Pass the remote

I watched the Emmys a couple of weeks ago and realized that I’ve come full circle. It used to be that I was familiar with all the nominated shows and all the actors and I could follow an awards show as one of the in-crowd. There weren’t that many channels and most of the people watching the Emmys were in the same boat as I – we watched these shows because. . .they were on.

Television has changed. There were and are lots of jokes about having 500 channels-and-still-nothing-to-watch but in fact, there is plenty to watch. Television became a medium of niche-watching – something for everyone. If you didn’t like sports, there was cooking. If you couldn’t be bothered to get used to new shows, there were channels and channels of re-runs.

I have been all these watchers but particularly the last one; it’s so easy just to keep watching Seinfeld, Everybody Loves Raymond, Columbo and The Simpsons. I continued to be a big fan of Curb Your Enthusiasm.

However, society was changing and I wasn’t keeping up and so over a number of years, I could watch the Emmys and not know a single program that was in the running. (I would know of them because I’m culturally-adept. I just wouldn’t have watched them.)

As time went on, there were also a number of new players in the game of making TV shows – most notably HBO but also AMC, FX, Showtime, Netflix. They were off the regular channel list so they were much more graphic – violence, language, sex. It changed the Emmys again and I was falling further behind.

Then, last Christmas, I got a small electronic device – a tablet – and I started opening it in the morning and watching Netflix. I started with movies but then I graduated to TV series.

Before I knew what was happening, I had become a dedicated viewer of the Golden Age of Television.

I’ll continue in this vein because TV is fun to talk about. I also looked back at all the previous winners of Emmys since the awards were first instituted and it’s possible I might re-think the designation “Golden Age of Television.” I don’t know; they made some awfully good television back in the days of Four Star Playhouse, Hallmark Hall of Fame, Playhouse 90 – and many others.

They made some bad TV too but “boob tube” probably doesn’t really apply to the majority of programs.