| 1 | %% |
| 2 | %%Examples have been organized into rough chronological order. |
| 3 | %% |
| 4 | |
| 5 | [[foldercontrol]] |
| 6 | |
| 7 | [[folder:1950s]] |
| 8 | * ''Series/ILoveLucy'' (1951-57) has so many turning points attached to it that one can honestly wonder if television as a whole would look the same today without it. It was a KillerApp for television in the days when a TV set still cost almost as much as a small car. The show's cinematographer Karl Freund [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQvjD2-p98U perfected and codified]] the three-camera {{sitcom}} setup that is still in use by many popular shows to this day, even with the rise of the single-camera sitcom in the 2000s. It invented the live StudioAudience, and their laughter was used by Creator/{{CBS}} to create {{laugh track}}s for their other sitcoms. And when Creator/LucilleBall got pregnant in the second season, leaving her unable to fulfill the 39-episode order, executive producer (and Ball's husband and co-star) Creator/DesiArnaz decided to rebroadcast older episodes instead -- inventing the {{rerun}} and, later, UsefulNotes/{{syndication}} once it became clear that these episodes were a potential cash cow. Emily St. James of ''The Website/AVClub'' [[https://tv.avclub.com/why-does-i-love-lucy-endure-after-all-these-years-1798230734 described the show]], together with ''Series/TheHoneymooners'', as "one of the two foundational texts of American TV comedy." |
| 9 | * ''Series/{{Today}}'' ([[LongRunners 1952-present]]) wasn't the first morning TalkShow. That was ''Three to Get Ready'', a comedic morning news program created by Creator/ErnieKovacs that aired on the UsefulNotes/{{Philadelphia}} TV station WPTZ[[labelnote:*]]Now KYW-TV[[/labelnote]] from 1950-52. ''Today'', however, was the first morning show to air nationally and the one that set the tone for all those that followed, combining a serious newscast covering politics, business and the weather with a much LighterAndSofter tone aimed chiefly at stay-at-home parents and their kids, with plenty of {{human interest stor|y}}ies and light entertainment. |
| 10 | * ''Today''[='=]s Creator/{{NBC}} stablemate ''Series/TheTonightShow'' ([[LongRunners 1954-present]]), meanwhile, defined what the late-night TalkShow would be for generations to come, a VarietyShow-esque mix of an OpeningMonologue, humorous commentary on current events, celebrity interviews, SketchComedy, "man on the street" interviews, AudienceParticipation, and musical performances with the host as the central figure of the program. Notably, while Creator/{{NBC}} would briefly try to experiment with this formula, turning ''The Tonight Show'' into a nighttime version of ''Today'' after the original host Steve Allen left in 1957, they would quickly go back to the format that Allen laid down, which ''The Tonight Show'' retains to this day despite many hosts and competing shows over the years. |
| 11 | * Ray Galton and Alan Simpson, creators of ''Radio/HancocksHalfHour'' (1954-59 on radio, 1956-61 on television) and ''Series/SteptoeAndSon'' (1962-65), gave the sitcom format a uniquely British spin and, as such, are generally credited with inventing the {{Britcom}}. In particular, they codified the idea of the head writers as the most important figures in the staff of a British sitcom, diverging from the American style that was built more around the lead actors. |
| 12 | * The eruption of the quiz show scandals in 1958, in which it was found that hit shows like ''[[Series/TwentyOne Twenty-One]]'', ''Series/{{Dotto}}'', and ''Series/The64000Question'' were being rigged at the behest of advertisers, has been pointed to as the end of the First Golden Age of Television for the impact it had on the medium. |
| 13 | ** In the immediate term, most of the quiz shows on television were yanked from the airwaves by 1960. When they did make a comeback in TheSeventies, they were now called {{game show}}s, and the changes to the format ran deep. The big-money prizes were gone, while the focus of the challenges went from general knowledge to word games, puzzles, and {{panel game}}s. It was only in the late '90s with the success of ''Series/WhoWantsToBeAMillionaire'' that the kind of quiz show that was discredited by the scandal made a comeback. |
| 14 | ** It also set off a sea change in both television advertising and the power of the {{networks}} over {{show runner}}s. The television networks in TheFifties largely had a ''laissez-faire'' policy with the shows they broadcast (only really caring about what [[MediaWatchdog the FCC]] would find unacceptable), which allowed producers and advertisers to work together to create the illusion of high-stakes challenges between two highly intelligent contestants that were in fact [[{{Kayfabe}} scripted from start to finish]].[[note]]The first episode of ''Twenty-One'' in 1956 had been played legitimately -- and both contestants proceeded to demonstrate how little they knew by flubbing multiple answers. Producer Dan Enright called the show "a dismal failure", and sponsor Geritol was ready to pull their ads, writing the show off as a flop, until the producers started rigging the show to get less embarrassing results.[[/note]] Afterwards, the networks put their feet down and ended the kinds of overt corporate sponsorship that led to the scandal, and exercised [[ExecutiveMeddling more control]] over television productions in general. |
| 15 | ** Finally, the scandals are often blamed for television moving increasingly downmarket in TheSixties. Quiz shows had been seen as fairly highbrow programming in which contestants engaged in battles of wits and knowledge, and most of the shows that replaced them were sitcoms, [[TheWestern Westerns]], and the aforementioned game shows. FCC chairman Newton Minow's famous 1961 speech [[https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/newtonminow.htm "Television and the Public Interest",]] better known as the "vast wasteland" speech for [[TheReasonYouSuckSpeech how he described the TV landscape of the time]], was written a few years after the scandals had reshaped television. |
| 16 | * ''Series/{{The Twilight Zone|1959}}'' (1959-64) was a critical turning point for the horror genre as a whole, and not just on television. Together with [[Film/HammerHorror Hammer Film Productions]] in the world of film, it established that the genre didn't have to be defined by the cheesy {{B Movie}}s that dominated horror in TheFifties -- and while Hammer was doing so by giving the genre lavish production values and cranking up the sex and violence, ''The Twilight Zone'', which couldn't afford or show such, made horror into a vehicle for social commentary, using its monsters and scary situations to explore and satirize real-world issues in a way that Creator/RodSerling knew he could more easily get away with (especially in the heavily censored TV landscape of the time) by working in "genre" fiction. |
| 17 | [[/folder]] |
| 18 | |
| 19 | [[folder:1960s]] |
| 20 | * The 1960 Presidential debates between UsefulNotes/JohnFKennedy and UsefulNotes/RichardNixon didn't just revolutionize how television networks covered politics, causing TV to displace radio as the mass medium of choice for news and debate, they also changed political campaigns themselves. Nixon arrived to the first debate having just gotten out of the hospital a few days prior while refusing to wear makeup, meaning that he did not look to be in great shape when standing on stage next to Kennedy, who built his campaign around youth and idealism despite being only four years younger than Nixon. The popular story claims that radio listeners either thought the debates ended in a draw or thought that Nixon won, but that television viewers thought that Kennedy won -- and sure enough, Kennedy went on to win a narrow victory in the election, his performance in the first televised debate[[note]]Nixon came to the following debates better prepared and is considered to have held his own against Kennedy in them, but far fewer people watched those follow-up debates, and so the first impression proved to be critical.[[/note]] putting him over the top. For better or worse, image became as important to political campaigns in the age of television as oratory had been in the age of radio, and politicians in the US and beyond quickly recognized television as a vital campaign tool. (The debates' producer, Don Hewitt, went on to create ''Series/SixtyMinutes'' for CBS.) Both Nixon himself and his running mate Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. believed that his underestimating the power of television cost him the election, with Nixon stating in his 1962 memoir ''Six Crises'': |
| 21 | -->"I should have remembered that 'a picture is worth a thousand words.'" |
| 22 | * ''Series/DoctorWho'' (1963-89, 2005-present) can be roughly described as the "British ''Franchise/StarTrek''" for the impact it had on TV and science fiction in UsefulNotes/TheUnitedKingdom. |
