I just finished streaming the latest season of “The White Lotus.” And “House of the Dragon,” “The Peripheral,” “The Crown,” “Andor,” “The Rings of Power” and too many more. What a change from May 1961, when Newton Minow, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, called television a “vast wasteland.” Or 1992, when Bruce Springsteen sang “57 Channels (and Nothin’ On).”
Many shows exist only because computer-generated imagery can create otherworldly landscapes and gravity-defying creatures. Like it or not, Silicon Valley owns Hollywood. Well, not literally, but clearly today’s Hollywood wouldn’t exist without Silicon Valley’s streaming technology and high-end graphics. As these two industries continue to merge, which will become more dominant driving society and culture?
I have to admit, I’m usually in the camp suggesting that Hollywood makes us dumber and technology makes us smarter. But now we are at Yogi Berra’s fork in the road. Sure, I have my beefs with Hollywood, with its preachy output and woke agendas. Most of the shows I mentioned above pushed back against toxic masculinity, the punching bag du jour. But increasingly I think streaming is making us smarter, while social media is bringing out the goldfish in us.
In the old days of 22-minute sitcoms, almost every episode had three intertwining plots. The A plot was the main one, “The One With Monica and Chandler’s Wedding,” while the B plot was often centered on another character, think “Kramer takes over Moviefone.” The C plot is often incidental, like Jim and Pam playing pranks on Dwight in “The Office.” This TV-writing formula was meant to please the lowest common denominator. These intertwining plots were why “Friends” had six main characters. You could pair up any two in any given plot. “Seinfeld” had four but often plugged in two other characters: Newman, Puddy or Jerry’s parents at Del Boca Vista. A-B-C! This defined the mostly mindless over-the-airwaves television. As the saying goes, television is 50 inches wide and barely an inch deep.
But with cable came more bandwidth and time available on premium networks such as HBO, so more characters could fit in each season. Shows could have long arcs and much more complexity. Think of how many twisty plots and characters filled “The Sopranos” and “The Wire.” This lengthened the attention span of viewers. Characters could be developed over years—such as Tony Soprano’s therapy sessions involving his mother. Try doing that in 22 minutes. Was it good for us? Author Steven Johnson suggested “Watching TV Makes You Smarter” in 2005 in the New York Times. I think he was right, and that was way before streaming.
Today we have infinite storage and massive bandwidth to deliver elaborate narratives that make you think.
