The title of this article is deliberately provocative. Few people would hold that television has never been better, but to say there has been a decline in the art of television is a different statement entirely. If nothing else, it implies that television does, or did, exist as an art form. Whatever your artistic purview, such an assertion is truly problematical.
This is the "art form" that, as David Steinberg once pointed out, introduces you to people like the Doublemint twins, who by comparison make Tricia Nixon-Eisenhower seem mysterious. Nevertheless, certain traditions of quality do pervade our reception of television - traditions we have learned to respect, either through their mythic construct or their humanistic intent.
Perhaps the greatest myth of television is its early "Golden Age," a period that saw TV rise to unprecedented popularity. The conditions of production during that rise have become laudable in their adversity. Workaday schedules, the pressures of performing live, a wealth of good writers, powerful performances, gritty realism, and hysterical comedy: That most of the programs have been lost in the wind isn't as important as the resonance of their history. Experts and witnesses testify to confirm the period's insistent work ethic; kinescopes treated like relics preserve highlights of the age (for only a certain status of program called for kinescoping) and document the creative fervor and richness that the adversity is said to have wrought.
Dramatic Legitimacy
Despite any excesses or loopholes in this history, how we gauge television creativity remains a pervasive residue of television's golden age. Berle, Caesar, Murrow, and others may have sold more sets, but the cultural value of important dramatic programming is what gave television (and this era) its legitimacy. The various teleplays of the period are its most esteemed assets, realistic and poignant, teeming with what viewers of discretion could call "quality." The same characteristics for critical assessment remain today, although they may be currently in a state of flux.
Ultimately, the golden age was doomed by its own success. The market control these shows provided the networks (who alone could afford the opulence of "live" spectacle) was the very condition that deemed "live" TV unnecessary: Once in command, networks saw that cheaper, syndicatable filmed and taped programming could be the norm. At the same time, the audience was calling for more hours of programming as the advertisers were calling for more hours of audience. The result of both demands was, in television jargon, to lower program quality to a more common denominator. Quality dramatic fare became scarce. "Cultural programming," infrequent even early on, became further ghettoized after the 1960s to corporate sponsorship on PBS.
So the lines of demarcation for quality TV were drawn and have been enforced. For comedy, and perhaps even sports and news, what viewers watch can usually be deemed the best quality programs. (Moonlighting, for example, garnered the most Emmy nominations this past year. It will almost certainly overcome its "bridesmaid" role next season, when it moves beyond its rookie status.) For dramatic programming, however, quality and rating are often inversely
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