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There is also the problem of moral relativism. Over a decade ago I watched an interview of an adult Jerry Mathers (Leave it to Beaver). He said that all of the shows were based on true events and situations. There was also a lot of heart in the show. He pointed out that Wally knew Eddie acted like a jerk most of the time but still was a loyal friend.

He stated what was wrong with TV was real humor and characters had been replaced with abusive humor and "put down" jokes. He didn't watch for that reason. He was completely correct, and television has gotten much worse since.

Tune into TV Land sometime and watch "The Rifleman", or "Leave it to Beaver", or "Bonanza", or "Dick VanDyke". Production values are very different, of course, but that is just the surface. Listen to what is held up as good and right. Listen to what is espoused about manhood and femininity. You will be amazed by the contrast.

I have a quirky theory that the loss of intelligent and interesting storylines (writing), started going downhill along with education, when the unions took over our schools.

My theory is that Hollywood's ability to tell good stories, such as it was, ended when the political activists of the 60s took over, the reason being that they, being so obsessed with their politics and the worship of activism, itself, as the end-all be-all of everything, are no longer capable of writing storylines which grow from an idea naturally. Instead, the Hollywood drones start with whatever social issues they want to represent, and shoehorn them into a story which only serves as the most minimal framework for their ideology.

You'll notice that virtually every Hollywood story now has the same plot elements: number one, always, is that the bad guys are always the ones who were supposed to be the good guys.Examples: if the movie is a war movie, then the ultimate bad guy is not the enemy troops, but the commander, or the military itself. If the movie is a spy flick, then the bad guy is the head of the CIA or the President himself(if he's Republican). If it's just regular people, then the bad guy is the protagonist's best friend, or father, brother. Etc etc.

Interesting theory, but I will have to disagree. “Educators” had been trying to figure out how to “dumb down” students for a long time before they finally hit on a way to do it - “new” math was one way and that was followed by “new” English. I was furious that I spent my senior year in high school diagramming sentences to “learn” “new” English instead of studying English Lit.

After that, they managed to get state legislatures to buy into their story that having an average of ~35 kids in a class was not conducive to a good learning environment. Pretty much every class I had all through school consisted of an average of 33 - 35 kids and we learned more in those days than kids do today with all the teachers, helpers, aides and assistants in a smaller class size. In Texas, class sizes are limited to 22 kids so they can learn less and graduate stupider than the average 6th grader when I was in school. In essence, what the NEA and the “professional” educators did was turn education into a jobs program for people too dumb and too lazy to do much of anything else!

To understand Hollyweird, you need only to look at Broadway. Broadway lost its edge and its innovativeness starting around the mid-70s and it’s been a downhill ride ever since. If you look at what is playing on Broadway today, the bulk of it is pablum based on Disney movies that someone without much pride or creativity turned into Broadway musicals. Hollyweird followed suit when they saw the trend on Broadway.

But, the real downhill slide began when radio drama went off the air. If you want to discover real storytelling and real imagination, pick up an album of some of the old radio dramas and study them. The stories and the storytelling are fantastic and I fell in love with old radio dramas as a kid when my dad was stationed in post-war Germany and all there was for entertainment was either the American movie theater on base or radio dramas on Armed Forces Radio Network (AFRN)!

Good times!! :-)