How TV went from bad to great

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*I screwed up the X Axis on the chart at 13:42 - it should go to 2023. I'm sorry.
More info and sources at bottom.
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Sources:
Well, thanks again to Gord - he proved to be more of a "source" than I anticipated. I originally just wanted to know some fun stories about running TV Shows on DVD (which he had), but I opted to include his insights instead. Very helpful. Thanks!
Source for TV size stat:
www.cioall.com/...
Newton Minow's speech:
www.americanrh...
Nice article about Lieberfarb:
www.nytimes.co...
Books are all affiliate links.
Book about Syndicated TV that set nice context (and gave me my early examples).
amzn.to/43n9Ilb
DVD Demystified helped me get my grounding.
amzn.to/3vlgV8Q
The Big Picture - book about Hollywood shifts (I mainly mined for Lieberfarb and DVD stuff).
amzn.to/3TiQd96
Darknet - nice book about the early days of Hollywood adjusting to the internet. Includes Lieberfarb looking like a genius.
amzn.to/3TAalVn
McLuhan - I thought this would be a big part of the video but then I read the book. It's academic dribble, totally outdated, minimally insightful. A bunch of gibberish. FIGHT ME IF YOU DISAGREE I'LL DEFEND MYSELF!
amzn.to/3TDuCt5
Obviously lots of Newspaper articles scatted in here too. Email me if you need one.

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

Thanks for watching!! Use code PHILEDWARDS at the link to get an exclusive 60% off an annual Incogni plan: incogni.com/philedwards

[@MarshallLevin]

My brain read that as Philed Wards.

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

@@MarshallLevini can't deny it

[@IamNiggler]

@@drsteevoI'm gay too

[@GordLacey]

It was an absolute pleasure to chat with Phil for this video. I’m glad I gave him some usable material 😂

[@fiziktetrinet2330]

Omg I remember using your site! 😄

[@Game_Hero]

Real OG of the Internet

[@gfox9295]

I remember getting into NewsRadio (1995-1999) a bit late into its run and wanting to catch up on the earlier seasons... Sure there were 2 reruns a day on whatever channel had it syndicated, but I wanted to mainline it faster. ;) And so I found your site while searching for info about when the DVD sets from seasons 1 through 5 would be released. What a great resource, you did some great pre-youtube, pre-social media work with it, kudos Gord!

[@michelleokafor1268]

I used your site too

[@cheesegod1337]

king

[@floramew]

In Pompeii, there's preserved graffiti, rude crude and socially unacceptable things like you'd see in bathroom stalls today. There's a burnt dinner, stuck to the pot, in a trash collection area, or at least I think that was from Pompeii? I myself personally have thrown out a dish when I burnt the food so badly the dish was ruined too. My point here is... Technology changes, time changes. But people? I firmly believe that humanity, as a whole, is largely the same as it ever was. And it's comforting, in a way.

[@its_clean]

The Pompeii graffiti is awesome, and still legitimately very funny even by today's comedy standards. I get this same feeling when I see old film recolored, particularly the Lumiere series of candid films shot in various locations around the world. Contrary to the popular image of the turn of the 20th century as a dour, humorless, black-and-white place (because we usually only see dour, humorless, black-and-white photographs from that era), the recolored films show a vibrant, colorful, rich world full of characters as interesting, funny, and weird as we are today. You see a bunch of people in business suits having a snowball fight in the middle of the day, you see dockworkers in Istanbul goofing off and mugging for the camera, you see the crowded horse traffic in Paris that feels both distantly ancient yet also immediately familiar to the bumper-to-bumper congestion of modern cities. It's a brilliant way to humanize history into something we can personally identify with. Exactly as you said- times change, but people are still people.

[@fairygrove3928]

We can back even further, to the dawn of written language, 4000 years ago. The Mesopotamian cuneiform tablets are full of the same sorts of stuff we humans still talk about, from taxes, to broken deals, to shopping lists. There's even a 3,500 year old "Yo Mama" joke/riddle, and 4,000 year old, "A dog walks into a bar" joke. It's very humbling to realize that, all over the world, for thousands of years, we humans have been very much the same.

[@floramew]

That's a great point. Ea Nasir is infamous for having the world's oldest surviving bad yelp review for his faulty copper, and all. 😂

[@Megadextrious]

This is one of my favorite things about learning about history! It makes me feel so much more hopeful and grateful for the human race; to know that even though millennia may pass, all of the joy, sorrow, curiosity, and boredom that I feel are the same feelings that folks have been experiencing for eons.

[@MemoirsofaGamer1982]

There's literally penises used as arrows to show you the directions to the brothel. I was there in August. 😅😅

[@kerobop]

Twin Peaks doesn't get enough credit for helping the idea of contemporary television as a cinematic experience in its own right. Being able to accomplish that AND make fun of the very format you're working in is just wonderful.

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

hard to believe it's from 1990

[@TheActualCathal]

I think the big miniseries of the previous decade have the bigger claim. Rich Man Poor Man, North and South, Shogun, The Thorn Birds, these were big deals.

[@anthonybird546]

​@@TheActualCathalor the Granddaddy of them all, Roots

[@gfox9295]

@@TheActualCathalLonesome Dove!

[@tryknight1426]

Please never stop making these videos. You undoubtably make the best video journalism content on the internet (in my opinion). You keep you content engaging, fun, self aware, and are never too over the top. It just feels authentic.

[@jwcanes]

You should also check out Johnny Harris

[@tryknight1426]

@@jwcanes 🤓☝️I actually included “over the top” because of Johnny Harris. I’ll occasionally watch his videos but they’re getting pumped out like hot cakes right now and just feel too try hard I guess? I know it’s not a great diss but his content is starting to feel really formulaic even though is obviously high quality.

