Considering it's basically a live music video, there's no reason why you wouldn't browse the internet at the same time.
GoT took a nose dive when they stopped having source material to work off of. It became stupid, mindless drama. People talk about the ending as if that's where the problems started. No, the writing was crap for the last several seasons.
The latest season of The Expanse was disappointing. It went from a slow burning, character driven series to an action packed run-of-the-mill drama laden mess, like most of the television shows you see nowadays. I'm happy Amazon picked it up, but they basically butchered the show, it will never live up to its potential.
Everything just kind of becomes samey because they're all learning how to do it from the same sources, and the lessons they're learning is unnecessary drama pulls people in and keeps them there. Except it drives me nuts when an entire season's worth of plot points could literally evaporate if character A articulated why they were angry at character B, who would then explain it was a misunderstanding.
Also, Chernobyl was fantastic and Watchmen was delightful, for the most part. And Evil is an interesting supernatural/cutting edge Tech mix. Then there’s the final season of Mr. Robot.
Actually I am thinking that the Expanse in general is a series where the screenwriters are outperforming the original authors.
Season 4 was always gonna be trouble, and I suspect that contributed to SyFy cancelling it.
The slow decline that started with The Real World had picked up pace, and the airwaves were slowly filling with reality show after reality show.
Then Lost went on the air, and nobody noticed at first, but by Season 2 it had competition from story-driven shows again. And I dunno who rushed out Lost Season 1 on DVD a few months before the second season aired, but that was an inspired decision. Tons of new viewers for Season 2, and probably for the first time ever people were binge-watching a TV show.
It ended with a whimper, but boy did it start with a bang.
Lost got some crazy publicity (for the time) as well: Lots of people thought the shot of the plane from the inside being torn in two was real, not from a TV show.
I find this a weird take because we're in a renaissance of quality story telling TV right now. Keeping in mind Sturgeon's Law, only 66% of tv being crap is a win.
Not on broadcast television, which is what OP was referring to. It’s all monster of the week procedurals, low effort sitcoms, and reality garbage.
You could once tell a thrilling serial (whether it's crime drama, or sci-fi) within TV-14 guidelines that many people will watch, but now people expect more grit I guess. They want more gut-wrenching violence or adult language that feels more real and doesn't hold back.
There is no middle ground any more. it is either cheap simi-scripted reality series, music/tallent shows, and game shows or high budget prestige dramas.
this is a classic problem with long running tv shows. it's hard to get the pacing right when you don't know in advance how many seasons you're going to make.
Is it that major media conglomerates allocating less budget on their broadcast TV business and more into their movies and subscription based business models?
My other guess is that content restrictions of broadcast TV are now really holding it back.