Open Forum Friday: Has TV Surpassed Movies as the Mainstream Entertainment Medium of Choice?

Posted by on October 5th, 2012   Filed under: Open Forum Friday

Last week Andrew O’Hehir over at Salon incited plenty of discussion and rebuttals across the blogosphere with his editorial entitled, “Is Movie Culture Dead?” He suggested that film had fallen out of vogue with critics and academics in terms of providing meaningful material for cultural debate, and while I’m not overly interested in that part of his argument, I’m a little more intrigued by the other insinuation he makes. He believes that it has been replaced by TV instead. This is something I had been thinking about for a while now, and indeed so have many others, including James Wolcott over at Vanity Fair who wrote a piece in July entitled “Primetime’s Graduation”. But are today’s television shows actually superior to film or is it all just smoke and mirrors?

It’s definitely true that networks like HBO, Showtime and AMC have elevated television to an art form that at times rivals the best that cinema has to offer. And some days it seems like more people are talking about latest episode of The Walking Dead than whatever hit theatres that weekend. However, whenever someone points out how many bad movies there are in theatres, they usually fail to mention all the terrible stuff that is also on network TV. Cable TV may be more cost effective and reliable than your average mainstream movie, but I still think a lot of the best TV shows largely consist of soap opera-esque filler. What do you think? Do you prefer to stay home and watch TV rather than going out to the theatre? Is it better to have an entire season to invest in characters, or is there something special about keeping things contained to a two-hour run-time? Is TV actually better than film? Give us your thoughts here on Open Forum Friday.



  • projectgenesis

    I love movies; I go at least once or twice a week. But, yes, right now, at this moment – TV is better. I think it will shake out that this decade of TV, 2002-2012, will be the 1967-1977 of film.

  • dan

    There are films as good as tv shows such as Breaking bad/Mad men/the sopranos etc But these films are rarely seen and it seems most moviegoers these days are dumb teens who just wanna see tits and explosions. Do you think teens are going to see Looper this weekend? No they will go and see taken 2 a generic action sequel that looks exactly like the first, just like hangover 1 and 2. Completely unoriginal.

  • Mike H

    I definitely have to agree that TV is moving past the motion picture for sure, with shows like Breaking Bad, The Walking Dead, Dexter, Sons of Anarchy, they would hold my interest over the next big flick. And you see a lot of big names signing onto TV series and they go with that for a few seasons and they are golden, most of them.
    And for someone that would be going to see a flick in the theater all the time, over the years that has decreased huge. Is it because there are really no more surprises for the big screen, too many on set leaks and coverage that when you go to see a movie, you have already been overexposed.
    Movies have to do something HUGE to get my interest back in the theaters and it is definitely not 3D shit.

  • Owozifa

    I think mainstream film has just gotten farther away from character and focused a lot on plot and special effects to its detriment. I don’t think TV is all that great and my personal investment has actually been waning. I’m watching no TV right now. There’s too much else to watch to bother putting up with, as you call it, soap opera filler.

  • Kasper

    There’s so many excellent tv shows these days on cable that far surpass the quality of most movies – and we can watch it without going bankrupt, unlike going to the movies which cost like 20+ dollars here. It’s insane.

  • scott

    For subliminal messaging maybe, but movies are till strong.

    scott
    http://www.reconditepictures.com

  • I think there’s a combination going on. Not only have the scripted dramas of the last 10 years become extremely high in production value and writing quality, but they also have the advantage of being serial dramas. The most popular films (money wise) appear to be serialized films (H Potter, LOTR etc). The advantage TV has is not only is the quality very high at present, but you get the serialization payoff week after week (as opposed to every 3 years for a movie).
    I’m happy that both mediums have become major talking points.

  • Xidor

    I think in the workplace, more people talk about TV shows than movies. I think that was also the case for Seinfeld. Today, I don’t think there is a particular show, but a bunch of shows.

  • Tum Tum Tyranus

    Yes, tv has surpassed movies as the mainstream entertainment medium of choice but they did it a long time ago and only because it’s the most convenient.

    But in terms of quality, film is way fucking better than tv.

    All these shows geeks crank off to(Breaking Bad, The Wire, Mad Men, Boardwalk Empire etc.) are fucking boring. If these geeks were awesome pirates like me, and had the option to watch almost any film in the world, than they wouldn’t waste their time on these crap ass shows. It’s stockholm syndrome.

