There was a time when cinema was the source of conversation and happenings. Everything revolved around the story it told and the movie stars it had on its cast. Conversations just like “Oh, have you seen the new Tom Cruise movie?” or “Did you see the movie about the possessed girl?” were common and still are to some degree, but they have lost the intensity they carried. During much of the 20th century, movies were the kings of cultural conversations. TV was in its infancy, and even with technological developments in the latter part of the millennium, it just didn’t carry the same weight as movies. Not everybody had cable; not everybody got hooked right away with HBO’s seminal prestige TV The Sopranos. Movies still ruled the cultural landscape, and their prestige was untouched.
However, during the late 90s and 2000s, TV started to produce more varied content than the old brick-and-mortar sitcoms, soap operas, and police procedurals made for broad appeal. It started to experiment with more niche, original content, genre-heavy teen shows like Buffy, Veronica Mars, or Gossip Girl, while not prestige themselves, were a symptom of this—that started to generate a huge load of fans who were digital natives, born with a computer device in their homes. Shows like The Sopranos, The Wire, Mad Men, and Breaking Bad were commented on everywhere, in blogs, online reviews, digital newspapers, and social media.