[@michaeladkins6]

@@tryknight1426 Nobody opens a map like Johnny.

[@matt45540]

The first KZbinr to use an Apple vision pro for something useful 👏

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

it has been returned

[@ryanortega1511]

Amen!

[@RaySmith-zg7od]

🤣​@@PhilEdwardsInc

[@sd-ch2cq]

​@@PhilEdwardsIncI thought you'd keep it as a business expense 😄

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

@@sd-ch2cq gosh i could but that's too much to justify! (plus it ...didn't do some things the way that might have convinced me to incinerate money)

[@jenniferbates2811]

As one of your subscribers who graduated from high school in 1996, I remember going to Circuit City to buy a DVD player and a Sony portable cd player. My grandfather had a TV repair shop, and he loved the fact that you could record TV shows to DVD's. When he died, I had so many TV parts it was so surreal.

[@joeybaseball7352]

Sorry for your loss. It's so sad that job like TV repairman are dead now. They make TVs so cheaply and low quality now, that there's no point in repairing them. It's cheaper to just throw it away, and get a new one. And most of them, you can't repair them, even if you wanted to. If you tell a kid today that there were people who owned stores where all they did was repair TVs, they would look at you like you had two heads.

[@jenniferbates2811]

@joeybaseball7352 Thank you. My grandfather was an awesome man. As far as technology is concerned, that's just a product of time itself. I'm just happy to be alive to witness it

[@Bellett64]

@@joeybaseball7352 you and @jenniferbates2811 might be interested to know that the TV through which I am typing these very words has been repaired thanks to the wonders of KZbin. About five minutes outside of warranty, this big arse Samsung I bought started to wash out; black was gradually displaying as grey. I'm not a handy man, but I Googled it, found some Mexican video where the guy repaired a completely different Samsung TV that displayed the same symptoms, then bought the equivalent part for my TV from eBay. Sure, there wasn't really a 'repair' in the traditional sense, but a simple 'replace', but I was proud that I got the TV going again, and it's been fine ever since. Must be about 10 years now. Jennifer, if your granddad was here, I'd hope he'd approve.

[@Embargoman]

The TIVO replaced the VCR.

[@jenniferbates2811]

@@Embargoman Not for everyone, but it's funny to see how much technology we've witnessed

[@curiousfirely]

This video absolutely gave me the nostalgic feels. In the early 2000's I absolutely remember using my university's high-speed internet to download episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, one at a time. It took weeks, and several of us, but we got them all, and well before streaming entire tv shows was possible.

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

in a similar vein i remember getting west wing on dvd at the library!

[@yondie491]

anecdotally, Farscape was the first show I was aware of where season long story arcs were integral to the experience. and of course, it was screwed over by the network who kept moving its time slot. Back then, if you missed an episode or three, it was difficult to catch up. prior to that, there were in-season story arcs but usually just 2 or 3 episodes for a single narrative.

[@grindcoreninja6527]

That's a show I haven't thought about in years.

[@ailo4x4]

That is also the reason Firefly failed. It was aired out of order so it made no sense until you could get the box set.

[@Shampyon]

@@grindcoreninja6527 The CGI parts look a little dated, but overall the show holds up a lot better than a lot of it's contemporaries.

[@grindcoreninja6527]

@@Shampyon Is it on Hulu? I haven't been feeling well and I might just go to sleep while watching it.

[@andymackie8283]

Babylon 5. Just sayin'

[@albertbodden]

I feel like a great missed opportunity was the Tivo or DVR. For me and many others, that's when I got to actually enjoy and catch up to (in almost real time) prestige TV. I could watch Lost on a Friday night or 24 on a Sunday, which allowed me to actually watch shows with overarching plot lines and not feel like it was too late for me to catch up to everyone else.

[@andrewgraham2546]

TV is at the point (it almost got there with full cable packages years ago) where you have to create a sort of artificial scarcity in your own mind in order to not go crazy. If I actually sat down to watch the shear amount of "good" shows on these platforms that my friends tell me to, I'd surely become a lard pile and nothing else would ever get done.

[@philipgwyn8091]

Yes and no. People might recommend you a lot of shows, but that doesn't mean they are good, or that they are for you. In other words, you don't have to and probably shouldn't watch them.

[@andrewgraham2546]

​@@philipgwyn8091I would argue the same applied with cable.

[@carrottopevans]

DVD audio commentary was so cool! Directors, actors, cinematographers, I wish we got more of that now

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

i miss that too

[@jgrab1]

What's to "miss"? Buy your shows on physical media like I do. @@PhilEdwardsInc

[@GoodmansGhost]

Literally on 99% of Dvd's, Blu's and 4k's. You only miss out on them if you're a streamer zombie.

[@GordLacey]

This is why I signed up for Phil’s Patreon! He provides commentary on the episodes he posts, and they’re so good.

[@danielwhyatt3278]

Thankfully you still get this for a lot of anime releases.👍🏼

[@glennac]

It helps that TV (Studios, Producers, Writers, etc…) started to take the medium seriously in the late 90’s and early 2000’s. Sure, shows like Hill Street Blues paved the way in the 80’s, but even it had a wink or camp with exaggerated characters and situations. Compare that to ER, The West Wing, CSI, Northern Exposure, or even Frasier, shows that respected their audiences and took the medium seriously.

[@blairhoughton7918]

St. Elsewhere. Just going to leave this here.

