Well, they had a bit more than half the population we have now, but only three networks. The talent’s still there but it is far more diffuse now.
With double the population you would think all that talent would still be showing up somewhere, diffused or not, but where is it, is it in the music, the movies, the TV shows, in late night comedy, in science fiction writing, in novels?
Writers can't write, actors and actresses cant act, everything is either badly done remakes, stolen ideas from times long passed, and VERY WOKE!
Every old film, stage play, radio show, or T.V. show was NOT "brilliant", or even good; however, a great deal of it was.
Why is that? Well, if I have to produce a reason, it's because having to write well in school ( and yes, that goes for even in the lower grades ), reading for pleasure ( which means that you have to use your imagination, and throw in listening to a radio show as well ), children amusing themselves with imaginative games/pretending to be someone else, is long gone.
And no, AI won't be any better, because it has no soul and is NOT a human, so it can't "feel"! It'll be garbage in/garbage out, with the end result being some damned repeated thing, in the "voice" of Shakespeare, Hemingway,Jane Austin, you name it.
Some T.V. shows were made from books, such as the TOPPER series ( which was directly taken from the film series of that name), Bewitched ( both take-off of two of Thorne Smith's books...Topper and THE PASSIONATE WITCH, which was first made into the film I MARRIED A WITCH ) and then there were the new weekly plays on the three major networks, and a decade later, plays on channel 13 ( which was a local channel and then became PBS ), every Friday night.
And yes, I'm going way back to the late 1940s through the 1950s.
In the '50s, there was Bilko, Car 54 Where Are You, and many other great comedy series.
Re '60s shows...F TROOP, STAR TREK, and many others, not mentioned.