Yes but instead of us being given a few options of what we can spend our time watching or looking at, we now get to decide what content we consume. Whether it be binging a show, or doom scrolling, participating in online forums we are not relegated to what's given to us, we find what we are looking for to consume.

I feel like this statement can be attributed to Soap Operas. They really did cater to the housewife who was home everyday. My grandmother used to stop all activities when her "stories" came on and if she wasn't home to catch them she learned to use her VHS recorder to tape them for when she got home.

Not so much anymore, now we have news channels that only talk about the same news all day long. Circling back to the same topics that they had touched on earlier in the day.

I feel like with the change in streaming availability that this is not so much the case anymore for younger watchers. We pick and chose when we want to watch our new/favorite show. We can binge in little bits when we have time. We are not bound by the timing of television. And more so we have many more options of things besides tv, Podcasts, audiobooks. Television is no longer the go to for entertainment.

When I still had cable television years ago, I would switch between shows during commercial breaks so that I could catch multiple shows or pieces of shows at the same time. I have a serious hate for advertisements so I try to not watch them at all.

This seems like a more natural and sensible way to deal with advertisements. Creating breaks so that can add in more adds is a terrible setup and the audience recognizes that.

I have discovered some of my favorite musicians and styles of music just by getting to shows early and actually listening to the opening acts or the intermission act of a show.

I grew up on these shows and I found them more relatable to my own life than any of the previous shows they have talked about. The hit on real life topics and how the family/group would work through them. It was funny but it was also more realistic than anything I had seen before.

Yes but it was at this exact time period that the nuclear family was beginning to change and morph. What they were portraying during the 80's wasn't based on what was happening in the real family life.

For some people this is a comfort to them. Being able to rely on a consistent show format that takes their minds off of their real world problems. It is the detachment from the day to day that gives them enjoyment. The small comfort of knowing that the show will have the same similar pattern each week with a "happy ending"

Yes! There is no story or growth of the characters. It's always as this quote says. Fix the problem, laugh at the issue that created it and show ends. No one experiences any real life events or personal growth through the problems that are created. You would think with the change in society and all of the issues that are prevalent that they would be able to create stories that have some sort of depth to them.

I don't disagree with this. The sitcom is very overused and predictable. In some cases it even seems ridiculous. I find the sitcom show very hard to watch, even though it has changed and evolved over the years the repetitiveness of the story just doesn't bring me any type of amusement anymore.

Advertising is the root of many of the problems in America and the world.

I feel like this says so much about television and society. More educated families didn't want their kids to spend countless hours wasted in front of a tv and lower educated families spent even more time sitting in front of the tv.

This sounds like they don't want any depiction of real life actually displayed on television, more of a facade of real life.

I feel like it was much more than disruptive. The television set replaced hobbies and hands on learning. In the last reading it stated that tv sets replaced pianos in the home. Studies have shown that learning piano increases cognitive function and we replaced it with brain rot.

This sounds like children not wanting another kid to have access to a new toy or game because they can't have it first or as much. This kind of business behavior is detrimental to country wide progress.

This is a continuing theme throughout this writing, advertisements telling the public what the "solve" was for the family issues they were having. Was this just a post war thing or was advertisements this abundant before?

Guilting women into leaving the workforce to be homemakers and raise kids only to then require them to go back into the workforce to help pay for the life they were told they needed. I'm starting to understand our societal problems more.

It feels more like paper advertising sold an idea to the general public so that they could then advertise to them on a greater scale.