[@anthonybird546]

I keep thinking a lot about LA Law

[@gfox9295]

To me, the noticeable shift in quality happened when actors who would normally have only wanted to be in movies started appearing more and more on TV. That was the real start of the 2nd golden age, and while Mad Men and Breaking Bad made it official, shows like Sopranos and Oz on HBO paved the way beforehand. And yep, Twin Peaks and X-Files and LA Law and Northern Exposure and all that in the early 90s as well in turn paved the way for the HBO shows.

[@UnchainedEruption]

Please you have no idea what you're talking about. TV shows in the 20th century were better written than now. All that changed in that late 90s / early 00s period is the rise of HBO and its competitors (Showtime, etc) that tried to offer more risque, R-rated material at home. Stuff like Sopranos. That's not better or worse than traditional tv. Just different.

[@glennac]

@@UnchainedEruption Never had HBO so can’t speak to that sector. But I was around in the late 60’s and 70’s and insipid shows like Gilligan’s Island, The Munster’s, Bewitched, Green Acres, The Brady Bunch, etc were hardly fine poster-children of the period (some exceptions: anything by Norman Lear, Mash, Carol Burnett Show). Even the Dramas of the 70’s were pretty hackneyed and mostly appreciated for their nostalgia. Then the 80’s brought us the evening soap operas (Dallas, Knots’ Landing, Falcon Crest, etc) Insert eye rolls here. 🙄🙄🙄 Sure, there were occasional standouts. But as some have described TV in the mid-to- late 20th Century, it was a “wasteland”.

[@teamcoltra]

This also hits something I've been thinking about recently: it feels like old TV was a bunch of reruns all the time. So you have a few common tropes because it's the same shows. If you want to hit that syndication you do what others do. If you asked me when did The Brady Bunch air I would have assumed the 90s since I grew up with it but the last episode came out in the 70s. All those Hannah Barbarra cartoons, same thing.

[@teamcoltra]

Carrying on my point: Old Gilligan's Island and I Dream of Genie were beside new Home Improvement. This video made me look up a bunch of shows I thought I grew up on and most of them stopped airing before I was born. 🤣 Now shows can take more risks because they don't really care about syndication and getting picked up by a channel. They actually need a niche audience who wants to rewatch the episodes over and over and will sign up for the streaming platform that lets them.

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

yes this sounds similar to my tv diet

[@bertcielen8709]

In the late 1980s MTV had a quiz show called "Remote Control" where college students answered trivia questions about TV shows. And so many of these questions were about shows like Gilligan's Island which was 20+ years old at that time.

[@teamcoltra]

​@@bertcielen8709I've always said that MTV in 1908 was crazy. ;)

[@ailo4x4]

@@teamcoltra 1980??

[@rgp1989]

I think it would be interesting to compare old TV of the 60s and 70s to other countries, such as the UK and France, to see what things could have been like with a different business model. TV has almost taken the opposite trajectory in places like this, going from high quality, state funded art that is still very well regarded, to cheap crap, now that things have become more commercial and deregulated

[@RillianGrant]

Do you have any idea why the opposite happened?

[@Bluefalcon6154]

I started to skip your ad but then realized the quality to sub ratio is criminal keep up the great content!

[@tylerdecker5099]

That's funny, I'm a big West Wing fan and someone on the subreddit the other day justified a continuity error as the showrunners not expecting streaming binge-watching. I took that at face value, but the show was absolutely being released season-by-season on DVD at that point...

[@blairhoughton7918]

The West Wing lost a lot when Sorkin and Schlamme left, and the network tried to "fair and balance" it.

[@sleepink.]

The thumbnail transitioning perfectly into the autoplay is so sick and under appreciated

[@brickman409]

I would also argue that the VCR, and later the DVR played a role in this as well. Being able to make your own recordings of TV episodes allowed you to watch shows at your own pace, similar to what DVD would offer later. It was a bit more involved of a process though, you'd have to figure out when the episode you wanted to watch was playing, and then program your VCR ahead of time to record it. Still, it allowed you to watch a show at a time that worked for you rather than being restricted by what was scheduled. Before the VCR, that just wasn't possible. And then of course, with DVR, that process became much more simplified and automated. You could easily program your DVR to record every episode of a show as soon as it aired. I remember back in the day people would talk about watching shows like the Sopranos and Breaking Bad that way.

[@Blaa_Boi]

Hey that Admiral TV set is fully loaded for $499 I mean you've got a piece of furniture in two colour's, a 16" tube, for total whopping screen area of 155 sq inches, storage for your 33's 45s & 78 records, 360° rotating aerial and most importantly the Dynamagic AM/FM Radio.

[@fishflake1209]

Admiral was the sponsor of Sid Caesar’s first TV show. It was cancelled because the popularity of television was outpacing Admiral’s production capacity, causing them to end their sponsorship. Maybe they should have scaled back on all the features.

[@dechefmane3526]

We can thank Twin Peaks for a big contribution to quality television

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

log lady deserves a nobel

[@olafsigursons]

And Band of Brothers

[@adityasanthanam1945]

Old television shows were great, too. Also, the episodes were standalone for many of them, so you did not have to watch the entire thing in order and at once, which is so time consuming and is why I do not watch much newer television. My favorite show is the 1960s spy series The Avengers. There was also Columbo, Kojak, Matlock, Perry Mason, The Saint, Coronation Street, Bewitched, I Dream of Jeannie, Emmerdale, The Prisoner, Danger Man, The Bill, The Professionals, The Sweeney, Only Fools And Horses, Fawlty Towers, Are You Being Served, Yes Minister, and so much more.

