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It was definitely The Sopranos. People had heard of HBO originals before, but everybody was talking about The Sopranos. Not that there was nothing being produced on that level before, but it was popular enough to convince a lot of other networks to put in that level of effort and money for a TV show. 24 was definitely the big influencer for serialization, but I think of these as 2 separate trends that happened to coincide, though they probably helped each other.
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Aug 20, 2018 14:23
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Sir Lemming posted:24 was definitely the big influencer for serialization, but I think of these as 2 separate trends that happened to coincide, though they probably helped each other. If nothing else, I guarantee you can still recall the ticking clock sounds perfectly in your head.
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Aug 20, 2018 14:39
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Does anyone remember the era prior to that yellow First Down line? For something so small, it was such a huge gamechanger.
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Aug 20, 2018 15:20
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fartknocker posted:Basically, yes. Fox got rights to the NFC package of NFL games prior to the 1994 season and it was a big reason why a lot of stations became Fox affiliates. They added extra cameras and were the first network to have on screen graphics like the scoring bug and the game clock, years before anyone else tried it. They also brought over basically everything from CBS (Most notably Pat Summerall and John Madden) so it further legitimized their coverage. It also didn’t hurt that the NFC was the dominate conference during that era, so they’d get all the high profile Dallas-San Francisco-Green Bay games. Fox really did revolutionize televised sports that year. I was never really into sports as a whole, but prior to that you literally had to watch a game to know what was happening. I remember the play clock was just a camera pointed at the scoreboard superimposed in a corner. If you wanted to know the score, you had to wait for a producer to superimpose it on the screen. Now, I can just glance at the screen and know exactly what's happening at any given moment that's not a commercial break. I'm not even sure how anyone could survive a televised baseball game before the 90's.
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Aug 20, 2018 16:17
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The 90's was sort of a renaissance for good tv shows. Things like The Sopranos was a huge deal. Why? Because people were loving sick of sitcoms. If you look at the history of the medium you'll see why. Tv launched with nothing but talk shows or game shows in the 50's. That's all there was. It stays that way for about a decade or so, then you get sitcoms. Sitcoms hit a low point in the 70's. They're formulaic, tacky, and have lovely one dimensional characters. This trend persists from the 70's all the way to the 90's. People were sick of sitcoms. So the game was really set up for someone looking to tell an actual story, not just sell dish soap with lovely jokes around it.
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Aug 20, 2018 16:56
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Beastie posted:It stays that way for about a decade or so, then you get sitcoms. Sitcoms hit a low point in the 70's. They're formulaic, tacky, and have lovely one dimensional characters. At the same time, that was the decade of Norman Lear, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, M*A*S*H*, Barney Miller and Taxi. I suppose the problem is that the best stuff has endured and we've forgotten the less celebrated efforts. The main genre I associate with the seventies is detective shows and police procedurals (all the Quinn Martin productions, Kojak, Hawaii Five-O, Mannix etc.) but again, I guess that genre has always been popular. Wheat Loaf has a new favorite as of 17:11 on Aug 20, 2018 |
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Aug 20, 2018 17:08
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Beastie posted:The 90's was sort of a renaissance for good tv shows. Things like The Sopranos was a huge deal. Sometimes I felt like the actors playing Meadow, AJ, and the side mob characters thought they were in a sitcom.
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Aug 20, 2018 18:31
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Neito posted:Does anyone remember the era prior to that yellow First Down line? For something so small, it was such a huge gamechanger. They've had the first-down line basically as long as I can remember. I was just remarking on that the other day, how we've basically had that fancy line but nothing else for a couple decades, and now suddenly they're doing all kinds of weird graphics. Baseball they show you where in the batter's box the ball hit and how hard, and sometimes even chart an arc of where the ball traveled. They're also displaying ads using AR putting them on top of all kinds of things, I saw a game the other day where they just covered up half the audience with a big banner ad (that wasn't actually there IRL, so they could still see the game) In 10 years TV of live events is gonna be weird, covered in pop-up virtual ads.