| 23 | ** In its original run, it spawned numerous copycats, ranging from the long-running but much-mocked ''Series/TheTomorrowPeople1973'' to the dark and cerebral ''Series/SapphireAndSteel'', as well as many other less well-known examples. Since the '60s, virtually every British science fiction series has inevitably borne the influence of, or at least been compared to, ''Doctor Who'' in one way or another, and American media like the ''Franchise/BillAndTed'' films and ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'' have also homaged it. Even the word "cyber" was popularized by the recurring villains known as the Cybermen. |
| 24 | ** Similarly, the 2005 revival is credited with restoring Saturday night family dramas to British television as others began to capitalize on its success, as well as with breaking down the barrier for British television in the American market (British TV often had to be RemadeForTheExport or shuffled off onto Creator/{{PBS}} before then), as British shows ranging from ''Series/{{Sherlock}}'' to ''Series/DowntonAbbey'' to ''Series/BlackMirror'' became [[GermansLoveDavidHasselhoff trans-Atlantic hits]]. |
| 25 | * By 1966, the American SoapOpera was regarded as a hopelessly old-fashioned genre, focused on FamilyDrama and chaste romance. Then, Creator/{{NBC}}'s fledgling ''Series/DaysOfOurLives'' hired William J. Bell as its head writer, and he began push the envelope by bringing sexual themes into the show. While controversial, it also boosted the show's ratings and helped bring in a younger audience, and other soaps also started taking a HotterAndSexier route. |
| 26 | * ''Series/{{Ultraman}}'' (1966-67) for {{Toku}}satsu. Prior to the show, the genre was defined almost entirely by {{kaiju}} like Franchise/{{Godzilla}} and Film/{{Gamera}} stomping around on cinema screens and destroying things. With the debut of ''Ultraman'', it not only introduced the idea that heroes could battle these destructive monsters and win regularly, but that Toku could be adapted to the schedules and budgets of television with the same results and great success. The result? Toku transformed into a primarily television-based genre revolving around {{superhero}}es battling [[MonsterOfTheWeek Monsters of the Week]], allowing for the birth of popular franchises like ''Franchise/KamenRider'' (which started the "[[HenshinHero Henshin]] Boom") and ''Franchise/SuperSentai''. The kaiju flicks were nearly put out of business, as people loved being able to watch Toku weekly over having to wait for a new movie to come out each year in a period where home video releases were still just a dream. |
| 27 | * ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'' (1966-69). |
| 28 | ** Despite not doing spectacularly well in the ratings, it spawned numerous short-lived imitators (a few coming from Creator/GeneRoddenberry, ''Trek''[='=]s creator) in comic books and television. During the '70s, it became ''the'' template for ScienceFiction television in America (and to a lesser extent, the rest of the world) until the advent of ''Franchise/StarWars'', even if the clones tended to only last for a season or two. Even the original ''Series/{{Battlestar Galactica|1978}}'' and other works influenced by ''Franchise/StarWars'' showed its influence. Its impact lasted as late as the '90s, though more in the form of television reacting ''against'' the series. |
| 29 | ** Modern {{fandom}} was also birthed by ''Star Trek''. While there had been antecedents like ''[[Theatre/TheRingOfTheNibelung Der Ring des Nibelungen]]'', the Franchise/SherlockHolmes novels, and (of course) the preexisting fanbases for the science fiction and fantasy genres, ''Star Trek'' made fandom mainstream, its fanbase growing into an entire UsefulNotes/{{subculture|s}} with its own dedicated fan communities, magazines, [[FanConvention conventions]], and {{fanfic}} (including popularizing SlashFic and the term [[invoked]] "MarySue"). |
| 30 | ** ''Franchise/StarTrek''[='=]s influence would go on to shape far more than science fiction as a genre. Not only is it the TropeCodifier (and {{Trope Namer|s}}) for the PowerTrio, but things like automatic doors, Kindle, iPods, Bluetooth, cell phones, and laptops were all first conceived for ''Star Trek''. Creator/{{Apple}} co-founder Steve Wozniak directly credited ''Star Trek'' with inspiring his interest in technology, as did Martin Cooper, the inventor of the cell phone. |
| 31 | ** Its impact went beyond pop culture and into real-world politics. ''Star Trek'' had been the first successful American TV show to feature a mixed-race cast without either presenting it as unusual or having the non-White cast members in subservient roles. (When Creator/WhoopiGoldberg first saw the show as a little girl, she told her mother "Mama, there's a Black woman on television and she ain't no maid!") Dr. Mae Jemison, the first African-American woman to work in space, was inspired to become an astronaut after seeing Creator/NichelleNichols as Lieutenant Uhura on television as a little girl, and when Nichols herself considered leaving the show, none other than UsefulNotes/MartinLutherKingJr himself (for whom ''Star Trek'' was the only show he'd let his kids stay up late to watch) convinced her to stay by pointing to her status as a role model for Black youth. |
| 32 | ** Even ''its {{cancellation}}'' left a mark on television. Around the time of ''Star Trek''[='=]s third and final season in 1969, the networks started taking the study of {{demographics}} much more seriously, owing to mounting criticism that their highest-rated shows skewed overwhelmingly towards older, rural audiences and weren't connecting with the young viewers that advertisers craved. A study of ''Star Trek''[='=]s ratings after it was canceled showed that, while its viewership overall was low, it had been one of Creator/{{NBC}}'s top-rated shows among two groups of highly coveted viewers, men aged 18-45 and college-educated people. When the major networks realized just what a potential golden goose NBC had killed when it canceled ''Star Trek'', it became a major factor in UsefulNotes/TheRuralPurge in the early '70s as the major networks strove, arguably to the point of going overboard, not to repeat that mistake. |
| 33 | * In 1968, American network Creator/{{ABC}} was a distant third to its rivals Creator/{{CBS}} and Creator/{{NBC}}. Unable to compete with their news departments' coverage of the Democratic and Republican Party conventions that summer, ABC News instead hosted a series of debates between two intellectuals and bitter ideological rivals, the conservative Creator/WilliamFBuckleyJr and the leftist Creator/GoreVidal. The insults flew fast and furious -- among other highlights, Vidal called Buckley a [[GodwinsLaw "crypto-Nazi"]], to which Buckley responded by calling Vidal a "queer" and threatening to [[TalkToTheFist punch him in the face]]. On that stage, the modern image of the PompousPoliticalPundit, and the format for the "talking head" political TalkShow, arrived on television in the form of Buckley and Vidal with their back-and-forth insults, while ABC and its news department went from a perennial also-ran to a major player in American television, joining CBS and NBC as one of the Big Three networks. |
| 34 | * ''Series/SesameStreet'' (1969-present) revolutionized both puppetry and children's television. |
| 35 | ** It was not the start of Creator/JimHenson's career (he had been working in television since TheFifties), but it was his BreakthroughHit that brought his innovations in puppetry to mainstream attention and showed everybody else how to make puppet shows work on television. Instead of wooden puppets controlled through strings, Henson's [[Franchise/TheMuppets "Muppets"]] were hand puppets made of felt and cardboard, giving them a more lifelike appearance while also making it easier to hide their operators out of the camera's sight as opposed to having visible strings show up on camera. In the late '70s, Henson's ''Series/TheMuppetShow'' would demonstrate that his style of puppetry could appeal to adults as well. |
| 36 | ** Beyond its technical innovations, it, together with its Creator/{{PBS}} stablemate ''Series/MisterRogersNeighborhood'' (1968-2001), also popularized the EdutainmentShow and raised the prestige of children's television in TheSeventies. The show's creators at the Children's Television Workshop worked closely with teachers and child psychologists to create a program that would prepare young children for school without talking down to them, and the "CTW model" helped challenge the image that television gained in TheSixties as the "idiot box" that was [[NewMediaAreEvil dumbing down America]]. |
| 37 | [[/folder]] |
| 38 | |
| 39 | [[folder:1970s]] |
| 40 | * During the 1970-71 television season, Creator/{{CBS}} premiered two shows that revolutionized the medium as a whole and the {{sitcom}} in particular. |