[@Ashley-xu1lk]

I agree with you that when a show is episodic it makes for an easier watch for a viewer. But I love shows with a story to tell, and the one advantage to streaming is that you can now watch every episode and in order. I think I prefer shows that has a mix of both styles, where it's episodic but there's an episode or a string of episodes that go further to tell a story and add a little complexity but if you missed those episodes you're largely still okay. One of my favorite shows ever in Xena the Princess Warrior. I watched it in order and a lot of the episodes are good as stand alone but when you do watch it in order the storytelling about these characters and their world becomes much more impactful. It's great.

[@DanLyndon]

Yeah, and most shows today are far dumber than many of the ones you mentioned. But Phil has a narrative to sell.

[@HydraulicDesign]

Of course over 40 years some shows will be good, your list proves nothing, especially as half of them aren't actually "good" without nostalgia glasses. Breaking Bad stomps all over all of them it's not even close, it's a work of art on a completely different level.

[@amazingalliteration]

@@DanLyndon Have you ever thought that you are the stupid one?

[@VAM_Physics_and_Engineering]

Creative use of VR for tying everything together and for story telling.

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

thanks VAM!

[@AaronOfMpls]

Indeed, it really brings home how much _smaller_ TVs were back then, in a way I'd kinda forgotten! Growing up in the 90s, even my family's "big" home-theater TV -- that our main VCR and a surround-sound stereo were connected to -- was "only" a 30-something inch CRT (I forget the exact size). Dad didn't see the point in spending more for a still-standard-def bigscreen; instead he waited until rear-projection _HDTV_ prices dropped far enough out of the stratosphere in the early and mid 2000s.

[@IanMacMoore]

I always think about the Battlestar Galactica episode of Portlandia when binging comes up. The scream at there not being any more episodes is comedy gold.

[@gfox9295]

yep, I was surprised he didn't mention Battlestar as one of the DVD bingeworthy shows. ;)

[@Shadownumber206]

I feel like this can be expanded on. Because you talked about binge-watching. And how that gave you a sense of _freedom_ and allowed you to basically create your own network, where you decide what syndicated shows to air, and when you want to air them, just for an audience of you. And you bring up the perfect point of how network were forced to air a show once a week, based on their weekly timeslot, and based on the ads that bought commercial time. But now, all that _freedom_ of binge-watching, is being taken away. The whole point of binge watching, and streaming, was that there were no constraints of radiational TV. There were no set timeslots. There were ads. And you could drop all the episodes at once, and watch at your leisure. Not anymore. Now streamers are shoehorning TV constraints into streaming. And there's literally no reason for this, other than greed. Now instead of dropping all the episodes at once, they're releasing them one-by-one, on a weekly basis, and at a certain timeslot. Why? There are no timeslots on streaming. Why are the creating timeslots? So you stay subscribed longer. But that defeats the entire purpose of streaming. That's just cable. And now there's ads. Netflix promised that they would never ever put ads on their service. Now they have ads. Why? The whole point of streaming was that there was no ads. Greed. I can go on and on, about password sharing crackdown, removing programs, deleting completely finished movies, churn, etc. And for the churners, they're coming after you next. There are people who only subscribe when stranger things is on. Then they cancel. The next thing they're gonna have is long term subscription contracts, with early termination fees. Sound familiar? People tell me all the time, they would never do that. Yeah, and netflix said they would never ever ever put ads on their service. And that same person, who you mentioned in this video, Ted Serandos, was the same guy who went back on his word. So it's not even like there was a leadership change.

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

it does seem like we're getting a shift in the opposite direction...

[@mallenwho]

There are also downsides with releasing a whole season at once. There were big cultural issues when huge hit TV series all dropped, and people had to construct social contracts around no spoilers etc. One episode a week is much better for gossip conversation and watercooler talk for a group of separate people to enjoy the experience of working through a series together! And it also keeps a show in the cultural eye for longer, rather than just being dropped and buried underneath 'content'.

[@mdoerty13]

A big difference is that television can appeal to small pockets of the population - narrowcasting rather than broadcasting. The segmentation has led to some great shows. It has also resulted in a glut of “reality TV.” Thus, you can have “Better Call Saul” which is free from FCC limits and was watched by 2.2 million people per episode (on average). That rating is 5-6 times less than what the Brady Bunch would garner in its Friday time slot five decades ago. Thus, the question becomes whether the economics are there to support these shows. That is still to be decided.

[@vylbird8014]

The Brady Bunch predates cable. There were three channels to watch, and maybe a local one if you were lucky. Less competition.

[@mdoerty13]

@@vylbird8014 Agreed. Hence my “broadcasting vs. narrowcasting” statement. My point though was related to the economics. We think of these shows as quality. However, because of segmentation of the market, their audiences are much smaller and whether or not that such shows can be economically viable in an ever-changing marketplace. The audience size note was with respect to economics - not quality.

[@jordanmcgrory2171]

I think the shift also has to do with who has the money to commission/buy shows now. Even after the DVD boxset was well-established as a cultural phenomenon, there were still a lot of shows written in episodic format for syndication/to suit a TV network because a production's most reliable chunk of money comes from the network. It's only later on when streamers become the biggest buyers of TV shows that continuous becomes the norm and episodic would be a pleasant break...

[@nikytamayo]

That sponsor transition was smooooooth. Also, coolsmartification. Awesome. It would be interesting tracing the evolution of the broadcast serial from radio shows (the hilarious sound effects, the sloooow pace) to broadcast TV to streaming. I do miss the incredible amount of material you could produce for a show on a broadcast budget, sometimes (twenty plus episode seasons instead of the six to twelve that's common today), but you can't deny the incredible polish and story-telling focus of the modern serial. Audio only serials have even started popping up here and there... there are actually fantasy adventure podcast serials you can listen to in the car or at home. And I think that's awesome.