  • patrik

    TV is at least equal, I would say.. There is a lot of shit on tv as well but most of those shitty shows just goes unnoticed whereas shitty movies may get a little more highlighted. But there has certainly been many amazing shows over the last decade and at any point there’s been probably two or three awesome ones going at the same time.

    #9 I don’t know if that is some weak attempt at fishing but I’ll respond anyway and say that all of those shows that you mentioned are fantastic.

  • Tum Tum Tyranus

    No fishing, that’s how I feel. Price and convenience shouldn’t be a factor when comparing the two. If you take them away, I genuinely feel that geeks would gravitate more towards film. Give them the option to watch this rich library of film comfortably in their homes, and then lets see what they think is the superior medium.

    Another thing I notice when geeks debate this issue, is how they don’t take into account rewatch value. So many of these shows are designed to be slow burns that maybe work on the initial view but once you get into the rewatches they tend to draaagggggg. A lot of these geeks are only reacting to their first and only viewing of a show and this tends to cloud their judgement when debating this topic.

  • Tum Tum Tyranus

    You know what, as pro film as I am, I will concede that tv does comedy way better than film. It’s almost the exact opposite of how I feel above. Comedy movies tend to drag and a lot of them have these crap artificial emotional moments during the last act. Comedy shows(the good ones) are in & out, often stand alone, and have a higher laugh to plot ratio.

  • piggy

    There’s only a handful of worthwhile shows. I have no idea who these people are that support them all and keep them on the air.

  • Steve

    I would agree when it comes to comedy. I can spend two days burning through an entire season of Community, Arrested Development, or 30 Rock. But when it comes to dramas I sometimes get the feeling that there are side plots and filler thrown in just to drag out the runtime and fulfill the quota of episodes per season.
    Look at The Walking Dead – a show which has a very intriguing premise: life in a zombie apocalypse, but stretched out over several seasons, not crammed into two hours. The further you get into that show, however, the more it just turns into characters bickering with each other and occasionally some Zombies.
    In summation, I think TV works best when episodes are contained stories, not one hour parts of a 50-hour whole.

  • Owozifa

    I don’t hate TV, but I just feel like 90% of it that lasts more than one or two seasons gets crushed under its own weight and I just can’t keep interest in anything.

  • Frank

    So you hear people talking about The Walking Dead and you assume that there’s some real merit to TV being better than film? Have you actually seen The Walking Dead? If you haven’t, save yourself the trouble because is in no way comparable to great cinema. Let’s just say I would rather watch Revenge of the Fallen again than sit through an entire season of The Walking Dead.

    Seven. That’s the number of TV dramas that compare favorably to the best films of recent years. And they are…

    The Wire, Breaking Bad, Sopranos, Mad Men, Sons of Anarchy, Homeland and Game of Thrones. Now I don’t know about anyone else, but the number of great films that I have watched this past 5 years far exceed that total.

  • patrik

    #11

    Well, I love both movies and tv and I watch both mediums in the comfort of my home. The price of a tv show on blu-ray or dvd tend to be a lot higher than the price of a movie so I don’t think it’s more convenient.. You can just download both, which I think most “geeks” do.

    I guess I just disagree about the rewatch value, since I’ve rewatched all of the show you mentioned except Boardwalk Empire which I’m currently blowing through the second season on glorious blu-ray as we type. I don’t think the shows drag at all, in fact you can get a lot more out of a rewatch. Just like with movies. Funnily enough I rewatched the entire Breaking Bad series a couple of weeks ago and picked up on a lot more things this time. You could use the exact same arguments for movies, it’s not like every movie gets better on rewatch. Also, something like Breaking Bad could never be done with a movie. There’s no way you can do character development in the same way. I love following a story and/or a group of characters for a season or more than one season if we’re lucky. First season of Lost is absolute magic for example and could not be done in a movie. Definitely agree about the comedy though.

    Now, I’m not really pro-tv, I like both mediums on an equal level. There’s some shit and there’s some gold in both. I’m just defending tv here. I don’t really know how people compare a show against a movie though.

    #16 I would add Treme, Lost, Dexter, Fringe, Deadwood, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, first season of Prison Break and Firefly to that list.. There’s probably lots more, but it’s early and my brain is not working at full capacity yet. I’m also sure there are plenty that I haven’t seen.