| 41 | ** The first was ''Series/TheMaryTylerMooreShow'' (1970-77). Whereas sitcoms in the past were driven primarily by one-liners and wacky situations, ''MTM'' featured fleshed-out characters and mined its humor from their relationships and interactions. [[Creator/MaryTylerMoore Moore herself]], and her character Mary Richards, have also been pointed to as a turning point beyond just television, bringing women's liberation into American living rooms by featuring a working, unmarried[[note]]Mary Richards was originally written as a divorcée, but this was changed to a broken engagement due to a) the fact that divorce was still controversial in 1970, and b) fears that viewers would [[JustForFun/RoleAssociation associate Richards with Laura Petrie]], Moore's character from ''Series/TheDickVanDykeShow'', and think that Laura had divorced Rob.[[/note]] professional woman as the protagonist rather than having her be a stay-at-home wife. |
| 42 | ** Four months later, CBS premiered ''Series/AllInTheFamily'' (1971-79), which marked the arrival of Creator/NormanLear as one of the most revolutionary TV producers of all time. Starting with ''All in the Family'', Lear's shows brought a new level of social consciousness to American television in TheSeventies, raising the bar for the social, cultural, and political topics that could be discussed on TV and demonstrating that the "idiot box" could tackle serious issues with nuance and depth while still being funny and entertaining. He brought the "social realist" theater of the early 20th century into the age of television, telling stories about ordinary people living ordinary lives while confronting, and being confronted by, the issues and changing social norms of the day. His shows also brought a previously unheard-of degree of diversity to television, with his various female and non-white lead characters including the likes of [[Series/SanfordAndSon Fred G. Sanford]], [[Series/{{Maude}} Maude Findlay]], [[Series/GoodTimes Florida and James Evans]], [[Series/TheJeffersons George and Louise Jefferson]], and [[Series/OneDayAtATime1975 Ann Romano]]. |
| 43 | ** When the impact of these two shows was taken together, they, for better or worse, helped drive UsefulNotes/TheRuralPurge at CBS and other networks in TheSeventies, as their success seemed to vindicate CBS' strategy of focusing more on younger, urban/suburban demographics. It's not a coincidence that, almost immediately after ''MTM'' and ''All in the Family'' became hits, all three major networks began hunting for more shows like them, often enlisting Moore and Lear's production companies to do so, and shows like ''Series/GreenAcres'', ''Series/TheBeverlyHillbillies'', and ''Series/FamilyAffair'' began getting chopped down. |
| 44 | * ''Series/TheSixMillionDollarMan'' (1973-78) set a template for a generation of American sci-fi and fantasy ActionAdventure shows well into TheNineties, from its contemporaries ''Series/WonderWoman1975'' and ''Series/TheIncredibleHulk1977'' up through ''Series/KnightRider'' and ''Series/HerculesTheLegendaryJourneys''. It also proved that the {{superhero}} genre could be enjoyed by adult UsefulNotes/PrimeTime audiences as much as it was by kids, five years before ''Film/SupermanTheMovie'' did the same in film. |
| 45 | * ''Series/KolchakTheNightStalker'' (1974-75) was the show that figured out how to make horror work on television outside the context of an {{anthology}} series: namely, by combining the genre with the PoliceProcedural and focusing on the people investigating the various horrors. With that, the MonsterOfTheWeek format was born as IntrepidReporter Carl Kolchak hunted down monsters of various sorts. Creator/ChrisCarter cited ''Kolchak'' as one of his main influences when he created ''Series/TheXFiles'', and it's not hard to see why. |
| 46 | * In 1976, ''Rich Man, Poor Man'', an adaptation of Irwin Shaw's 1969 novel, popularized the {{miniseries}} on American television. It wasn't the first American miniseries; that would be ''The Blue Knight'', which aired in 1973. However, its success gave the format prestige as a way to faithfully adapt [[{{Doorstopper}} big, epic novels]] to the screen: instead of compressing them into a feature film that would have to [[AdaptationDecay leave a lot out]] even at three hours or more, a limited series offered a way to tell the story in as many episodes as needed, the only limits coming more from [[MediaWatchdog Standards and Practices]] than time constraints. From the late '70s through the mid-'80s, as evidenced by the success of shows like ''Series/{{Roots|1977}}'', ''Series/JesusOfNazareth'', ''Series/{{V|1983}}'', and ''Series/{{North and South|US}}'', the miniseries was the TV equivalent of the SummerBlockbuster, what the networks turned to during UsefulNotes/{{sweeps}} when they wanted to strike critical and audience gold with beefed-up budgets, [[AllStarCast star-studded casts]], flashy special effects, and attention-grabbing subject matter. Its influence lasts to this day; the 2010s era of "Peak TV" characterized by lavish, serialized prestige dramas on streaming services can easily be seen as simply a revival of the miniseries format. |
| 47 | * In 1976, UsefulNotes/TedTurner, owner of the UsefulNotes/{{Atlanta}} independent television station WTCG, created cable television as we know it. Before, cable had been primarily used to distribute television to remote areas beyond the reach of broadcast signals, with WTCG itself carried by cable networks in six Southern states, but Turner, wishing to broadcast [[UsefulNotes/MajorLeagueBaseball Atlanta Braves]] games in UsefulNotes/{{Boston}} so he could watch them from his yacht in Marblehead, hooked WTCG up to cable systems across the US and changed its name to [[Creator/{{TBS}} WTBS]] (Turner Broadcasting System), the first TV "superstation". For the first time, cable had value beyond just utility; it had stations of its own that weren't carried on regular broadcast television. |
| 48 | * ''Series/{{Dallas}}'' (1978-91) wasn't the first successful PrimeTimeSoap (that would be the 1964-69 adaptation of Grace Metalious' novel ''Literature/PeytonPlace''), but it ''was'' the first to become a true smash hit, bringing SoapOpera storytelling and {{melodrama}} to the evening hours with [[SceneryPorn far more lavish and decadent budgets, costuming, and set design]] than were afforded to their daytime counterparts (which ran at a rapid clip of up to five episodes a week and had to stretch their budgets thin as a result). Within the show, the biggest landmark was the "Who Shot J.R.?" StoryArc. As [[OnceOriginalNowCommon hard as it may be to believe now]], it was considered ''unthinkable'' for an American TV show in 1980 to end a season on a {{cliffhanger}}, so when ''Dallas'' did it, it legitimately shocked the nation and produced what remains one of the most widely-viewed television events of all time. ''Dallas'', together with shows like ''Series/Dynasty1981'', ''Falcon Crest'', and the spinoff ''Series/KnotsLanding'' that [[FollowTheLeader followed in its wake]], changed the soap opera and American television forever by demonstrating that prime time dramas could play around with the same kind of long-running, serialized stories, laying an important crack in the soap opera's dominance of daytime television as the genre migrated to prime time -- especially once shows in genres outside of the "[[BigScrewedUpFamily family drama]]" format common to soaps, from cop shows to sitcoms to sci-fi and fantasy, began [[{{Soaperizing}} doing the same]]. |
| 49 | * With the daytime SoapOpera needing to evolve to keep up with the prime time challenge from ''Dallas'', the hiring of Gloria Monty as the showrunner for ''Series/GeneralHospital'' in 1978 proved to be the next big game changer for the genre. Given three months to save the show from cancellation, Monty decided the way to go was to appeal to younger viewers. Along with head writer Douglas Marland, Monty turned the show's focus to its younger characters, especially NaiveEverygirl Laura, ramped up its {{Melodrama}}, started adding in CrimeDrama and adventure elements, and sped up its pacing, putting in twice as many scenes per episode as the then-standard for soaps, as well as abandoning the archaic "live-to-tape"[[labelnote:explanation]]i.e. the show had been staged like it was a live broadcast, but was pre-recorded for later playback[[/labelnote]] production format, which allowed it to start doing things like filming on location. It paid off dramatically, as it suddenly became a major sensation, with 30 million viewers tuning in for the wedding of [[SuperCouple Luke and Laura]] in 1981. With other soaps benefitting from the renewed attention to the genre, youth appeal, fast pacing, increased production values, over-the-top storylines and an emphasis on the SuperCouple became the daytime norm. |
| 50 | [[/folder]] |
| 51 | |
| 52 | [[folder:1980s]] |
