For example, AV Club argues (https://www.avclub.com/the-last-barney-miller-also-ended-an-era-1798276904) that the end of Barney Miller (https://www.avclub.com/barney-miller-quarantine-pts-1-2-1798220914) as well as WKRP in Cincinnati in 1982 symbolized the end of the 1970s.

1992 always felt like the end of the '80s (https://www.quora.com/Culturally-speaking-when-did-the-1980s-end) television wise in my book. Many popular shows from that time period ended their runs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1992_in_American_television) then like The Cosby Show, Growing Pains, Who's the Boss, The Golden Girls, Night Court, Johnny Carson's Tonight Show, and MacGyver. Dallas had already come to an end the year prior (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_in_American_television), and Cheers, Designing Women, Saved by the Bell (it was technically, more of a '90s show, but its entire aesthetic and vibe felt more at home in the '80s) and Knots Landing would end in 1993 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1993_in_American_television).

Seems to remind me of that funny trend I've noted for a long, long time, particularly amongst folks who are prone to make generalized assumptions when looking towards the past. That is, how the last part of the decades (and even part of the next ones) come to define the whole for them. In other words, their concept of the Fifties is more like the realities of 1958-62; their concept of the Sixties is more like the realities of 1968-72; and the Seventies, 1978-82. Just a quirky thing I've long noticed about much of the general public who aren't as tuned-in on such things compared to nostalgia buffs, who are apt to zero in on specifics.

1992/1993 did feel like the end of the '80s, what with so many iconic '80s TV shows ending around that time.

1992/1993 did feel like the end of the '80s, what with so many iconic '80s TV shows ending around that time.

That sounds about right, due to the abundance of long-running 80's shows ending then; such as The Cosby Show, The Golden Girls, Who's the Boss?, Growing Pains, Cheers, and Night Court.

There was an article in our local newspaper a few years ago which pointing out, culturally speaking, decades don't come in neat little packages defined by numbers. For example:

-- The 1960's, culturally speaking, began with the Kennedy assassination in November 1963, since the earlier part of the decade had more in common with the 1950's that the 1960's, as a whole.

-- The 1970's, culturally speaking, began when the last U.S. troops left Vietnam in March 1973.

-- The 1980's, culturally speaking, began when Ronald Reagan was inaugurated as President on the United States in January 1981.

-- The 1990's, culturally speaking, began with Bill Clinton's inauguration in January 1993.

-- The 2000's, culturally speaking, began on 9-11 (September 11, 2001)

-- The 2010's, culturally speaking, began with the inauguration of Barack Obama in January 2009.


I known this doesn't entirely relate of television, but the culture of each decade is widely reflected in the TV shows. For example, the infamous "Rural Purge" of 1971, which led to the cancellation of numerous Westerns and rural-themed Sitcoms in favor of more socially-relevant shows such as All in the Family. On the other hand, the election of Ronald Reagan as President was reflected by a decline in socially-relevant type series and more Family Sitcoms such as The Cosby Show, Growing Pains, and Full House.

That sounds about right, due to the abundance of long-running 80's shows ending then; such as The Cosby Show, The Golden Girls, Who's the Boss?, Growing Pains, Cheers, and Night Court.

There was an article in our local newspaper a few years ago which pointing out, culturally speaking, decades don't come in neat little packages defined by numbers. For example:

-- The 1960's, culturally speaking, began with the Kennedy assassination in November 1963, since the earlier part of the decade had more in common with the 1950's that the 1960's, as a whole.

-- The 1970's, culturally speaking, began when the last U.S. troops left Vietnam in March 1973.

-- The 1980's, culturally speaking, began when Ronald Reagan was inaugurated as President on the United States in January 1981.

-- The 1990's, culturally speaking, began with Bill Clinton's inauguration in January 1993.

-- The 2000's, culturally speaking, began on 9-11 (September 11, 2001)

-- The 2010's, culturally speaking, began with the inauguration of Barack Obama in January 2009.


