Television is much better crafted today then in the 70s. The content is less positive but I'm one of those that feel our entertainment reflects our world, it's not a driver - art imitates life.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
The problem, when comparing contemporary television to television in 1974, is that TV has become not just bad but sad.
I haven't had television since 1991, and it definitely influences me. As a child of the 1970s, I couldn't hold a narrative in my head; I was lucky if I could hold a joke in my head, because every time you turn on television or radio, it wipes the slate clean - at least in my case.
I started working in the mid-to-late Seventies, when television was not what it is now.
Television is what made It's a Wonderful Life the classic it is today.
In the late '70s, maybe just before I started, there was still an attitude that if you did film you didn't do TV and vice versa, but that's gone now.
Television has changed. Some feels like good old-fashioned TV, and some of it feels more filmic and more natural and more nuanced. I don't think there's any clear line any longer between film and TV.
It's how the '70s were for movies, the 2000s are for TV. I think it's a phenomenal time for TV and to be involved in it.
In terms of representation, television is reflecting an era that has passed. It's the wrong time; it's the wrong period. In all sorts of television, it doesn't feel like the 21st century.
I think that every time you bring a subject into the mainstream landscape of television, it can have a huge impact. Television is such an influential medium.
Even when I started in 1970, I knew that television was having a negative effect on our society.