Talk:Golden Age of Television

Stop your fake edit war
I posted you a clear message that the so-called unsourced material was sourced in the Wiki bio of the person quoted, and previously put (see) after the link to the bio. Where do they get people with such low IQs to give edit privileges to? Do you want material reptitiously put into this article to satisfy yourself? What a loser. I'll do it, but I hope the higher management tags you for this. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.29.203.76 (talk) 19:57, 10 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Dear Sir with high IQ (174.29.203.76), I admit I have low IQ. However, given your high IQ, I expected that you would have read and understood my message posted at 00:55 hours on 11 Nov and would have been well aware about WP:CS. I am sure that with your IQ level, you will understand that guideline and also WP:3RR. I am also confident that in no time you will understand the fact that anyone is welcome to edit on Wikipedia provided that they follow the guidelines. Having said that, please follow the guidelines and continue editing on Wikipedia. Should you need any help, feel free to drop in a message to me on my TalkPage. Cheers,  Arun Kumar SINGH (Talk)  20:13, 10 November 2015 (UTC)

Message from Francis Burdett
The idea that the "golden age of television" in the US was in the 1950's and 1960's is somewhat dubious. For every "Playhouse 90" and "Twilight Zone" there were 2 wrestling shows and 3 middle-brow westerns. In general one could make the argument that quality of the average drama on television is better now that it has ever been. --Francis Burdett 01:39, 22 June 2006 (UT
 * I agree, this whole article feels very POV-ish, particularly since there are no references to external articles referring to this period of time as the "Golden Age". Jeff schiller 12:18, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

Isn't the current era the Golden Age of Televison?
Every day, the papers publish articles explaining why/how we live in the Golden Age of Television. Most cultural commentators during the 50's wrote that their shows were mostly trash and rightfully so. The output consisted mostly of game shows and soap operas, designed around around selling washing powder in the ad-break. Middle class people with taste preferred radio plays, theater, books and above all, the cinema. The few good shows from that era, like the 'anthologies', are vastly outweighed in quantity by the current production of quality shows.

If you read the papers or talk to people on the street, there is a strong belief that tv is supplanting both movies and novels as the best medium for story-telling. Shows like The Wire are regularly compared to Dickens and Dostoevsky. These are some newspaper articles recentey published in just the last 4 days (quick Google search) which take for granted the notion our current era is the 'Golden Age of Television'.

http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/box-seat/how-tv-got-so-good-20130320-2gfd7.html http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/03/its-the-golden-age-of-tv-but-why-exactly/274165/ http://www.filmschoolrejects.com/features/golden-age-tv-aspires-to-be-film-not-vice-versa-rfure.php

Shouldn't there at-least be a mention that 90% of the public thinks the current age is the Golden Age of Television, not the fifties? Mshara1 (talk) 11:37, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

This section is a load of crap. The era of live television from the late forties through the early sixties has long been called the Golden Age of Television by historians. This section is the biggest load of idiocy I have ever read. I changed that section because it is utter nonsense and a point of view written by an idiot who hasn't a clue about television history.--
 * I don't have a dog in the hunt about whether the current era should be called either a or the Golden Age of Television, but I do have concerns that this article does not do enough to firmly establish through extensive secondary sources that the consensus of historical scholarship agrees that the era the article covers is indeed the golden age. There really should be at least one whole section early in the article that explains who considers this era the Golden Age, why they consider it so, and for how long. Also, DO NOT CALL PEOPLE IDIOTS. Comment on the edit, not the editor. Last, remember to sign your posts with four atildas. Mmyers1976 (talk) 19:01, 9 May 2016 (UTC)

The "Golden Age of Television" is actually the 60s, 70s and part of the 80s. From memory, it has been dubbed that oftentimes in the press when making references to the many hit TV shows by Aaron Spelling, from Charlie's Angels to Dynasty. The Golden era of TV encompasses pre-Aaron Spelling... but not that far back! The 1940s cannot and ARE not part of the Golden Age of television! They are part of the DAWNING ERA OF TELEVISION. No one is discussing which era was better, had more quality TV or better family shows, or more intelligent, we're just debating the appellation for the different eras.