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Aug 20, 2018 18:55
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Zaphod42 posted:In 10 years TV of live events is gonna be weird, covered in pop-up virtual ads. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdmsPG-BfRw
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Aug 20, 2018 19:05
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Beastie posted:This trend persists from the 70's all the way to the 90's. People were sick of sitcoms. In 1989, NBC still had the #1, #3, and #4 shows on television, all on Thusday night (Cosby Show, Cheers, and Different World). Other sit-coms in the top 10 were the Golden Girls, Empty Nest, Roseanne, the Wonder Years A few years later, 1992-93, the top 10 was this: 1. 60 Minutes 2. Roseanne 3. Home Improvement 4. Murphy Brown 5. Murder She Wrote 6. Coach 7. Monday Night Football 8. Cheers/Sunday Night Movie (Tied) 10. Full House So that's the early 90s, still sit-com hell. Sopranos premiered in 1999. Top 10 '98-99 was 1. ER 2. Friends 3. Frasier 4. Monday Night Football 5. Veronica's Closet/Jessie (Tied) (Also what the gently caress were those shows, I have no memory of them whatsoever.) 7. 60 Minutes 8. Touched by an Angel 9. Sunday Night Movie 10. Home Improvement Sitcoms really were sucking but the viewing public didn't really seem to be getting sick of them. But then a couple of years later, you had this: 1. Survivor 2. ER 3. Who Wants To Be A Millionaire 4. Who Wants To Be A Millionaire (Again) 5. Monday Night Football/Friends/Everybody Loves Raymond (Tied) 8. Seriously We're Asking You Who Wants To Be A loving Millionaire WTF 9. Law & Order 10. The Practice People were demonstrably pretty sick of sitcoms and looking for something else, but I don't think it was prestige shows like Sopranos that killed them. It was loving reality TV and gameshows again.
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Aug 20, 2018 19:09
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Phanatic posted:Sitcoms really were sucking but the viewing public didn't really seem to be getting sick of them. But then a couple of years later, you had this: This was around the year 2000ish, because that was the year there was a hollywood strike, so they just shoveled out a shitload of gameshows
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Aug 20, 2018 19:15
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I'm not saying sitcoms are dead, just that people were ready for something new. ER is a good example of 90's shows where they tried to break the mold and create something with meaningful gravity.
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Aug 20, 2018 19:22
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Neddy Seagoon posted:If nothing else, I guarantee you can still recall the ticking clock sounds perfectly in your head. I was a fan of 24, so early between two seasons I thought it was a great idea to change the ringtone on my cell phone to the ringtone from the show. I had it for months. Then the next season started, and I thought every call on the show was for me!
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Aug 20, 2018 19:31
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Drama killed tv for me, every drat thing has to be dramatic.
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Aug 20, 2018 19:33
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Beastie posted:I'm not saying sitcoms are dead, just that people were ready for something new. ER is a good example of 90's shows where they tried to break the mold and create something with meaningful gravity. I don't know. St Elsewhere had been a very highly-acclaimed hospital drama praised for its serialised storylines, realism and accuracy (disclaimer: I don't know how realistic or accurate it actually was) a decade before ER.
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Aug 20, 2018 19:34
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evobatman posted:I was a fan of 24, so early between two seasons I thought it was a great idea to change the ringtone on my cell phone to the ringtone from the show. I had it for months. Then the next season started, and I thought every call on the show was for me! Someone recreated BoJack's polyphonic Horsin' Around ringtone, and it's been mine for a few years now. Of course now whenever someone calls BoJack I think it's my phone ringing.
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Aug 20, 2018 19:35
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Veronica's Closet was about Kristie Alley running a Victoria Secrets style company. It was one of those successful working women shows where their douchbag ex husbands were still hanging around Jesse was about Christina Applegate being a single mom living with her dad. It was retooled in its second season to her going back to school, and almost the entire cast was jettisoned. I remember Fox getting NHL and ALL the jokes up here in Canada were about how Americans were so stupid they couldn't see the puck. Fox was going to put a blue glow on it when it was passed, and red when someone shot for the net.
