Old schoolers like the late Gil Schwartz of CBS used to hate it when the press would commandeer executive sessions at TCA in the aughts with questions about the death of broadcast TV.
HBO had come to dominate the Emmys year after year and the perception was that programming on the Big Three just wasn’t sexy, no matter how much Schwartz would argue that the size of CBS’ audience was far more valuable than the trophies it never seemed to collect at the Shrine Auditorium.
He was right, of course: other than The Sopranos, which set HBO records, no show on premium cable could come close to the reach of a CSI.
Looking back, the fact that anyone was defending broadcast TV seems positively quaint these days. Those types of champions are now few and far between, especially since a number of veteran broadcast executives were handed their walking papers this year from CBS and the CW, while Fox’s Charlie Collier left network TV for a career in streaming.
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