The problem with wiki is it's edited by any random person, and they edit in their disinformation, whatever erroneous info they landed on when they googled a blog or other such clueless (or biased!) website. They take that at face value, others repeat it, pretty soon someone types that onto Wiki editor and then it sticks. People are confusing dates with the Golden Age of Hollywood (cinema). Huge difference. The Golden dates vary considerably here. Classic TV shows such as Bewitched are definitely part of the Golden Age of Television. The Lone Ranger is not, it's part of its incipience. No one is debating that it was also a great TV show, or which one was better. The Lone Ranger defined television because it was part of its DAWNING, then the Golden Age happened. (It is also a reference to everything Aaron Spelling touched turned to gold. A real Midas of TV. Yes, it's also a money reference here. Spelling was a cash machine.)

Please people: this article needs dates correcting. Plenty of historians, scholars and newspaper articles out there (which I read back when they were actually published, as opposed to someone's fallacy posted online) will prove what I'm saying, if you do your research. Many of us lived in those eras and we know what they are called, and why, and when they started. No offense, but if a Millnennial has their facts wrong, why should they be allowed to rewrite history according to their gross misinformation? They didn't live then, we did. 108.178.137.210 (talk) 10:03, 26 July 2019 (UTC)Thanks.

An established and recognized fact
How can something be "dubious" when it is recognized by the Los Angeles Times, the U.S. Museum of Broadcasting, and the Encyclopedia Britannica?

The Golden Age of Television is an established and recognized fact.

C.P.Taft (talk) 05:51, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

hey wasn't this period the golden age of British Television when such Writers as the excellent Nigel Kneal and Drama serials from such greats as Francis Durbridge ruled the Airwaves of Britain! american Television has always been tacky and of poor quality.

Unsigned commentators are always tacky and poor quality. There was only one government run station and one private in the 50's and most of the 60's. Looking at the TV in the UK article, it seems that there was nothing of worth to come out of that period. Somebody should kill this article. 75.28.128.85 (talk) 08:09, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

It's still dubious since you provide no citations. And the whole article reeks, to be honest. The subject is notable enough for an article, but this isn't it. Hopefully someone with more knowledge / concern than me will rewrite.JakartaDean (talk) 12:28, 25 June 2012 (UTC)

Historically accurate article
This article looks like a piece of nostalgia written by people of a certain age. It is lacking in objectivity. AshbyJnr 23:42, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. This page is POV as heck. What encyclopedia puts "culture" in quotation marks? 68.12.123.82 (talk) 15:07, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

The only remotely qualified source for the article contests the concept of the golden age. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.255.61.223 (talk) 15:59, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

The first two footnotes in this article come from highly authoritative sources: the Los Angeles Times and the Museum of Broadcasting. This article is not mere "nostalgia," but a matter of recognized history.

C.P.Taft (talk) 05:43, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

Multiple suggestions

 * 1) South Africa needs to be wiped out because its in the 1970s and this article coverage is until 1961. It's way off topic
 * 2) Generally, the whole Worldwide section really should be wiped out to concentrate on the United States 1st.
 * 3) The introduction of this article puts the whole Worldwide section out of context.
 * 4) Move the citations out of introduction. The golden age of television in the United States occurred because of the explosion in the sales of television that went through the roof in 1948 and continued on an extremely strong pace. 66.234.33.8 (talk) 13:38, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