| 53 | * Ted Turner revolutionized cable TV a second time in 1980 when he launched CNN, the first [[TwentyFourHourNewsNetworks 24-hour news network]]. Before, people had to wait for the morning and evening newscasts and papers to catch up on the daily news, but CNN allowed them to do so at any time, in real time, and developed the media infrastructure that allowed them to be the first to respond to a breaking news story with national reach. The advantages of this became apparent during UsefulNotes/TheGulfWar, the moment when CNN was catapulted into the national spotlight as its reporters were able to offer on-the-ground, instantaneous updates of the conflict in a way that Creator/{{CBS}}, Creator/{{NBC}}, and Creator/{{ABC}}'s news teams couldn't without interrupting their other programming. CNN's coverage of the Gulf War made cable news a serious competitor to broadcast news in both popularity and legitimacy, leading to the creation of MSNBC and Fox News in 1996 to compete with it. |
| 54 | * ''Series/HillStreetBlues'' (1981-87) was the series for which the term "gritty cop drama" was invented. The use of handheld cameras gave viewers the feeling of being in the middle of a messy, dangerous, often chaotic, big-city landscape. Other camera techniques, such as tight closeups, use of offscreen dialogue, and rapid cuts between stories, gave the series a {{documentary}} feel. It pioneered intertwined storylines in an episode, some of which took several episodes to play out. Many episodes were written to take place in a single day. It was one of the first cop shows to have dirty-cop arcs instead of one-shot or guest appearances. A Creator/JackWebb series it wasn't. |
| 55 | * ''Series/ThePeoplesCourt'' (1981-93, 1997-present) revolutionized the "court show". Before, programs built around depicting the legal process were dramatizations, using actors to play the judge, the jury, the litigants, and the attorneys. What ''The People's Court'' did was turn it into a proto-RealityShow, with a real arbitrator deciding real small-claims cases on national television, a format that spawned a slew of similar programs that turned reality court shows into a staple of daytime TV while the dramatized versions all but vanished. |
| 56 | * ''Series/RobinOfSherwood'' (1984-86) introduced a number of changes from previous depictions of Myth/RobinHood: being the first version to get away from the green-tights-and-hat-with-a-feather image in favour of something a band of 12th century outlaws might actually wear, introducing the idea of a Saracen outlaw which was copied by later adaptations, returning Maid Marian to being an ActionGirl after being a DamselInDistress since the [[UsefulNotes/VictorianBritain Victorian era]], and portraying King Richard as just as bad as Prince John (although that didn't catch on as much). |
| 57 | * Creator/BillCosby created ''Series/TheCosbyShow'' (1984-92) to present [[LighterAndSofter a more idealized portrait]] of black America, the Huxtables being a loving, well-educated, upper-middle-class African-American family in contrast to the heroes of the {{blaxploitation}} films and Creator/NormanLear sitcoms of TheSeventies, who he saw as [[JiveTurkey lower-class stereotypes]]. While that part of the show's legacy would eventually inspire backlash from other black TV writers (even before [[ContractualPurity Cosby's personal disgrace]] years later), many of them will still point to ''The Cosby Show'' as a trailblazer for the BlackSitcom and for African Americans on TV in general, portraying a family that was unmistakably black but also aspirational, and which faced many of the same issues as their white counterparts. Furthermore, it also helped revive the DomCom for a new generation, modernizing the traditional sitcom nuclear family (the mother Clair was a lawyer while the father Cliff worked from home and took on many "feminine" roles in the house) but still embracing many of the tropes of its '50s forebears. [[https://op-talk.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/09/24/why-the-cosby-show-still-matters/ This article]] by Jake Flanigin for ''The New York Times'' goes into more detail. |
| 58 | * While ''The Phil Donahue Show'' pioneered the tabloid TalkShow, it was ''Series/TheOprahWinfreyShow'' (1986-2011) that turned it into a genre and spawned all the imitators. Winfrey used her syndicated talk show as a platform to discuss hot-button issues on a national stage, making the issues personal in a way that even Donahue (himself not one to shy away from controversial topics) never did and putting them directly into viewers' living rooms. Notably, her influence wound up flowing in two different directions: shows like ''Series/TheView'' and later seasons of ''Series/{{Today}}'' embraced Winfrey's conversational style on one hand, while the likes of ''Series/TheMortonDowneyJrShow'', ''Geraldo'', and ''Series/TheJerrySpringerShow'' on the other went for the [[PointAndLaughShow controversial subject matter]], leading to the "trash TV" subgenre of "extreme" talk shows. |
| 59 | * Speaking of ''Series/TheMortonDowneyJrShow'' (1987-89), it popularized a very different sort of TV TalkShow: one in which the host was openly combative towards his guests, using his program as a bully pulpit to pontificate on political and cultural issues. While Downey's career as a talk show host only lasted two years before [[CreatorKiller going down in disgrace]], he was also a clear case of ShortLivedBigImpact, as the style of his show has been pointed to as an inspiration for the "trash TV" boom of TheNineties in the short term, and the rise of RealityTV and Fox News in the long term. Even Al Sharpton, a pundit who sits on the opposite end of the political spectrum from the conservative Downey, cited him as an inspiration for his confrontational style; perhaps not coincidentally, Sharpton was a frequent guest on Downey's show. Andrew O'Hehir, [[https://www.salon.com/2013/06/04/morton_downey_jr_the_man_who_broke_talk_tv/ writing]] for ''Salon'', said that "[i]f he wasn't quite the first host to understand a political talk show as primarily a form of theater or a revival meeting, rather than a conversation or debate, he pushed that realization to its illogical extreme." |
| 60 | * ''Series/{{Seinfeld}}'' (1989-98) changed the way {{sitcom}} characters and stories are portrayed so completely that the original series seems [[OnceOriginalNowCommon derivative]] in the new context it created. It helped pave the way for American sitcom protagonists who were [[UnsympatheticComedyProtagonist far less moral and sympathetic]] than before; while there had been people like [[Series/AllInTheFamily Archie Bunker]], [[Series/MarriedWithChildren Al Bundy]], and [[Series/{{Roseanne}} Roseanne Conner]] in the past, the cast of ''Seinfeld'' was unique in that they were ''all'' abrasive, selfish jerks with nobody to balance out their worst tendencies, with the show's humor coming from watching them go through life and handle it badly without learning a damn thing (hence the show's famous credo of "no hugging and no learning"). Along the way, it also increased the standards of sophistication for sitcom humor, its eponymous creator and star, stand-up comic Creator/JerrySeinfeld, eschewing the cornball humor and [[AnAesop Aesops]] of many contemporary sitcoms in favor of biting wit and satire. Shows like ''Series/ItsAlwaysSunnyInPhiladelphia'', ''Series/CurbYourEnthusiasm'' (created by ''Seinfeld'' veteran Creator/LarryDavid), and ''Series/ShamelessUS'' probably would not exist without the influence of ''Seinfeld''. |
| 61 | * ''Series/SavedByTheBell'' (1989-1992) was this for the KidCom. Previously, sitcoms usually cast child and teenage characters in supporting roles, with even shows like ''Series/WelcomeBackKotter'' and ''Series/SquarePegs'' that focused on them also giving just as much attention to the adult characters. In fact, the original incarnation of the show, ''Good Morning Miss Bliss'', was very much in that vein. Once the show was retooled, the focus was shifted to the teens, the adults were moved to supporting roles, and its timeslot was moved to air with NBC's animated shows, as Peter Engel knew from the beginning that the success of the show would be down to the kids. The series featured similar subject matter to the Series/AfterschoolSpecial format, but in a much more lighthearted way that focused more on the characters' {{Zany Scheme}}s than on preachy moral messages, while the main character of Zack Morris was repeatedly BreakingTheFourthWall to address the audience (something that was very uncommon at the time). It paved the way for networks to aim more programming towards adolescents and teens, with the show in particular being a huge influence on many high-school-set sitcoms on Creator/{{Nickelodeon}} (especially those created by Creator/DanSchneider) and the Creator/DisneyChannel. |
| 62 | [[/folder]] |
| 63 | |
| 64 | [[folder:1990s]] |