[@MrGreen-ci2mm]

Yesterday, I was literally wondering why hasn't Phil uploaded in 2 weeks, but good to know you now did

[@JTrickZ]

Love your videos Phil! First seamless Apple Vision pro usage i have seen where it makes sense!

[@EmmisonMike]

I remember Chuck Jones of Loony Tunes talk about how most cartoons (barring his own, ofc) were just illustrated radio shows. The primary medium at play wasn't the animation in these cartoons (I'm thinking he was referring to like Hanna-Barbara cartoons, which developed more advancements in cartoon budgeting than unfettered artistic merit). I wonder if the reason was that Loony Tunes were shown in theaters while Mr. Magoo was shown on, well, a radio with a small screen for reference. I like that i thought that and then phil proceeded to talk about how old TV's were programmed the same as radios, because like they were radios. i think technologically, with not only VCR's, but the sort of projection TV's we saw in the 90's and 00's were the tip of that spear, I'd wager.

[@angelicasmodel]

Thanks for this video. I remember reading similar articles to the ones you mentioned as the tech changed. I also want to give a shout out to your excellent use of subtitle tech. I love it not only when creators add a proper transcript, but when they also add jokes and commentary in it.

[@ramiror2132]

One of the guys at work who is like 60 described this exact scenario to me when 24 season 2 premiered. They started watching but there were a lot of loose threads from last season, so he got the DVDs to catch up with the idea of watching, like, an episode a day. They ended up watching the whole season in a weekend.

[@MrGreen-ci2mm]

4:01 Haha you've mastered Johnny Harris's signature "Look at this"

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

we all sprout from the same roots kzbin.info/www/bejne/b3_OnI2AfdSpl5Ysi=k_bU32GBmIjQ3hbi

[@jamiefoerst]

I like your new style, it’s like a more energetic Knowing Better. Glad to see you finding your style.

[@travioli9643]

I was recently thinking about how shows used to have to be planned around ad breaks and other programming as you mentioned when i recently rewatched Naruto. When "streaming" the show as we would do nowadays, you can still tell where the ad breaks were supposed to go

[@AaronOfMpls]

Heck, I'm still tempted to _take_ short breaks in such shows, to not throw off the pacing. 🙂

[@Ben111000111]

I watched the entire sponsorship ad, but I appreciate the progress bar you included

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

👍

[@ericfielding2540]

Another interesting discussion about the interaction between technology and culture! I never watched a lot of TV from direct broadcast. The time requirement was one hassle , but the quality was another reason.

[@rpaynenyc]

Fascinating analysis! Also, I think when TV first began, it had to appeal to the whole family- kids to adults. It was formulaic and sanitized content, since everyone was watching at the same time. But there were very sophisticated talk, like Dick Cavett and Jack Parr, that were on later when the kids had gone to bed so it wasn’t monolithically simplistic

[@EvenFilms]

As someone who studied film and tv in college, aka “Carson Daly Studies,” you nailed it as always Phil. Loved the nod to how old TV advertisement models have essentially been reborn on KZbin with sponsor segments. Fantastic stuff!

[@perrybarton]

Nice work as always, Phil. And thank you for bringing back fond memories of Mom engrossed in her favorite shampoo operas.

[@dyscotopia]

As aomeone who is old enough to remenber the early days of VHS I can attest rhat only superfans kept track od the continuing plotlines of various shows, and, with limited channels, we'd often ve watching things we were barely interested in, often syndicated. As such, it was necessary to shoehorn lots of exposition for context and otherwise write standalone plots. This did not make for artful viewiing, but it did ensure you could follow what was going on with little prior knowledge

[@stocktonnash]

I found the leprechauns pot of gold!

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

🪙

[@sd-ch2cq]

First time i bingewatched was somewhere around 2005, when pirating tv-shows became a big thing. Afaik there were way more pirates than people willing to pay the exorbitant price for a dvd-set.

[@joseybryant7577]

Reminds me of when I was in middle school. I'd come home and watch Cheers and Magnum P.I. Tough to talk to kids in the mid-2000s about Norm Peterson hiding from his wife

[@xliquidflames]

Wow. You're so right. I never thought about it but the TVs themselves would have limited the quality of the shows. I was born in 1982. My earliest memory of watching TV is up close, on the floor, in front of this big wood grain box that doubled as a counter top. It had those ugly cloth speaker grills going down both sides of the screen. It had these feaux brass handles on the bottom front that were screwed into fake drawers that didn't actually open.The handles were there to give you and a friend something to pull on if you needed to get behind it to fix something. It was huge, ugly, heavy, and sat on the floor really low. You couldn't get away with something like the shot of that card on my childhood TV. No one would be able to read it. Also, our TV signal came from a big arial antenna that was on a long pole over the roof of the house. The motor to turn it had stopped working so my mom would have me run outside with a pipe wrench and yell at me through the window to stop when I turned it enough to pick up the channel she wanted. If you didn't get the antenna in just the right spot or if the atmosphere wasn't just right, you'd get static in the picture. So, the signal and the TV both would limit what people could put in the shows. I forgot WKRP existed and I hadn't heard that intro song since the 80s. That was _such_ a weird feeling when I heard it. It literally gave me chills. Okay, I wrote this comment as I was watching the video and then 14:52 came up and that is similar to the TV we had. It even has the handles on the bottom. Ours didn't have that big of a screen and it had the speakers on both sides of the screen. But the handles on the bottom... that stuck out to me. That's the thing I remember most about that TV for some reason.

[@WalterBurton]

It will never not be both deeply weird and exhilarating to see my own history---what feels like very recent history!---the subject of, well, legitimately interesting history, and historical analysis. This a really good one, Phil. Thanks!

