Quality television

Quality television (also quality TV or quality artistic television)[1] is a term used by television scholars,[2] television critics,[3] and broadcasting advocacy groups[4] to describe a genre or style of television programming that they argue is of higher quality due to its subject matter, style, or content. For several decades after World War II, television that was deemed to be "quality television" was mostly associated with government-funded public television networks;[5] however, with the development of cable TV network specialty channels in the 1980s and 1990s,[6][7][8][9] US cable channels such as HBO made a number of television shows during the turn of the century that some television critics argued were "quality television", such as Angels in America, Sex and the City, The Sopranos, The Wire and Six Feet Under.

Claims that television programs are of higher quality include a number of subjective evaluations and value judgements. For example, Robert J. Thompson's claim that "quality television" programs include "...a quality pedigree, a large ensemble cast, a series memory, creation of a new genre through recombination of older ones, self-consciousness, and pronounced tendencies toward the controversial and the realistic"[10] includes a number of subjective evaluations. The criteria for "quality television" set out by the US group Viewers for Quality Television ("A quality show is something we anticipate...[it] focuses more on relationships...[and] explores character, it enlightens, challenges, involves and confronts the viewer; it provokes thought...") also require a number of subjective evaluations.

Television programs on another end of the spectrum from quality television are sometimes called B-television or blue collar television.[11]

  1. ^ John Thornton Caldwell, Televisuality: Style, Crisis, and Authority in American Television, Rutgers University Press, 1995, p. 67.
  2. ^ David Lavery (Middle Tennessee State University); Janet McCabe (Birkbeck, University of London); Kim Akass (University of Hertfordshire); and Kristin Thompson, author of Storytelling in Film and Television (and co-author of several textbooks on film with her husband, David Bordwell). Thompson is an Honorary Fellow in the Department of Communication Arts at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
  3. ^ A TV Guide article entitled "Girls Power: WB Drama to Return" states "Score one for fans of quality television: The WB is on the verge of renewing its acclaimed freshman drama Gilmore Girls for a second season."
  4. ^ Viewers For Quality Television in the US, the Campaign for Quality Television Ltd. in the UK, and the Alliance for Children and Television (ACT) in Canada
  5. ^ Government-funded public television networks such as the BBC produce "educational programming...[,]high quality documentaries and cinephile films" as a way "... to educate and 'uplift' the general population... Course description: Visual Art and Television (Open UvA college). Describes the complex relationships that art and television have maintained since the mid 20th century up to the present. (Art on TV; TV in Art; and TV as Art).
  6. ^ "Cultivating TV aesthetics". 3 June 2014.
  7. ^ Making A Case For The '90s, Television's 'Other' Golden Age-UPROXX
  8. ^ Why the Golden Age of TV Was Really Born in the 1980s-Vulture
  9. ^ Casetti, Francesco; Fanchi, Mariagrazia (17 August 2017). "Cinephilia/Telephilia". Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media. 45 (2): 38–41. JSTOR 41552408.
  10. ^ Thompson, Robert J. Television's Second Golden Age: From Hill Street Blues to ER: Hill Street Blues, Thirtysomething, St. Elsewhere, China Beach, Cagney & Lacey, Twin Peaks, Moonlighting, Northern Exposure, LA Law, Picket Fences, with Brief Reflections on Homicide, NYPD Blue & Chicago Hope, and Other Quality Dramas. Syracuse University Press, 1997. pp. 13–16.
  11. ^ The Tyrant's Fall That Rocked the TV World: Until He Was Suddenly Brought Low, Jim Aubrey Ruled the Air, p. 94, at Google Books