I known this doesn't entirely relate of television, but the culture of each decade is widely reflected in the TV shows. For example, the infamous "Rural Purge" of 1971, which led to the cancellation of numerous Westerns and rural-themed Sitcoms in favor of more socially-relevant shows such as All in the Family. On the other hand, the election of Ronald Reagan as President was reflected by a decline in socially-relevant type series and more Family Sitcoms such as The Cosby Show, Growing Pains, and Full House.

There's also articles (https://www.rollingstone.com/tv/tv-lists/president-tv-series-defined-era-994869/) that bring up (https://www.vox.com/culture/2017/1/19/14288694/presidents-tv) which TV shows best defined represented each American presidential administration. For example, Diff'rent Strokes, Hill Street Blues, Family Ties, and Dynasty seemed to be the most representative of Ronald Reagan's administration (1981-1989).

I don't know how much it directly affected (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_entertainment_affected_by_the_September_11_attacks) the television (https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9780230608412) landscape (https://www.jstor.org/stable/40068195), but 9/11 definitively singled the end of an era. 9/11 officially marked the end of whatever innocence (https://www.reddit.com/r/90s/comments/q43xz9/911_didnt_end_90s_pop_culture/) and optimism (https://www.reddit.com/r/90s/comments/98iq63/the_opitism_of_the_90s_was_gone_after_911_nodoubt/) that we had (https://www.reddit.com/r/HistoryWhatIf/comments/leezoo/how_different_would_pop_culture_be_if_the_911/) about the future and the new millennium.

I think that many of us now look at (https://www.reddit.com/r/AskAnAmerican/comments/o5xcrd/are_americans_nostalgic_of_the_1990s_if_so_why/) the '90s with rose-tinted glasses (kind of like how people looked at the 1950s like that in the '70s) because at that point, the Cold War had ended (thus, America presumably didn't have anymore major foreign enemies to worry about), the iron curtain had fallen, the internet age was dawning, and the economy was strong.

That isn't to say that nothing "bad" didn't happen in the '90s such as the Columbine massacre, the Oklahoma City bombing, the Centennial Park Olympic bombing, the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993, the Waco siege, the LA riots of 1992, the O.J. Simpson murder saga, etc. But those incidents weren't on the scale as the 9/11 attacks were.

1950s television ended around the time "The Danny Thomas Show" and "Leave It To Beaver" went off the air in 64' and 63' respectively.

One could say 60s television ended officially with the "Rural Purge" that happened with CBS in the early 70s with Gunsmoke being the final show of the bunch to be cancelled. Felt like an end of an era.

70s television ended in the early 80s when shows such as Mash and Happy Days were being cancelled. Other's like The Jeffersons, Three's Company, and Alice were also on their last legs in the early 80s too and were all cancelled before 85'.

80s television ended in the early 90s and Cheers was the harbinger of the end of an era.

90s television arguably ended with Friends. Besides Frasier, it was the last major show from the decade to really define an era

That sounds about right, due to the abundance of long-running 80's shows ending then; such as The Cosby Show, The Golden Girls, Who's the Boss?, Growing Pains, Cheers, and Night Court.

There was an article in our local newspaper a few years ago which pointing out, culturally speaking, decades don't come in neat little packages defined by numbers. For example:

-- The 1960's, culturally speaking, began with the Kennedy assassination in November 1963, since the earlier part of the decade had more in common with the 1950's that the 1960's, as a whole.

-- The 1970's, culturally speaking, began when the last U.S. troops left Vietnam in March 1973.

-- The 1980's, culturally speaking, began when Ronald Reagan was inaugurated as President on the United States in January 1981.

-- The 1990's, culturally speaking, began with Bill Clinton's inauguration in January 1993.

-- The 2000's, culturally speaking, began on 9-11 (September 11, 2001)

-- The 2010's, culturally speaking, began with the inauguration of Barack Obama in January 2009.