| 65 | * When ''Series/BeverlyHills90210'' (1990-2000) premiered on Creator/{{Fox}}, it revolutionized the American TeenDrama. Before, teen-oriented TV series in the US had been either [[AnAesop issue-oriented]] Series/{{Afterschool Special}}s, {{sitcom}}s with mostly teenage casts like ''Series/WelcomeBackKotter'' and ''Series/SavedByTheBell'', or transmissions of Creator/{{CBC}}'s ''Series/DegrassiHigh'' that made it over the border or onto Creator/{{PBS}} stations. ''90210'', however, brought the genre [[HotterAndSexier sex appeal]], [[SoapOpera soapy drama]], and CharacterDevelopment that made it a sensation among young people and [[MediaScaremongering a cause for concern]] among [[MoralGuardians their parents]], while handling teen issues with a mix of realism and sympathy for the teenage characters that was unheard of for such shows at the time (at least in the US[[note]]Canadians watching the aforementioned ''Degrassi High'' and its predecessor, ''Series/DegrassiJuniorHigh'', likely wouldn't have been so shocked by ''90210''[='=]s tone. In fact, a popular rumor among ''Degrassi'' fans claims that Creator/AaronSpelling tried to get an [[ForeignRemake American remake]] of ''Degrassi'' off the ground, and created ''90210'' as a SpiritualAdaptation after being rebuffed by that show's producers.[[/note]]), bringing the revolution started by Creator/JohnHughes' teen movies in TheEighties to television. The sea change that ''90210'' started was such that virtually every teen drama of the '90s and 2000s bears some of its influence, even if only in reaction to it. |
| 66 | * Two programs in the first half of the '90s are credited with popularizing RealityTV in the US. |
| 67 | ** The first was ''Series/TheRealWorld'' (1992-2013). It didn't invent the RealityShow; programs like ''Series/CandidCamera'' and ''Series/{{Cops}}'' predated it, and ''The Real World'' itself was inspired by the 1973 PBS documentary series ''An American Family''. However, it was this show that laid the foundation for what would become arguably the most common RealityTV formula, a DocuSoap format in which a group of strangers were selected to live together and generate the show's drama and storylines organically, often having been screened and picked out by the producers in the hopes that their personalities would clash. Going beyond television, Pedro Zamora on the show's third season in 1994, ''The Real World: San Francisco'', is often credited with breaking down taboos around AIDS and homosexuality with his sympathetic portrayal. |
| 68 | ** The second wasn't a "show" ''per se'', but rather, the UsefulNotes/OJSimpson trial in 1994-95. The highly sensationalized case -- a superstar athlete turned actor at the peak of his celebrity is credibly accused of murdering two people, in a case where people's opinions one way or the other served as a shibboleth for numerous cultural fault lines in American society -- felt to many Americans like a thrilling arc out of a SoapOpera, and [[IfItBleedsItLeads that was just how it was treated]] by the media. Many networks devoted their daytime programming to covering the "Trial of the Century", which not only crowded out their ''actual'' daytime soap operas and set off their decline due to the disruption of their schedules, but also whetted people's appetites for more programming in that vein.[[note]]Marcia Clark, the lead prosecutor during the trial, noted that the networks originally received hate mail from soap opera fans angry that their favorite shows were being preempted, only for those same people to [[NotSoAboveItAll happily tune in to the unfolding drama]] (and compliment her on the street), to the point where they were disappointed when it was all over.[[/note]] Lili Anolik, [[https://www.vanityfair.com/style/society/2014/06/oj-simpson-trial-reality-tv-pop-culture writing]] for ''Vanity Fair'', has described the media circus around the trial as the first true reality TV hit. Perhaps not coincidentally, the Kardashian family, among the most famous figures in reality TV, first entered the public eye due to lawyer and family patriarch Robert Kardashian being part of Simpson's "Dream Team" of legal defenders -- a point that ''Series/AmericanCrimeStory: Series/ThePeopleVOJSimpson'', a dramatization of the trial and the coverage of it, frequently made with [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXyvYTS7xy0 its portrayal of Robert and his daughters.]] |
| 69 | * In the UK, meanwhile, the turning point for RealityTV came when Creator/{{ITV}} premiered ''Series/PoliceCameraAction'' (1994-2010), a show focused largely on police dashcam videos, chiefly from the UK initially but later with videos sourced internationally (they even did an episode on the aforementioned O. J. Simpson trial in 1996). While ostensibly an EdutainmentShow in its early years, it was DarkerAndEdgier than anything else on TV, with a heavy dose of GreyAndGreyMorality and the police themselves portrayed as just as susceptible to crime and corruption as the public, and while it wasn't the first police documentary series even in the UK (that would be the obscure, [[ShortRunner short-lived]] 1992-1993 Creator/Channel4 documentary ''The Nick''), it was a seminal influence on British reality shows as a whole going forward. |
| 70 | * ''Franchise/PowerRangers'' (1993-present) brought {{tokusatsu}} to the West, combining dubbed footage from ''Franchise/SuperSentai'' with new English-language scenes shot with Western actors to great effect. It spawned a legion of copycat action shows in children's television (many of them produced by [[Creator/SabanEntertainment Haim Saban]], the man behind ''Power Rangers'' seeking to make lightning strike twice), and beyond that, its success, together with that of ''Series/{{Baywatch}}'', has also been pointed to as leading to a wave of syndicated sci-fi/fantasy action series in TheNineties, many of them leaning heavily on {{camp}} and comedy. |
| 71 | * In 1993, the Creator/{{Fox}} network was already known for hit shows like ''Series/MarriedWithChildren'', ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'', and ''Series/BeverlyHills90210'', but it was still viewed as something of an upstart in American television, having launched just seven years earlier. But when they outbid CBS that year for the rights to air [[UsefulNotes/AmericanFootball NFC football]] games, and proceeded to pillage most of CBS Sports' on-air talent and several of CBS' most valuable affiliates (including UsefulNotes/{{Atlanta}}, UsefulNotes/{{Milwaukee}}, UsefulNotes/{{Detroit}}, UsefulNotes/{{Cleveland}}, and UsefulNotes/{{D|FWMetroplex}}allas) the following year, they were established as a power player. No longer were they "the fourth network"; after 1993, the Big Three networks ignored Fox at their own peril, and by the 2000s Fox had joined their rivals in what are now the Big ''Four''. CBS, meanwhile, saw its AudienceAlienatingEra, already ongoing since the mid-late '80s, deepen further; it wouldn't be until 2002 when they fully recovered. |
| 72 | ** Fox's NFL coverage also revolutionized the way sports was presented on American TV by introducing the continuous score/clock graphic on the upper part of the screen. It was was derided as visual clutter by the other networks but fans quickly expressed their approval and it's now nearly universal for all live sports broadcasts. ''NFL on Fox'' also marked a huge jump toward packaging football as entertainment rather than the often dry style that dominated sportscasting by the early 90s. |
| 73 | * ''Franchise/StarTrek'' and ''Franchise/StarWars'' were (and still are) considered the bastions of American ScienceFiction, both being notable for their 'optimistic' views. Starting in 1993, however, three shows -- ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'' (1993-99), ''Series/BabylonFive'' (1993-98), and ''Series/TheXFiles'' (1993-2002) -- started taking sci-fi in a new direction, away from the SpaceOpera[=/=]SpaceWestern concept and more towards a mix of character-driven drama inspired by cop shows and long-running story arcs. (''The X-Files'' was even set on present-day Earth, drawing less from 'classic' science fiction tropes for its lore and more from real-world UFO conspiracy theories.) This started a slow but steady shift in American television that started with things like ''Series/{{Farscape}}'', the reimagined ''Series/{{Battlestar Galactica|2003}}'', and the Franchise/StargateVerse, and later grew beyond science fiction in a big way with the premiere of ''Series/TheSopranos'' (as noted below). |
| 74 | * ''Series/TheXFiles'', in addition to leading the aforementioned trend towards DarkerAndEdgier, more character/story-driven science fiction on American television, also left its mark in a number of other ways. |
| 75 | ** At the time, it was among the scariest shows on television, and while there had been scary shows before it going back as far as ''Series/TheTwilightZone1959'' and ''Series/AlfredHitchcockPresents'', it helped open the door for far more explicitly horrifying content on TV. The 2010s' boom in horror shows like ''Series/TheWalkingDead'' and ''Series/AmericanHorrorStory'' likely would not have happened as it did if not for ''The X-Files'' leading the way. |
| 76 | ** It also heavily impacted the PoliceProcedural, and not just by raising the bar in terms of the violence such shows could get away with. Emily St. James, writing for ''Vox'' at the time of [[https://www.vox.com/culture/2018/10/23/17989508/x-files-25th-anniversary-monsters-of-the-week-excerpt-todd-vanderwerff the show's 25th anniversary,]] has said that "our modern crime dramas are usually just ''X-Files'' that have jettisoned the supernatural elements", namely in terms of the greater focus that they have placed on technology, forensics, and the process of investigation versus earlier police dramas. |