    Again, I don’t know how people compare say Breaking Bad to a movie though. What movie would you compare it with? And what criteria are you going by? Two different mediums, I love them both.

  • patrik

    And I even forgot to take British tv into consideration.. Doctor Who, Sherlock and Luther are all awesome as well.

  • Tum Tum Tyranus

    “The price of a tv show on blu-ray or dvd tend to be a lot higher than the price of a movie so I don’t think it’s more convenient”

    A lot of geeks don’t rewatch.

    “You can just download both, which I think most “geeks” do.”

    You’d be surprised. A lot of them don’t know how to transfer the d/l content to watch on their big screen tv(this is a huge hurdle). So they watch more shows with their dvrs on their tv sets instead of downloaded films/shows on their laptops.

    “You could use the exact same arguments for movies, it’s not like every movie gets better on rewatch.”

    Of course not every movie. But my point was that rewatches for movies deemed “great” tend to hold up more than rewatches for tv shows deemed “great”.

    “I love following a story and/or a group of characters for a season or more than one season if we’re lucky.”

    I agree but when done right. I guess this specific point is just a matter of different tastes.

    “Again, I don’t know how people compare say Breaking Bad to a movie though.”

    I just base them on how much they entertain me/level of compulsion.

    “And I even forgot to take British tv into consideration.. Doctor Who, Sherlock and Luther are all awesome as well.”

    I like Doctor Who(Series 4 – Present though)

  • mushroomyakuza

    Hard to qualify this, but I spend WAY more time watching TV than movies these days. TV has certainly risen over the last decade to a really high quality level whereas film generally seems to be going the other way.

    On the other hand, I think as J pointed out TV is mostly plotting though.

  • Tum Tum Tyranus

    “You can just download both, which I think most “geeks” do.”

    Oh wait, are you taking about pirating or netflix/itunes. If latter, not a lot of options. If former, many geeks don’t pirate or don’t know how to pirate effectively to where almost every movie is available to watch.

  • Tum Tum Tyranus

    “But when it comes to dramas I sometimes get the feeling that there are side plots and filler thrown in just to drag out the runtime and fulfill the quota of episodes per season.” – Steve

    Agree 100%

  • I don’t think people realize just how important DVD was (and then Netflix, networks streaming their own shows online, video on demand) to TV, as I don’t think I’ve ever seen ANYONE mention how it’s changed the way that shows have told their stories in the last decade. Sure, it’s helped shows in picking up new viewers and allowing them to catch up in the off-season, but it’s also made it so that network shows in particular (which unlike many cable shows are limited to an airing or 2 during the week) don’t have to be as new viewer-friendly as before, allowing for deeper, more-involved storylines, giving it more of an overall cinematic feel, because it doesn’t have to stop every so often to let the slow kids catch up. To be fair though, I think it’s also led to some shows getting OVER-complicated as well. If a lot of the bigger shows that are on now were on in the 80’s or 90’s, you’d be screwed if you missed a week or two (imagine if you were trying to start a couple of seasons in!), but there are so many outlets now where you can see them that it’s almost impossible to get too far behind. It’s funny, because I know people that won’t watch a show if it’s on for free right NOW, but they’ll plop down 40 bucks for the season on DVD. I remember when “I’ll just wait ’til it’s out on video” only applied to MOVIES that you only kind of sort of wanted to see.

  • Gerry

    For me movies and TV can both be excellent forms of entertainment.

    Lately TV seems better because film studios focus on huge blockbusters, franchises and sequels at one end and ultra low budget at the other end with precious little in between.

    I think this studio policy has been introduced because of the recession, with studios unwilling to release mid budget films as the outlay on them is big enough to put a dent in studio finances if they don’t succeed.

    I’m hoping that this policy changes with either the end of the recession (unlikely any time soon) or because of intelligent and forward thinking studio heads and execs.

    There has been no doubt that TV has led the way regarding quality in the last few years with the very best American series.

    There’s a lot of mediocrity and dross below that top layer however.

    Even in the lighter, more throwaway shows, e.g. Smallville, Nurse Jackie, the best American shows are fairly excellent.

    Battlestar Galactica, Dexter, Game Of Thrones and Breaking Bad are some of my favourites of the top American shows. Their series arcs rival the story arcs in movies.