[@bennimkin7981]

This is probably the best written video I've seen of yours, in recent memory. I've felt in the past that you haven't always stuck the landings in your conclusions. But this was *Chef Kiss*. I really liked it. Nice dig at McLuhen. That guy definitely couldn't stick his landings. Welp. anyway.. excellent work -As always.

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

thanks!

[@HeyTylerAustin]

Great video. Took me back to the excitement that came from getting a new season of TV on DVD.

[@poopesure]

After the retirement of Tom Scott you have filled that short and sweet informative video void.

[@paulmiller591]

Another excellent video Phil. I wondered how we got to a time with such great content and assumed it was simple random evolution. You cleverly identified that it was certainly not random. Thank you. You deserve 1M subscribers for your work.

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

ah thank ya!

[@sparqqling]

Love spending my time on watching Phil Edwards videos

[@driaan_louw]

The DVD ad is burned deep into my brain, down to the last sound effect.

[@Ashley-xu1lk]

Love seeing a Phil Edwards video in the morning! I don't even bother reading the title, if I see Phil in the thumbnail and it's from his channel I click.

[@Slurkz]

Amazing documentary, thanks a lot! 💜 The background music is a bit too loud though, if you ask me. Especially during the softer interview sections

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

👍

[@screetchycello]

"The one where Phil expenses a VR headset" (affectionate)

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

it has been returned.

[@screetchycello]

I ain't judging 😂

[@ryanortega1511]

Make it shorter. “The One with the VR Headset”.

[@MminaMaclang]

Phil, one day, other writers will be referencing your work too. Great job on this one. Always a joy to watch or read your work.

[@Joshleslie871]

Hey phil as a fellow nerd this reminded me so much of how the advancements in instrument technology led to the defining characteristics of the styles of music played in the medieval, baroque, romantic, and modern eras. You’d likely really enjoy that deep dive.

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

oh that's cool- i agree!

[@I_WANT_MY_SLAW]

Apologize to Alf. Alf is an amazing sitcom. And he's a funny guy. I don't like the whole cat eating thing. Because I love cats. But I like Alf.

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

no disrespect intended to mr. shumway

[@mjisthegoat88]

@@PhilEdwardsIncif i didn’t enjoy your videos so much, i would’ve turned this off the moment i saw alf being disrespected.

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

@@mjisthegoat88all love to gordon

[@rachealgetscreative]

I remenber my husband and I binge watching seasons of 24 but running to the Blockbuster to go rent the next set of episodes. :)

[@Demodude123]

Even KZbin went from silly funny videos to more engaging long form content. It's fascinating how platforms of media evolve.

[@dodaexploda]

God bless you Phil Edwards for adding the sponsor progress bar. Was that always there or is that new this video?

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

first sponsor!

[@dodaexploda]

@@PhilEdwardsInc oh my. I guess they are basically everywhere that I didn't even notice. Either way, thanks for the progress bar!

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

i always appreciate em as a viewer even if i don't skip, so thanks for letting me know it's helpful!@@dodaexploda

[@dodaexploda]

@@PhilEdwardsInc no problemo. Yeah, they are super helpful. If I ever get to that spot I'll be adding them also. And you're quite welcome.

[@carterevanroust]

I remember some networks having "marathons" where they'd spend a weekend showing just one show. I think that's how I watched the whole of Avatar when it was airing on Nickelodeon. I also binged on the Everybody Loves Raymond and Angel DVDs

[@HLR4th]

Great Video! I moved in 2020. I though out a lot of things- I could not bring myself to throw out all those DVD, BlueRay, and even some well viewed VHS tapes (mine and the kids!). I love streaming, but those media entertained. Throwing them out would have felt like a betrayal.

[@alexbacon-rz2ih]

Growing up in the 80s/90s in the UK - my experience was quite different to the US centric story here. We DID have prestige drama courtesy of the comparatively well funded BBC eg the seminal Colin Firth ‘Pride and Prejudice’ or the famous ‘Brideshead Revisited’. Back then US shows were seen very much as the poor cousin to the UK shows.

[@mikeklubnika]

Another great vid. loved the newspaper citations

[@dalegaliniak607]

I was an early buyer of a DVD player (I want to say sometime in 2000). I had started to watch a lot more anime at that time, which, as a whole, embraced larger stories significantly earlier than the US, probably due to the rental/used VHS (and later DVD) culture that existed in Japan during the 90s (and earlier).

[@Kylefassbinderful]

As a kid in the 90s I remember there was a sweet spot in tv size. I'd go to someone's house and they might have a 40" TV and the picture never looked all that much better than the 24" we had at home. Back then if you had a thirtysomething inch Sony Trinitron TV you probably had the best viewing experience until LCD tech matured.

[@Moffen9T]

There's something so cozy about the newspaper highlights and the soft drum track playing in the background. Thank you for shedding some light on this overlooked piece of history!

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

ah thanks! cozy is the ultimate compliment!

[@bertcielen8709]

IMHO this video plays fast and loose with history. For instance: TV shows had also been available on VHS before DVD appeared, e.g. Twin Peaks, The X-Files, various Star Trek shows, The Prisoner, Doctor Who, Farscape, etc. Also, special features (commentaries, etc.) weren't invented for DVD, those were already available on LaserDiscs. And plenty of shows had season-long story arcs, e.g. Twin Peaks, Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Doctor Who, Babylon 5, 'Allo 'Allo, (later seasons of) Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Homicide: Life on the Street, Seinfeld,... Even older shows like Barney Miller or Hill Street Blues or St. Elsewhere or I Love Lucy! So network TV already had sown the seeds of this revolution, long before DVD arrived. And DVD box sets didn't become a phenomenon until after the "second golden age of TV" had already started in the late 1990s, with cable channels like HBO and Showtime and FX etc. gaining in popularity and ordering their own exclusive content: Sex and the City, The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, The Wire, The Shield, Deadwood, Battlestar Galactica. Plus there's the rise of HDTV (and its associated regulation in the USA) and the rapid evolution of TV technology. Yes, the popularity of DVD box sets did play a part, but it was merely an accelerant in a process that had started started long before. You could even argue that DVD box sets appeared precisely because there already was a lot of available "content" (awful word) and a demand for it.