| 77 | ** It raised the standards for direction and cinematography on television. For a long time, TV was seen as a place where visual style went to die unless you had managed to recruit a big-name director for an episode (a big part of ''Series/TwinPeaks''[='=] early appeal was the involvement of Creator/DavidLynch as the ShowRunner). ''The X-Files'' showed that supposed "journeyman" TV directors could turn in aesthetically stunning work far greater than what people normally expected of television productions, such that it's not a surprise that many of them made the leap to working in film. While ''Series/TheSopranos'' creator David Chase is often credited with leading the charge for more cinematic flair on television, at the time he created that show he was considering directing for ''The X-Files''. |
| 78 | * Eleven days after ''The X-Files'' premiered, ''Series/NYPDBlue'' (1993-2005) joined it as one of the shows that changed what American network television could [[GettingCrapPastTheRadar get away with]]. The pilot episode featured a sex scene between Creator/DavidCaruso and Creator/AmyBrenneman's characters, kept safe for broadcast only by {{Censor Shadow}}s and creative camera angles, and one character calling another a "prissy little bitch", shocking the nation and leading directly to the creation of the [[MoralGuardians Parents Television Council]]. On network television, this set off an arms race in the '90s as every network set out to push the boundaries for what they could show on screen without getting fined by [[MediaWatchdog the FCC]], and while this race would end quite suddenly in 2004 thanks to an incident further down this list, cable television, unburdened by the regulation faced by broadcast networks, would be free to go that much further with all the saucy, violent, and profane content that subscribers and advertisers were willing to pay for. |
| 79 | * If ''Seinfeld'' was "the show about nothing", then ''Series/{{Friends}}'' (1994-2004), its Creator/{{NBC}} "Must See TV" stablemate, took sitcoms in a very different direction. While its basic setup and a lot of its humor were decidedly old-fashioned (its hip BigApplesauce setting and young cast aside), its sense of continuity wasn't; instead of having each plot be resolved at the end of each episode (save for a handful of big moments), it had its characters grow and form relationships that [[CharacterDevelopment developed]] as the show went on. If ''Dallas'' brought long-form storytelling from daytime soaps to primetime dramas, then ''Friends'' brought it to sitcoms in turn. Today, one would be hard-pressed to find a sitcom made in the last twenty years that ''doesn't'' have a continuing StoryArc. |
| 80 | * ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer'' (1997-2003) had a similar impact to ''The X-Files'' when it premiered. |
| 81 | ** Together with ''The X-Files'', it played a major role in boosting the critical respectability of 'genre' television. Early in its run, the show's title alone saw it dismissed by critics expecting teenybopper junk, but by the time of its GrandFinale, it and its SpinOff ''Series/{{Angel}}'' were the subject of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffy_studies serious academic analysis.]] After ''Buffy'' and ''The X-Files'', the SciFiGhetto began to crumble on television, as critics could no longer dismiss fantasy and science fiction shows sight unseen. ''Series/VeronicaMars'', ''Series/{{Lost}}'', ''Series/TrueBlood'', the Series/{{Arrowverse}}, and the relaunched ''Series/BattlestarGalactica2003'' and ''Series/DoctorWho'' are just some of the shows that proliferated in their wake, winning a level of acclaim that had never been afforded to similar shows in the fairly recent past. |
| 82 | ** Also together with ''The X-Files'', it demonstrated that there existed a potentially massive female fanbase for fantasy and science fiction stories, beyond just {{Estrogen Brigade}}s attracted to [[MrFanservice hunky male leads]], breaking the stereotype of genre fiction being a male-dominated fandom. More importantly, while ''The X-Files'' was chiefly marketed to men with the female fans being seen as an unexpected but welcome bonus, ''Buffy'', a TeenDrama with HorrorComedy elements and overtly feminist messaging, was explicitly marketed primarily to women from the very beginning. A staggering number of female protagonists in genre fiction since (especially in UrbanFantasy) can probably trace their lineage back to this show's titular ValleyGirl VampireHunter. |
| 83 | ** Finally, its fusion of self-aware comedy and [[BuffySpeak witty dialogue]] with genuine danger and pathos, without becoming either too silly or too grim, left a mark far beyond just television. Creator/RussellTDavies cited ''Buffy''[='=]s tone as an influence on the relaunced ''Doctor Who'', and ''Buffy'' ShowRunner Creator/JossWhedon later had [[Film/TheAvengers2012 a major hand]] in shaping the Franchise/MarvelCinematicUniverse and, by extension, the entire world of [[SummerBlockbuster blockbuster filmmaking]] in an image not unlike that of ''Buffy''. |
| 84 | * Creator/{{HBO}} led a revolution in television in the late '90s and early '00s. |
| 85 | ** Shows like ''Series/{{Oz}}'' (1997-2003), ''Series/SexAndTheCity'' (1998-2004), ''Series/TheSopranos'' (1999-2007), and ''Series/TheWire'' (2002-08), with their focus on cinematography, acting, and complex themes and storylines developed through sharp writing and in-depth characters, proved that television productions can be just as good as Hollywood movies, and that cable television could seriously compete with the broadcast {{networks}} on their own turf. This has led to what has been widely called a second golden age for American television, one that very quickly spread to basic cable channels in the '00s and the nascent streaming services in the '10s. The catalysts for ''those'' are described in more detail below. |
| 86 | ** Said shows also brought more mature content into American television, which, until then, was largely restricted to fairly tame (about a mild PG-13) programming due to [[MediaWatchdog the FCC]], whose rules only covered broadcast networks (cable, as a pay service, was exempted). By contrast, shows on broadcast TV like ''The X-Files'' and ''Series/NYPDBlue'' regularly had to tone down their most graphic content in order to avoid getting their networks slapped with fines. Due to these restrictions, much of the creative boom in American TV during the first two decades of the 21st century happened on cable networks -- and more specifically, on ''premium'' cable networks, which not only don't have to worry about the FCC, but also don't have to worry about advertisers being pressured by MoralGuardians to pull their ads. |
| 87 | ** If any one HBO series can be pointed to as the most impactful, then most people would suggest the gangster drama ''Series/TheSopranos'' as the harbinger of the era of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Age_of_Television_(2000s-present) "Peak TV" or "Prestige TV".]] It took the innovations of the aforementioned ''The X-Files'' and brought them from science fiction to a comparatively grounded crime story, focusing on character drama, GreyAndGrayMorality, a deep and complex MythArc, risky storytelling that wasn't afraid to "go there", bar-raising performances from its ensemble cast, production values on the level of a Hollywood movie, and a contemporary, easily-recognizable setting in the form of [[{{Joisey}} suburban New Jersey]]. Many critics have hailed it as the greatest TV show of all time, or at least in the upper echelon, the show that proved that television could be TrueArt on the level of film; Maureen Ryan, [[https://www.popmatters.com/the-sopranos-is-the-most-influential-television-drama-ever-2496186702.html writing]] for ''[=PopMatters=]'', said that "[n]o one-hour drama series has had a bigger impact on how stories are told on the small screen, or more influence on what kind of fare we've been offered by an ever-growing array of television networks." Its impact can be felt on crime shows in particular (especially those with a VillainProtagonist) but also throughout the landscape of modern serialized television. |
| 88 | * While ''The Real World'' proved that RealityTV had mass appeal, it was two shows that came after it that turned it into a global phenomenon beyond Creator/{{MTV}}'s youth audience: the Swedish series ''Expedition Robinson'' (1997-present), better known in its American incarnation ''Series/{{Survivor}}'' (2000-present), and the Dutch series ''Series/BigBrother'' (1999-2006, not counting its ''many'' [[MultiNationalShows international spinoffs]]). Together, they combined the DocuSoap with the GameShow by incorporating a competitive element and the idea of being VotedOffTheIsland (a trope that ''Survivor'' [[TropeNamers named]]), allowing for both traditional game show challenges and added drama and tension as the people who lived with one another were also competing and scheming against each other for tactical advantage. ''Survivor'' and ''Big Brother'' not only spawned a boom in competitive reality shows in the 2000s that largely sent more traditional game show formats into decline, they became the subject of serious public debate as viewers were alternatively horrified and entranced by the lengths contestants went to in order to win, especially after the first American season of ''Survivor'' was won by the CardCarryingVillain Richard Hatch, who became the template for every reality TV [[TheChessmaster chessmaster]] since. |