    Re British TV you are only seeing the tip of the iceberg. There is a lot of ‘continuing drama’, i.e. hoary old soaps and hospital shows that have been churning out mediocrity for years on the main channels.

    My blu rays and DVD’s are nearly a 50/50 split between movies and TV. I hope that this continues because of good quality from both mediums.

  • Gerry

    @PlanB.

    If you’ve got the patience to wait for shows on DVD / Blu ray, mainlining them is a frakking awesome way to watch them.

  • @25 — Mainlining them is usually how I got into them in the first place, as I was late to the party on a lot of my favorite shows, but if I have the ability to watch new episodes as they air (translation: if it’s on free TV/basic cable), I’d rather do that, so as not to have things ruined for me. I don’t think there’s anything I got into mid-run where I didn’t have at least SOME idea of where things were headed already, which ruins some of the fun. After I get caught up on things and start watching new episodes as they air, that’s when I start mainlining something ELSE. People who still complain about how they can’t find anything to watch on Netflix or so, so, soooooooooo unbelievably full of shit.

  • scott

    SHIPPING WARS: THE MOVIE could even the scales.

  • SunGun

    The question is has TV surpassed movies as the mainstream media of choice. The answer is simply yes. The big reason this is so is not that the quality of TV has surpassed that of movies but rather it is simply more convenient and with the advent if wide screen telesion sets, surround sound and high definition, the insentive for people to get out of their homes and head out to the theatre simply isn’t as strong as it use to be. I remeber when all we had was a black and white TV set going tl the movies was the ultimate treat. The picture was hugh, in colour and the sound was loud. Now, and this has already been discussed in the past on this blog, people are loud and disrespectful. Because of this and the fact that there is good quality programming on TV i get the the movies less often.

    Anither huge factor i believe that TV has surpassed movies as the mainstrean entertainment media of choice is simply that one episode of any show monopolizes a lot of the viewer’s time. A movie on average will run 2 hours while any tv show episode will run 1 hour max and if you pvr it you can strip that down to 45 minutes. For most people with families, like myself, by the time the kids are fed lunches for the next day made, and the house is squared away for the next day there often is little time to sit down in front of a 2 hour movie. Also the shorter running time offers the possibilty of choice. You can chose to watch 2 one hour espisodes of a tv show or 2 different shows in the same time it takes to watch a movie.

    As for quality yes television has gotten a lot better and since X Files has taken on a much more cinematic feel. So people are getting the same feeling, aestheticaly speaking, as they do in the movies now on tv. Well, kind of.

    Ciao

  • Maopheus

    The best TV shows are up there with the best films in terms of quality and cultural impact. Of course, the worst TV shows are pretty goddamn awful. But TV shows are different from movies in many ways, and it’s hard to compare that apples to apples. The shows are a slow burn for obvious reasons, they take much longer to tell the story and require much more time investment. And all of the good ones are really fancy soap operas. We just don’t call them soap operas. But the format is essentially the same, isn’t it?

  • I read an interesting article that explain how critical darling shows (30 Rock, Mad Men) which get far fewer viewers than typical TV (Two and Half Men, NCSI) actually benefit the smaller cable networks thorough reputation and exposure. The idea is FX becomes a known channel through the critical (but low ratings) hit, therefore, the channel gets viewers for OTHER shows & timeslots. (FX isn’t lost in a sea of cable channels)

    So in this way, TV is doing the EXACT OPPOSITE of film studios – they are using critical / innovating TV to get overall interest. Movie Studios KILL critical / innovating movies because they don’t want to invest in the marketing. Get it? The problem is partly to blame on movies being viewed as singular, whereas, TV shows are viewed as part of a family / brand / station. BOOM!

  • Dave

    I’ll always prefer movies to TV even though movies are getting more and more frustrating to get excited about since the majority of them are just rehashes. But, at least movies are self-contained stories and a lot of TV shows are coming up with movie-worthy concepts that may work in an extended pilot episode, but when it comes to longevity, they have to really reach to continuously come up with interesting stories. I prefer graphic novels to comics for the same reason. They have to think of some pretty ridiculous stuff to keep those things going month to month, but graphic novels are typically fantastic one-off stories with a beginning, middle, and end. And on top of all that, good TV seems to be a very small percentage of TV as a whole. Reality TV is the spawn of Satan and with that in the mix, TV will never win.