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

yeah the earlier vhs and dvd releases were mostly best ofs- they had to discover the full season pref and tech!

[@joeybaseball7352]

You're right. But that's like saying the iPhone wasn't the first smartphone. Yes, we know. But the iPhone brought smartphones to the mainstream. The iPod wasn't the first MP3 player. The Lisa wasn't the first PC. The Apple 1 wasn't the first computer.

[@bertcielen8709]

@@joeybaseball7352 The first box set of a TV series was The X-Files in September 2000. By that time The Sopranos were already on the air, as well as The West Wing, Freaks and Geeks, Oz, Futurama, Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Sex and the City,... And those are just shows from the end of the 1990s.

[@joeybaseball7352]

@@bertcielen8709 I actually had season 1 of a sitcom called Everybody Loves Raymond on VHS. by the time I got it, it had also been released on DVD. ButI just wanted it for the novelty. I also liked the show.

[@sergiorestrepo6657]

I can feel I'm being coolsmartified

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

let it flow through you

[@gclaytonlewis]

Phil, you are a treasure! How is it that every one of your videos is even better than the one before?

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

nice of ya, thanks!

[@theindefatigablegray]

I’m really appreciative for the amount of effort that has been put upon this video video “ essay and journalism, are absolutely incredible!!! Phil our favorite journalist cinephile

[@nurmihusa7780]

Wow. I’m in my late sixties and lived through all this, but you’ve given it a through line that explains what I never really realized as it was happening. Btw, we WERE corny, naive and dumb even it it wasn’t all our fault. (Side comment: I remember being so stressed that my parents wouldn’t pony up for a color tv until way after everyone else. Kids have an eye for revolutionary tech! Reminder: take to the grandkids’ advice.) One of yr best, Phil! Thanks!

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

haha this is true! i remember having a similar jealousy of the projector-style tvs that were huge (and i never had)

[@carlsoll]

Woahhhh :O TV Shows ‘needed to fill up’ around > Other Programming. *THATS* why it has to ‘end’ on the same note it ‘began’

[@jgrab1]

TV has been taking the plunge back recently. The Mad Men days are over.

[@Embargoman]

I remember that my first DVD player was an RCA DVD player and I had a 27 inch RCA TV.

[@JanRademan]

Apple REALLY need to add image stabilization to recordings made on the Apple Vision Pro. It is almost unwatchable with all the small head movements.

[@kaitlyn__L]

Honestly, I still call them “the box sets” even on streaming. So for most of this I was just like “oh yeah I knew that”. The demonstration of the size differences of different decades of TV was well done though, and I’d forgotten how unreadable anything was on TVs back even in the 90s. It didn’t help that VHS looked even worse. And for a second I was worried you were gonna say Apple Vision Pro is clearly the next frontier just like DVD was, so I’m glad you said what you actually said about being proudly opinionated about media again. Nice Twin Peaks shoutout too. I only found out about Cop Rock recently while watching Stam Fine reviews. Such a weird idea lol. Gotta have some dud before NYPD Blue though I guess.

[@ailo4x4]

And don't forget the reason why TV is so much better now; more money. The DVD/Netflix revolution brought a lot more cash into the game to fund much better production values. Great vid! I grew up in the 60's/early 70's laying on the floor watching tv close enough to get an almost cinema like experience. "You're gonna fry your brain being so close to that damn idiot box!", Mom on any given day!

[@colonelweird]

Wait, did you just low-key dis Marshall McLuhan??

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

high key!

[@Kliphie]

I’d throw Firefly as an early DVD TV show, it grew after it was canceled and got a studio to make a movie … that also didn’t do so well

[@mathismuller6033]

I really like your style of video/editing! It`s like "Great Big Story" or "Business Insider", except it`s not just a minute worth of information blown up to a 15 Minute video, but instead 30 Minutes worth of information skilfully compressed into a 17 minute video.

[@zeitgeistx5239]

He left out the DVD format war. My parents bought some DVDs only to realize that they didn’t have a Divx DVD player and couldn’t play it. Divx had cheaper DVDs but expensive DVD player. Also, right around when DVD became mainstream was when TiVo’s with onboard hard drives rolled out.

[@laurabowles]

I'm a high school English teacher and just started Fahrenheit 451 with my 9th grade class. One of Ray Bradbury's main motivations for writing the novel back in 1953 was the effect he feared the television would have on society. This video gave me some fresh insight on what exactly he was looking at. Although I'm sure he'd still be just as horrified (if not more so!) at modern technology addiction, I can't help but wonder how he might feel about TV if he were to look at complex, artistic shows like Severance or The Crown as compared to the "idiot box." Every time I teach this novel I'm impressed anew at Bradbury's prescience and the kinds of things he managed to predict, but I suspect he didn't see this kind of positive development coming. Fantastic work as always, Phil.

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

ah that's so funny, i mentioned the fahrenheit 451 tv walls in another comment! thanks for expanding the analogy

[@Otis151]

Congrats on your first sponsorship!!!