| 89 | * ''Series/TheDailyShow'' during [[Series/TheDailyShowWithJonStewart the tenure]] of Creator/JonStewart (1999-2015) took the NewsParody and turned it into a major genre of late-night television comedy, mainly by fusing it with a genuine political TalkShow. While there had been shows like ''Series/ThatWasTheWeekThatWas'', ''[[Creator/BillMaher Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher]]'', and the Weekend Update sketches on ''Series/SaturdayNightLive'' before it, Stewart brought earnestness and righteous indignation to the genre and used his show as a platform for more than just "above it all" snarking at dumb politicians and pundits, staking out specific positions on policies and issues and inviting public figures on for interviews while giving the material a humorous bent. Beyond just the various spinoffs created by ''Daily Show'' alumni (most notably ''Series/LastWeekTonightWithJohnOliver'' and ''Series/FullFrontalWithSamanthaBee''), the success and impact of Stewart's ''Daily Show'' meant that other late-night talk shows had to up their game with their political humor if they wanted to compete. |
| 90 | * Before 1999's ''Series/WalkingWithDinosaurs'' debuted, most documentaries on prehistoric life were usually talking head-centric works featuring dig sites and lab work, with mostly still images of drawings being the main way of depicting the subjects, with the rest using either traditional animation, stop-motion, animatronics or puppets, and after the 80’s basal CG, but rarely for more then a few minutes. ''Franchise/WalkingWith'' however, went in the style of a pure nature documentary that used then-cutting edge CG used on a scale not seen before to immerse one in a mesozoic environment with no cuts to any human talking heads whatsoever. It also showed dinosaurs acting for most of it like animals and not as [[PrehistoricMonster Prehistoric Monsters]] that did nothing but fight and attack. It was a monumental success, kicking of not only sequel series, a special, and a spinoff, but also caused many palaeo-documentaries to step things up, most notably from Discovery Channel, bringing audiences ''WesternAnimation/WhenDinosaursRoamedAmerica'' and ''Series/DinosaurPlanet'' just a few years after it. Today, most [[NarrativeDrivenNatureDocumentary narrative dinosaur documentaries]] and to a lesser extent paleo-media as a whole borrows many of its storytelling conventions from it. |
| 91 | [[/folder]] |
| 92 | |
| 93 | [[folder:2000s]] |
| 94 | * It's rare for a TV show to revolutionize a genre, and it's damn near unheard of for its TransatlanticEquivalent to do the exact same thing to a radically different version of that genre in another country. Yet that's exactly what the [[Series/TheOfficeUK British]] (2001-2003) and [[Series/TheOfficeUS American]] (2005-2013) versions of ''The Office'' did with the {{sitcom}}. They each popularized a single-camera, LaughTrack-free format inspired more by {{mockumentar|y}}ies and RealityTV than traditional sitcoms, and brought long-term arcs and more complex storytelling into a genre previously defined by NegativeContinuity outside of a few big episodes. The American version also brought CringeComedy to heights unseen in mainstream hit shows in the past; while such humor wouldn't have been out of place on a traditional BritCom, for American sitcom viewers it came as a shock. The list of sitcoms on either side of UsefulNotes/ThePond that can trace their roots to both versions of ''The Office'' is staggering. |
| 95 | * Creator/{{FX|Networks}}'s ''Series/TheShield'' (2002-2008) brought the quality and mature content of premium cable to basic cable, previously viewed as a wasteland of reruns and old movies. After the success of ''The Shield'', not only did FX make other hit series such as ''Series/NipTuck'', ''Series/RescueMe'', and ''Series/ItsAlwaysSunnyInPhiladelphia'', but other cable networks started making their own edgy, acclaimed, and wildly successful series, most famously Creator/{{AMC}} with ''Series/BreakingBad'' and ''Series/MadMen''. Today, basic cable shows have gotten close to premium cable in terms of what they can show, with networks like Creator/{{FX|Networks}}, the Creator/USANetwork, and AMC allowing {{Precision F Strike}}s on their original programming, and compete head-to-head with the broadcast networks in terms of ratings. At its peak, AMC's ''Series/TheWalkingDead'', a program whose content would never have made it on broadcast television, regularly pulled in well over ten million viewers, a number that not only was once thought unattainable by smaller cable shows but, thanks to cable turning the audience tide, actually dwarfed the ratings of most broadcast fare in the 2010s. |
| 96 | * The frenzy that resulted from Music/JanetJackson's WardrobeMalfunction at the UsefulNotes/SuperBowl XXXVIII halftime show in 2004 left a lasting mark on American television. |
| 97 | ** While cable TV was pushing boundaries, this incident caused over-the-air network television to swing in the other direction. During TheNineties, there was a push to [[GettingCrapPastTheRadar get edgier content onto broadcast TV]], with shows like ''Series/TheXFiles'' and ''Series/NYPDBlue'' leading the charge with their [[BloodierAndGorier graphic violence]], [[HotterAndSexier sex scenes]], and foul language. That ended after a superstar pop singer accidentally bared one of her breasts in front of 150 million viewers after putting on a highly suggestive performance. For MoralGuardians like the Parents Television Council, this was TheLastStraw that gave the ammunition they needed to wage war against what they saw as the corrupting influence of modern television. As the FCC cracked down on sex, violence, and swearing, the American broadcast television landscape grew increasingly sanitized while shows with more graphic content migrated to cable and later streaming. |
| 98 | ** On a lighter note, the affair was [[TheInternetIsForPorn also]] a KillerApp for DVR systems, as many people were eager to seek out an "instant replay" so they could see Janet half-naked for themselves. One of those people, Jawed Karim, co-founded Website/YouTube and Vevo partly for this reason. |
| 99 | * ''Series/{{Lost}}'' (2004-2010) popularized the idea of shows built around long-term, [[DrivingQuestion mystery-focused]] {{myth arc}}s that [[MindScrew jerk the viewer's mind around]] and are designed for close analysis, WildMassGuessing, and EpilepticTrees by fans, as well as bringing sprawling, SoapOpera-style storylines and non-linear storytelling into mainstream TV sci-fi and fantasy. Creator/JJAbrams, the co-creator of the show, famously referred to this method of storytelling as the "mystery box" in [[https://www.ted.com/talks/j_j_abrams_the_mystery_box a 2007 TED Talk]] on the subject. While it has its antecedents (''Series/TwinPeaks'', ''Series/TheXFiles'', ''Series/BabylonFive'', even Abrams' own previous show ''Series/{{Alias}}''), the boom in such programming after ''Lost''[='=]s success shows why the trope is called the ''{{Noughties|DramaSeries}}'' [[NoughtiesDramaSeries Drama Series]]. |
| 100 | * ''[[Series/LagunaBeach Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County]]'' (2004-06) was envisioned as a RealityTV version of ''Series/TheOC'', and in doing so, it demonstrated the full possibilities of the format by taking the DocuSoap to the next level. It featured long-running storylines that stretched across seasons, eschewed the ConfessionCam for narration, brought actual production values in order to give the events a more cinematic flair rather than try to remain grounded in ''cinéma vérité'' realism, and styled itself as a TeenDrama that blurred the line between reality and fiction to the point that it's been argued as the moment when reality TV developed its own version of {{kayfabe}}. With ''Laguna Beach'', reality TV evolved into a new form, a modern-day version of the SoapOpera in which the characters were real people whose lives could be (and, in the emerging age of social media, often were) followed outside the show. Shows from ''Series/TheRealHousewives'' to ''Series/KeepingUpWithTheKardashians'' would embrace the innovations that ''Laguna Beach'' popularized. |