What about the current era?
As even a cursory Google search instantly reveals, the current era —beginning circa Oz— is also very regularly referred to as "TV's golden age", in the specific context of shows like The Sopranos, The Wire, Six Feet Under, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, Carnivàle, Deadwood, Lost, BSG, Firefly, The Office, Curb Your Enthusiasm etc, etc, etc. Some commentators are going so far as to view contemporary TV as the new cultural locus of what used to be the classic European novel. It's rather peculiar and telling that none of this is mentioned anywhere in this article. —87.78.5.185 (talk) 14:47, 20 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Thank you for bringing up the topic. Wikipedia reports what is covered in reliable sources, which means that you are welcome to suggest changes to the page as long as you can support what you say.  Most television scholars (yes, such a thing exists) use "Golden Age" to refer to an earlier point in television history.  Andrew327 05:49, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Agreed that the bias manifested in the focus of this article is absurd. And it seems to be championed by two or three users, one of whom failed to sign his spiteful little comment above about how all criticism of the article is "a load of crap". I would hazard a guess that those stubbornly insisting that the early decades of game shows, soap operas, and patronizing children's shows hosted by creepy clowns was "the golden age" are all old enough that nostalgia is their prime motive. When you google "golden age of television" more than two thirds of links on the first five pages address the current era, from The Sopranos to Breaking Bad. I realize that google surveys are anathema to the anal retentive citationistas, but you're flat out deluding yourself if you think the current era isn't going to eventually have to be included, at the very least, alongside the late 40's-early 60's, if not replacing it outright. PenitentWhaler (talk) 16:02, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

The current era CANNOT and WILL NEVER be included in "Golden Age of Television", simply because that appellation refers to a BYGONE era. Long done and over with. What you are suggesting is akin to calling Millennials "The Greatest Generation". Sorry no can do. Those words in quotes are the appellation for a generation, the people are long dead. It started in 1910. You cannot randomly appropriate the appellation "The Greatest Generation", simply because you lived (or were born) in 2010, or because you think your generation might be great. These are terms that refer to PERIODS in *HISTORY*! You cannot make the present the past. That the shows you named are (or were) popular etc. has nothing to do with the terminology "Golden Age of Television". In fact, today's television is what makes people lament the Golden Age of TV, when Aaron Spelling reigned supreme. It ended because new techniques of filming and producing television were brought in. I don't know if today's TV has an appellation (and if it were up to me, that would be pejorative) but if it amuses you, you are free to call it "neo-Golden TV", see if it sticks, but that "age" of television which is said to have been "Golden" is in the past, a long, long time ago. You wouldn't call the 80s music era "Rockabilly", even if there was rock and roll then too, that's the 50s decade. And so on. Hope these examples are clear. Millennials are very hard to be taught, they want to rewrite a past in which they never sucked air; because they simply weren't born then, so, they are inherently clueless as to the facts then, and can only go by the disinformation they find today on the internet. Anything published online is gospel to them. This lack of education is oh-so sad! But please don't attempt to impose it on the rest of us. Your grand-kids will thank you for keeping history accurate.


 * If this is so biased, why have the networks occasionally broadcast [corrected your spelling: NO "ed", there's no 'casted' past participle, dude!] retro-golden age teleplays such as Death of a Salesman in 1966 and 1985? These are the kinds of shows that came from the golden age. Sure, the article seems overly nostalgic, and as User:Francis Burdett pointed out "For every "Playhouse 90" and "Twilight Zone" there were 2 wrestling shows and 3 middle-brow westerns." But I still wouldn't go so far as to write off the whole article, and even with shows like The Sopranos, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, etc., I reject the notion the golden age is now. -User:DanTD (talk) 14:35, 31 March 2014 (UTC)

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Cleanup Template
This article reads too much as a timelime of US TV in the 1950s, details of the evolution of programming, with no text that establishes who considered(s) this period the Golden Age and why, when this period was first called the Golden Age, etc. There should be an "Origin of the term" section right at the beginning of this article that provides that information. See the "Origin of the term" section from Silver Age of comic books for an example of what that should look like. Mmyers1976 (talk) 20:38, 12 August 2016 (UTC)

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