[@warrenny]

Enjoyed the video and comments. Two things I agree with putting ALF in the bad TV category. Some people might find deconstructionism to be edgy and artistic, but who are we kidding. It's a deconstruction of ET and muppets. children's stuff I would have thought there would be a mention of LOST. It wasn't the first of its kind, but it was the show that broke the strangle of 'reality' tv during the 00's and popularized the long form serials that everyone makes since then.

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

that is totally my fault for concision - Gord thoughtfully brought up LOST and even told a funny anecdote about how ABC flew a bunch of people to Hawaii for the DVD debut. It was funny because Gord had to do catchup, so he watched LOST on the plane to Hawaii, slightly freaking out his seatmate.

[@belg4mit]

A missing piece here is computers. Not for streaming, but for driving the need to improve display technologies and bringing down their cost. You could connect a Commodore 64 to a TV, but it limited what was possible. As computers advanced they needed better monitors...

I agree with most of your points, but when I was a kid this magic thing happened: VHS and VCRs players. The thing about them that I loved the most was the ability to RECORD from the TV. So I recorded a lot of episodes of Star Trek, films and documentaries. And I confess that, decades before torrents and Pirate Bay, well.... I copied a LOT of films by plugging two VCRs and making "backup copies". I memorized movies (Raiders of the Lost Ark I know every line). But... yes, all of this was happening in a time of small screen TVs (compared to today), 4:3 formats and bad sound. Today I think we are suffering from too much...everything. Too many series, too many (bad) movies, too much imagens. We have gigantic TVs, but the last NETFLIX MOVIE: THE MOVIE is the same old badly written, poorly directed thing.

[@el9delcielo]

That last bit with the AV persona was awesome! You should make it a regular series! 😂

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

the avp has gone back to its maker

[@chrisk5437]

It is worth mentioning that Kent State University developed LCD technology which created the boom for the bigger, thinner and eventually cheaper TV sets which we see today

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

didn't know that!

[@bottledwaterprod]

Ppl like me whose parents watched Northern Exposure growing up got to experience it again as teens/adults. They sold great, partly because they stood out on the shelf thanks to being packaged in tiny dvd parkas. It was strange and awesome seeing a show that was new to me, but weirdly familiar as "that mosse show" from my childhood. It's now my all-time favorite comfort show.

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

haha i had no idea about the dvd parkas

[@yondie491]

"I thought it was kinda dumb" while citing a source, lol

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

it actually made me sort of mad, because when i was looking it up beforehand i was running into all these articles that were like, "the prescient genius of 'understanding media.'" and then i read it and was like, this is super-dated gibberish.

[@Platitudinous9000]

sometimes a good quote comes from a bad source

[@yondie491]

@@PhilEdwardsInc was it at least interesting from a "this is how the past saw things" perspective?

[@misterscottintheway]

​​@@PhilEdwardsInc Putting Marshall McLuhan on blast is a pretty bold hot take. When someone is thinking decades ahead sometimes it doesn't read like poetry. He was trying to explain his ideas about the future using the language of the day. I imagine Ada Lovelace probably sounds dated as well but that doesn't mean she wasn't a genius who predicted how computers would work.

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

@@yondie491yes for sure

[@NimsChannel]

I actually prefer the older shows. Most of the new stuff that comes out is just about shock value. Nudity, violence, special effects. Its why breaking bad was a good show. Pure writing. Everything they make nowadays is basically a Novella. A lot of good shows turn into situational based romantic dramas after one season. Basically like a newage Brady bunch.

[@AaronOfMpls]

On the other hand, keep Sturgeon's Law in mind ("90% of _everything_ is crap"). Every era, genre, and style has its few best works, its many run-of-the-mill works, its so-bad-it's-good works that are worth chuckling at, and its bad-to-terrible works that are best avoided.

[@j.b.9260]

Hill Street Blues? St. Elsewhere? Moonlighting? Miami Vice?

[@glendunzweilerproductions2812]

I have a background in theatre, music, sound design, radio plays, kids TV, documentaries, film development, public speaking/storytelling , and ‘new media’. All of these use different technologies to tell different stories in different ways for different reasons to different people. I argue that there is no ‘bad’ as long as people know the choices they make and why they make them. Audiences are fickle and come with their own opinions. In video games, you have 2D simple pixel strategy games and 3D ‘photorealistic’ immersive experiences. One serves a different purpose than the other. Thanks for making the video!

[@bluewheels3980]

I love TV from any era. Each time period, regardless of the decade, has good or bad shows, and it's all subjective. For example I love the Dick Van Dyke Show and Mary Tyler Moore Show just as much as I love the bear or Shameless. My problem with current TV is that there is so much of it in most of it is serialized which in and of itself is not a bad thing but most only last a season or two and then on a cliffhanger only to get canceled. So I wait till the end of the series before I watch it nowadays. And I still love those old episodic shows like The Simpsons or The Golden Girls or Bob's Burgers that I can just drop into any episode for comfort and know what's going on

[@TransCanadaPhil]

I dunno, I kind of lament the move to highly serialized television over mainly standalone episodes that were self contained. I find it very difficult to watch or enjoy modern shows of the past 20 years or so for this reason. I’m probably in the minority though. Aesthetically I just don’t like the gritty, dark, single-camera look of modern television vs the bright, multi-camera look and feel of the past.

[@eeyore345]

I remember a little more than 20 years ago, my colleague and I made a special trip to the department store to stare in awe of that 20 inch LED TV selling for > 20K. 😂

[@rorycraft5453]

Maybe that is why I stopped watching network television shows in the mid to late seventies in my late teens. I will admit to binge watching the Rockford Files about five on Netflix. Television sets, the remotes back were me and my siblings. We were told to change from one of the three network channels to another. How the television landscape has changed since my childhood.

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

i'm a columbo man myself but i get the drift