| 101 | * The ''Film/HighSchoolMusical'' trilogy (2006 and '07 on the Creator/DisneyChannel, the third film going to theaters in 2008) heralded a revival of live-action children's programming after the field had been dominated in the late '90s and early '00s by animated series, as well as the Disney Channel's shift to a greater focus on {{Teen Idol}}s. Beyond just television, it's also been credited with getting a new generation of kids and teenagers interested in [[TheMusical musical theater]], chipping away at the stigma that had developed around it by then and making it something that it was okay to unironically love, leading to the success of ''Series/{{Glee}}'', the ''Film/PitchPerfect'' films, ''WebVideo/DoctorHorriblesSingAlongBlog'', ''Series/CrazyExGirlfriend'', ''Series/ZoeysExtraordinaryPlaylist'', and the broadcast networks' live TV musicals in the late '00s and the '10s. Aja Romano, writing for ''Vox'' at the time of the films' [[Series/HighSchoolMusicalTheMusicalTheSeries 2019 TV series adaptation]], goes into more detail in [[https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/11/13/20958457/high-school-musical-movies-legacy-dcom-bet-on-it this article.]] |
| 102 | * Creator/{{Netflix}} not only revolutionized the types of programs that air on television, it also fundamentally changed how people consume and interact with the medium. |
| 103 | ** The launch of Netflix's streaming service in 2007 changed television from "appointment" viewing, where people tuned in at specific times to catch programs or set their [=VCRs=] or [=DVRs=] to record them, to a model where any episode could be watched at any time. One major consequence of this was that serialized storytelling, built around {{Story Arc}}s spanning multiple episodes or even seasons, grew to displace procedural storytelling, built around standalone episodes with contained stories, as it became possible to "binge-watch" multiple episodes at once and follow a long-running story more easily. Binge-watching had first taken off a few years prior with DVD releases of TV shows, and for decades TV networks had known the appeal of running marathons of popular programs, but streaming made binge-watching much easier and less expensive for viewers now that they no longer had to purchase expensive DVD box sets or check their listings for when networks were running marathons. The streaming revolution that Netflix heralded is often pointed to as a key factor in the "Second Golden Age of Television" that took off in the 2000s, which was characterized by critically acclaimed, BetterOnDVD serialized TV shows like ''Series/BreakingBad'' and ''Series/MadMen'' that, just a few years prior, likely would've been canceled due to their low ratings in first-run broadcast. |
| 104 | ** Eventually, as TV producers came to recognize the value of streaming as a second-run distribution platform and started charging more money for streaming rights, Netflix got into the business of making its own original shows that it would own the rights to... and revolutionized television for a second time. ''Series/HouseOfCardsUS'' (2013-18), ''Series/ArrestedDevelopment'' season 4 (2013), and ''Series/OrangeIsTheNewBlack'' (2013-19) completely changed TV audiences' perceptions of shows exclusive to streaming services, from mediocre stories and poor budgets to exceptionally well-made and highly successful shows that stand on par with prime-time television. It's no coincidence that, soon after, Netflix's rivals Creator/{{Hulu}} and Creator/PrimeVideo got in on original streaming productions in a big way in order to challenge them, that shows from all three services became contenders at the MediaNotes/{{Emmy|Award}}s, and that other television networks and film studios launched their own streaming platforms. |
| 105 | * ''Series/BreakingBad'' (2008-2013), in addition to furthering the aforementioned trends towards DarkerAndEdgier direction and greater long-term CharacterDevelopment on American television in the 2000s and '10s, also left its mark on crime dramas set in modern times. It eschewed the classic [[TheMafia Mafia]] tropes and ViceCity setting that had dominated the genre since the early days of Hollywood, instead taking place in [[NewOldWest rural New Mexico]] and focusing on a crude, gritty, macabre storyline where [[TheCartel Mexican cartels]], {{corrupt corporat|eExecutive}}ions, and [[AllBikersAreHellsAngels white supremacist biker gangs]] are in charge of the drug market. Its influence [[FollowTheLeader led to a wave of crime shows and movies]] set in [[FlyoverCountry the small-town American heartland]] rather than the big city, such as ''Series/SonsOfAnarchy'', ''Series/QueenOfTheSouth'', ''Series/{{Ozark}}'', and ''Series/{{Yellowstone}}''. |
| 106 | [[/folder]] |
| 107 | |
| 108 | [[folder:2010s]] |
| 109 | * ''Series/{{The Walking Dead|2010}}'' (2010-2022). |
| 110 | ** Together with ''Series/AmericanHorrorStory'' (2011-present), it revolutionized horror television. They were hardly the first horror TV series; in fact, other examples of the genre are listed further up this page. They did, however, shift the focus of the genre away from [[GenreAnthology anthologies]], [[PoliceProcedural procedurals]], and MonsterOfTheWeek shows and towards a much greater focus on long-running {{Story Arc}}s, proving that a show could have every episode devoted to telling a single continuous story and still be scary. When analyzing the boom in the horror genre on television in the 2010s, most critics will point to these two shows as the ones that blazed the trail. |
| 111 | ** It also left a mark on the ZombieApocalypse genre, doing for zombies what Franchise/UniversalHorror did for [[ClassicalMovieVampire vampires]] and [[WolfMan werewolves]] in how it elevated a cult horror movie baddie into something as instantly recognizable even to mainstream viewers as any of the "classic" monsters. After the show took off, a boom of zombie TV shows hit the airwaves and streaming even as the genre died out in film. Special effects artist Cliff Wallace, in [[https://web.archive.org/web/20201101031019/https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/walking-dead-ten-years-later-zombie-experts-impact an interview]] with ''Syfy Wire'', credits the show with specifically popularizing a more grotesque look for zombies as well, more reminiscent of desiccated corpses with their receded lips and gums, NightmareFace, and other signs of physical decay than the more "lifelike" zombies of Creator/GeorgeARomero. On a less positive note, it's also been argued to have heralded a shift in the zombie genre's politics away from the anti-authoritarianism of Romero and towards [[TheSocialDarwinist social Darwinism]], portraying the zombie apocalypse as a world where only the strong survive and [[SillyRabbitIdealismIsForKids compassion and empathy get people killed]]. |
| 112 | ** Its companion series ''The Talking Dead'', meanwhile, helped popularize the post-episode TalkShow where the cast and crew discuss the events of the show and give viewers a behind-the-scenes look. |
| 113 | * ''Series/AmericanHorrorStory'' also revived the {{miniseries}} on American television, one of its main hooks being that each season was a standalone story with a clear beginning, middle, and end. In the age of "prestige TV", this caused both cable networks and later streaming services to revisit the miniseries format, which had been thought dead in the '90s and '00s, as a way to buttress their critical respectability. |
| 114 | * ''Series/GameOfThrones'' (2011-2019). |
| 115 | ** Together with its source material, ''Literature/ASongOfIceAndFire'', it has been credited with a boost in mainstream acceptance of {{fantasy}}, particularly DarkFantasy. Their widespread acclaim and massive {{fandom}}, built on their mature and complex storylines and characters that are clearly made for adults (throwing out the [[FantasyGhetto unfair notion that fantasy is only for kids or family-friendly]]), have put them into the public eye, made the books bestsellers, and made the show one of the most critically and commercially successful television dramas of the past decade. It is often listed as being on the level of shows such as ''Breaking Bad'' and ''Mad Men'', and inspired [[FollowTheLeader a noticeable number of medieval fictions for television]]. |
| 116 | ** It also, for better or worse, brought the [[SummerBlockbuster blockbuster]] to television, with [[https://www.polygon.com/tv/2019/5/21/18634070/new-game-of-thrones-show-witcher-lord-of-the-rings-tv-star-wars-series this article]] by Maureen Ryan for ''Polygon'' comparing it and ''Series/TheWalkingDead'' together with ''Film/{{Jaws}}'' and ''[[Film/ANewHope Star Wars]]'' in the world of film. Its [[SugarWiki/VisualEffectsOfAwesome cinematic production values]] were not only unmatched by anything else on TV, they stood eye-to-eye with any of Hollywood's biggest summer action movies, and so after it took off into Creator/{{HBO}}'s juggernaut, numerous cable and streaming networks poured millions into similar epic series built around massive casts, fantastic fantasy or sci-fi premises, big and twisting plots, and [[ShootTheMoney lavish spectacle]]. |
| 117 | [[/folder]] |
| 118 | |
| 119 | %% |
| 120 | %%Examples have been organized into rough chronological order. |
| 121 | %% |
| 122 |
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