And the declining attention span and diffuse inability to read, analyse and understand longer texts are a well-known problem.

Add to this that the various youth and sport movements were born around 1900 (e.g. Boy Scouts, the worldwide expansion of football clubs, karate and judo getting a modern approach with large classes), so the 1895 note really expressed a need that was fulfilled on a massive scale in later years.

The 1898 note alludes to tabloid or yellow press, a well-known problem that was surpassed in later years; the idea that newspapers had to put their stock into being reliable is fairly new (and seems to be retreating). To make an example, Pulitzer, the guy the journalism prize is named after, was actually a big endorser of yellow journalism. Even today, clickbaiting through sensational or fake titles can be tiresome.

The sadness for families stopping talking as everyone has his device to check isn't unknown to our times, either. If anything, the pandemic has lowered the age at which this in-house break-up happens.

[Florian]

“How vapid / fast-paced / meaningless / lost-our-previous-values have we become?”

I can’t but think, when have I heard this before; hm, how about… all of human history?

I’ll let the inimitable xkcd illustrate this with some selections from 100-150 years ago

https://xkcd.com/1227/

The whole thing there makes me rather sad.

All the technical advancement, all the raises in productivity and I get the feeling that people have less and less time for themselves. Normally, you should think: Wow, I can now do in one day what a whole team used to take around a week to do, I should either work less for the same pay or get paid like a whole team, right?

[halfeye]

The whole thing there makes me rather sad.

All the technical advancement, all the raises in productivity and I get the feeling that people have less and less time for themselves. Normally, you should think: Wow, I can now do in one day what a whole team used to take around a week to do, I should either work less for the same pay or get paid like a whole team, right?

That's obviously not how the big bosses see it.

[Vinyadan]

The whole thing there makes me rather sad.

All the technical advancement, all the raises in productivity and I get the feeling that people have less and less time for themselves. Normally, you should think: Wow, I can now do in one day what a whole team used to take around a week to do, I should either work less for the same pay or get paid like a whole team, right?

I have wondered about it. Maybe, in some regions, there is literally so much work available, that you have to squeeze all you can out of workers, because the manforce is all employed. And, at the same time, a man is a consumer first and a worker second, and he gets paid not for what he deserves or the income he generates, but for how much he needs to earn for him to know that it's worth having a job.

On the other hand, we have all of these electronics and cars and infrastructure and waste disposal and health and education services, more than any people before us. So I wonder if we actually are already ludicrously rich, it's just that some amazing possessions are things we take for assumed for "above poverty", and the rest is stuff we peruse but don't personally own.

[Bohandas]

you should think: Wow, I can now do in one day what a whole team used to take around a week to do, I should either work less for the same pay or get paid like a whole team, right?

This I agree with.

[Tyndmyr]

The whole thing there makes me rather sad.

All the technical advancement, all the raises in productivity and I get the feeling that people have less and less time for themselves. Normally, you should think: Wow, I can now do in one day what a whole team used to take around a week to do, I should either work less for the same pay or get paid like a whole team, right?

That's not all just perception. The world kind of broke a little bit in 1971. Every metric diverged at that point from historical relationships, and never came back to what it was.

Ratios like productivity to pay, or inflationary indices just...split apart, and never came back. As a result, many things have become deeply less affordable. Education, medicine, and housing are the big three.

The average price of a house(US) in 1971 was $25,200.

Adjusted for inflation, that would be $174,936.53, but the actual average now is $423,300.

Not only did inflation drain value from the dollars you're paid in, reducing the actual value of raises throughout your lifetime, but the cost has risen far beyond even that.

In 1971, that average house would cost you less than 2.5 years average wages.

In 2022, the average house would cost you almost eight year's wages.

So, not only have you not gained in proportion to efficiency gains, you have actually lost ground over time. Well, the average worker has. Folks like to break this out as a generational divide sometimes, but if you look at data, no one generation is at fault, it all goes back to 1971.

[Bohandas]

So, not only have you not gained in proportion to efficiency gains, you have actually lost ground over time. Well, the average worker has. Folks like to break this out as a generational divide sometimes, but if you look at data, no one generation is at fault, it all goes back to 1971.

Well then which generation was in charge in 1971?

[halfeye]

Well then which generation was in charge in 1971?

The silent generation or the one before that, most Boomers were still kids then.

[Tyndmyr]

Boomers are what, '46 to '64? Probably a few of the earlier ones were starting to run this or that, but not a whole lot. Our leaders have aged on average, but 25 has always been pretty young to be in charge of something.

Some combination of Silent and Greatest, probably. That said, most of any generation is not in leadership at any given point in time, so I'm not sure I'd blame anything on an entire generation.

Heck, there's some dispute still about exactly how/why/what changed to break everything.

You've got the invention of the microchip in '71. Sounds major, but it seems odd to give it credit starting at its invention, when it didn't become popularized and affecting the workplace for quite some time. Apples were probably the first widespread personal computer, and that wasn't until '77.

There's the whole monetary system conversion with the end of the Bretton Woods post-war era. That's my favorite theory, in that money touches everything, and the whole post-world war era is generally considered to have been extremely friendly to the middle class. With this explanation, it is quite possible that the whole thing was unintentional, at least for many. Economies are quite complex, and it would not be the first time someone screwed something up by mistake.

There was also a massive change in how nuclear power was perceived, having been associated with weapons. This culminated in massive changes in 1971, completely killing nuclear power plant creation off fairly rapidly in the US. Moving backwards from nuclear to coal is potentially a massive system-wide change. Humanity doesn't usually go backward in terms of power sources, and when it does, economic hardship is correlated.

Take your pick or build your own theory, I guess.