Here’s some food for thought.
I was born in the early fifties and grew up with b&w, then color tv.
Every day at school we all talked about “the show” that we watched the night before. With only three channels we all shared the same experiences - Beatles on Ed Sullivan, etc.
We didn’t know it, but we were living in an unusual period of technology that was simple broadcast. The common experiences shaped our culture.
But we are far beyond that now. First came many more channels. Then came time shifting with recording machines. Then on demand streaming. All technologies that shifted power to the consumer (and that, by the way, upended all existing advertising models).
Now, there are few common experiences left (Superbowl comes to mind). So we live in a country with many small subcultures, bolstered by the ability to connect with anyone anywhere on the internet. Anyone can “broadcast.”
It’s no wonder that this fragmentation is having an impact on our culture. And there is literally no “going back.” We grew up in a technical transition period from broadcast to network which will never recur.
It’s a brave new world, like it or not.
I'll tell you the impact it's had on me. It has me seeking foreign sources of entertainment. I watch KDramas, and because I'm learning Polish, I've started listening to Polish music instead of English music. So I couldn't tell you anything about today's new actors or singers.
There is still shared culture, but it comes in the form of “memes” nowadays. If something is funny enough, it will get spread around to just about everybody. It’s a more democratic way of sharing culture, but it seems the process limits what is shared to what will please the shortest attention span crowd.
I remember sharing In class TV shows!
We would write a small Skit and stand up
and share it.
Dragnet is one that sticks in my head.