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Aug 20, 2018 19:42
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Fox in fact did that.
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Aug 20, 2018 20:01
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Wheat Loaf posted:I don't know. St Elsewhere had been a very highly-acclaimed hospital drama praised for its serialised storylines, realism and accuracy (disclaimer: I don't know how realistic or accurate it actually was) a decade before ER. Yeah, I think if you really want to track the development of ‘prestige tv’ just look into the career of Steve Bochco. The man had a string of hit series that constantly pushed the medium forward from Hill St Blues, to LA Law, to NYPD Blue. He even gave a boost to what people currently think of as ‘prestige tv’ by pushing up and coming show runners he mentored away from network tv and toward cable when networks started self censoring under pressure from family alliance groups during the Bush years.
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Aug 20, 2018 20:13
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TITTIEKISSER69 posted:Fox in fact did that. I mean, they were trying to increase views with a lovely gimmick. But to be fair watching a hockey game in 480p or less really really sucks.
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Aug 20, 2018 20:13
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Macdeo Lurjtux posted:Yeah, I think if you really want to track the development of ‘prestige tv’ just look into the career of Steve Bochco. The man had a string of hit series that constantly pushed the medium forward from Hill St Blues, to LA Law, to NYPD Blue. He even gave a boost to what people currently think of as ‘prestige tv’ by pushing up and coming show runners he mentored away from network tv and toward cable when networks started self censoring under pressure from family alliance groups during the Bush years. Yeah, it was Bochco and David E. Kelley. They did all the cop and lawyer shows. I feel like there's an arbitrary divide between them. The two most acclaimed shows of the early 00s were The Sopranos and The West Wing and I feel like you can (again, arbitrarily) trace the former back to Hill Street Blues, which was very much Bochco's show, and the latter to L.A. Law, which was arguably more of Kelley's thing.  Do we still have many TV super-producers who create loads of shows and have most of them turn into reasonably successful hits? Guys with middle initials like James L. Brooks, Donald P. Bellisario, Steven R. Bochco, David E. Kelley, Steven J. Cannell, Glen A. Larson and also Norman Lear and Aaron Spelling; it feels like there's less of that nowadays. The only names currently active in TV who occur to me are Shonda Rhimes and Ryan Murphy, maybe Greg Berlanti. Wheat Loaf has a new favorite as of 20:30 on Aug 20, 2018 |
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Aug 20, 2018 20:26
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I think the biggest problem with sitcoms was what happens to everything popular. Everybody suddenly had to vomit minimal effort sitcoms all over everything until people quit watching them. There are some drat good sitcoms but so many of the ones made were just throwing poo poo at the wall to see if any of it would stick. Meanwhile because sitcoms were very watched the most popular ones stayed far longer them they should have because there was still money to be squeezed out. I really think that's why people soured on sitcoms. When the format was still being figured out they weren't afraid to take risks or do goofy poo poo but eventually it was just "hey this worked so just do it over and over because it makes money." That and how many of them stayed on the air far beyond the point where it was obvious they ran out of ideas. Though the worst is when a show goes "everybody likes this minor character. This show is now about that character and nobody else." That usually ends badly.
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Aug 20, 2018 21:02
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Up to a certain point, almost every sitcom on TV in the 90s looked the same: Living room, workplace, a few other sets, and everything shot from about the same angles. Just about everything from ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC. They'd been around before, but Fox probably struck a bit of gold in the late 90s with Ally McBeal and Malcolm in the Middle breaking out with a bit of an atypical (at the time) look for comedies. Now it seems like a popular trend is having a lot of sitcoms with a coat of a 'documentary' feel to it.
