Distaste for entertainment content is nothing new.
FCC Chair Newton Minow dubbed TV a vast wasteland in 1961.
The Scathing Speech That Made Television History
https://time.com/4315217/newton-mino...d-1961-speech/
When television is good, nothing — not the theater, not the magazines or newspapers — nothing is better.
But when television is bad, nothing is worse. I invite each of you to sit down in front of your television set when your station goes on the air and stay there, for a day, without a book, without a magazine, without a newspaper, without a profit and loss sheet or a rating book to distract you. Keep your eyes glued to that set until the station signs off. I can assure you that what you will observe is a vast wasteland.
You will see a procession of game shows, formula comedies about totally unbelievable families, blood and thunder, mayhem, violence, sadism, murder, western bad men, western good men, private eyes, gangsters, more violence, and cartoons. And endlessly, commercials — many screaming, cajoling, and offending. And most of all, boredom. True, you’ll see a few things you will enjoy. But they will be very, very few. And if you think I exaggerate, I only ask you to try it.
The speech is acknowledged to have helped steer the development of what was still a young medium, though some might argue that television is even more violent and bloody than it was 55 years ago–Minow had never seen Game of Thrones, after all. While the mayhem would endure, educational and informative programming, like the network news, advanced in scope during Minow’s tenure. And, of course, the medium acquired a new moniker.
In 2011, Minow told AdvertisingAge that greater consumer choice was the most important improvement in television in the decades that had elapsed since his speech—that by getting “vaster,” television was necessarily less of a wasteland.