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Aug 20, 2018 21:17
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Also sitcoms tended to flanderize their characters more and more every season
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Aug 20, 2018 22:05
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Zaphod42 posted:Also sitcoms tended to flanderize their characters more and more every season See: Jefferson D'Arcy v Steve Rhoades, adding unnecessary kids, or transitioning to new employment (Drew Carrey). The hoops they jump through are fun sometimes, too. "Caroline, the paper called and said they're moving you to their... DIGITAL COMICS SECTION ON THE INTERNET!" "Oh, that means I get a nice new office in downtown and a staff of spunky multi-ethnic interns!" "And that means I can't be your will-they, won't-they because as a real artist I don't know how to digitally color things!"
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Aug 20, 2018 22:20
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Sometimes, they do just throw poo poo around to see what works. The biggest recent one I can think of was that Shatner sitcom, Bleep My Dad Says.
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Aug 20, 2018 22:49
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Leavemywife posted:The biggest recent one I can think of was that Shatner sitcom, Bleep My Dad Says. I have no idea why they did what they did with Bleep. Such a loving mess.
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Aug 20, 2018 22:54
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molloy_(TV_series) Before Blossom there was MOLLOY!!
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Aug 20, 2018 23:26
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TITTIEKISSER69 posted:Fox in fact did that. There was an ad that I cannot find that had some James Carvell type telling the NHL guys about it, and at the end he's thrown out of the room with the red streak. I cannot remember what the ad was for though.
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Aug 21, 2018 07:18
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Really sounds like an ESPN ad, I'd love to see it.
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Aug 21, 2018 07:58
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I really cannot find it, god drat. I did find this one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XdLheUC7kA I found the ad Fox made to promote it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5xXKTCoWMc LIke what the gently caress? This seems like an ad from like Conan or something, especially with the pew noise
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Aug 21, 2018 19:19
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FilthyImp posted:See: Jefferson D'Arcy v Steve Rhoades, adding unnecessary kids, or transitioning to new employment (Drew Carrey). Hey, in that last season of Drew Carey, we got Kaitlin Olson as the owner of the internet startup. That's really the only thing I can say made sense about that season.
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Aug 21, 2018 19:28
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ER was massive; we would have weekly viewing parties in the common room of our dorm floor. That didn't happen for any other show except maybe Friends.
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Aug 21, 2018 20:48
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ER would have kept being the Emmy champ if West Wing hadn't come around. Same executive producer on both shows too. That guy was making bank back then.
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Aug 21, 2018 20:57
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Mu Zeta posted:And all the villains being latinos isn't going to age well Did you seriously not notice all the white supremacist antagonists?
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Aug 21, 2018 21:05
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Mu Zeta posted:ER would have kept being the Emmy champ if West Wing hadn't come around. Same executive producer on both shows too. That guy was making bank back then. Angela Lansbury was very frustrated for a very long time that she never managed to win an Emmy for Murder, She Wrote. It was on for 12 seasons, she was nominated for it 12 times in a row and she lost every time, because either Tyne Daly or Sharon Gless won in the category every year Cagney & Lacey was on, then she variously lost to Dana Delaney and the lead female actors from thirtysomething and Picket Fences the other half dozen times.
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Aug 21, 2018 21:15
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Murder, She Wrote was also the last television series to cut on film.
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Aug 21, 2018 21:33
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I work from home twice a week and sometimes enjoy throwing that on in the afternoons when it comes on one of those "classic TV shows!" channels. Not being in HD, it weirds me out how some episodes despite being first aired in the 90s looks 70s quality. Then I recently saw one in HD and wow it looked much closer to its era.
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Aug 21, 2018 21:48
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I could have sworn there was a story with Murder She Wrote that they'd wanted to naturally end the series a few times before being cancelled. It turned out that it was just one of those productions where everyone involved felt a bit close to crew and wanted to make sure it kept going a few more years to make sure they didn't have to go out and find new work suddenly.
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Aug 21, 2018 22:51
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TITTIEKISSER69 posted:Then I recently saw one in HD and wow it looked much closer to its era. That and the ShawScope sometimes makes the lens distortion really visable/framerate is all weird.
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Aug 22, 2018 00:35
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