I known this doesn't entirely relate of television, but the culture of each decade is widely reflected in the TV shows. For example, the infamous "Rural Purge" of 1971, which led to the cancellation of numerous Westerns and rural-themed Sitcoms in favor of more socially-relevant shows such as All in the Family. On the other hand, the election of Ronald Reagan as President was reflected by a decline in socially-relevant type series and more Family Sitcoms such as The Cosby Show, Growing Pains, and Full House.

Those seem like reasonable beginnings/endings. But one interesting question is: did various political administrations shape what we watched? Or did what we watch shape administrations? I think it might be a little of both. Nancy Reagan's "Just Say No" campaign became the plotline of multiple sitcoms, and she even made sitcom appearances in support of Just Say No.

Coca-Cola bought out Norman Lear's television empire in 1985, signaling the end of relevant, hard-hitting topics on most Lear sitcoms. 1985 feels too late to begin/end a decade, but it's undeniable that that change affected the feel of many TV series, with several Emmy award-winning series becoming lighthearted fluff.

1950s television ended around the time "The Danny Thomas Show" and "Leave It To Beaver" went off the air in 64' and 63' respectively.

One could say 60s television ended officially with the "Rural Purge" that happened with CBS in the early 70s with Gunsmoke being the final show of the bunch to be cancelled. Felt like an end of an era.

70s television ended in the early 80s when shows such as Mash and Happy Days were being cancelled. Other's like The Jeffersons, Three's Company, and Alice were also on their last legs in the early 80s too and were all cancelled before 85'.

80s television ended in the early 90s and Cheers was the harbinger of the end of an era.

90s television arguably ended with Friends. Besides Frasier, it was the last major show from the decade to really define an era

These are well-defined boundaries, with good rationales.

If we accept the ending of Happy Days as the end of the 1970s, then the end of the 1970s happened halfway through the 1980s: September 1984. :eek:

90s television arguably ended with Friends. Besides Frasier, it was the last major show from the decade to really define an era

I kind of view Friends more of an 2000s show even though it had 6 seasons in the 90s, 4 in the 2000s. It promoted single adulthood more than the concept of being married in the early 20s.

The 90s to me were split.

First half, terrible fashion and looks. But, the sitcoms followed the formula that every teenager (in a sitcom) must have a boyfriend/girlfriend, then get married in his or her early 20s and expectation of it.

I kind of view Friends more of an 2000s show even though it had 6 seasons in the 90s, 4 in the 2000s. It promoted single adulthood more than the concept of being married in the early 20s.I would hardly say early 20s marriage was the focus of the 90s. Seinfeld was entirely 90s and didn't have anyone married (besides recurring characters like the old parents). George subconsciously made sure of that poisoning his fiance. :lol: And besides the monster hits of Seinfeld and Friends, 90s NBC had all the friend hangout/workplace sitcoms like Caroline in the City, Wings, NewsRadio, Just Shoot Me, Veronica's Closet, Suddenly Susan, etc. (While Joe and Helen were married the last two seasons, Wings was still primarily a friend/workplace sitcom). Because of Friends and Seinfeld's smash hit success there were all the single hangout 90s copycats like The Single Guy and Union Square they tried to fill must see Thursdays with. Mad About You was NBC's only long-running 20s marriage show, then there were the teen focused Fresh Prince and Blossom which weren't replicated in the 2nd half of the 90s. Plus all the friend hangout or workplace sitcoms on other networks like Coach, The Drew Carey Show, Living Single, Spin City, Ellen, and Murphy Brown (Murphy started out late 80s but was largely a 90s show and of course the main character was a famous single mother who rejected marriage.). Grace Under Fire was a single mom comedy where she preferred that to marriage. 3rd Rock from the Sun was an alien family comedy where none of them were married. Then there was Frasier which was a mix of family and friend hangout, Frasier's marriage having failed after Cheers and never getting remarried. ABC had more family/married 90s comedies than other networks like Home Improvement, Roseanne, Dharma and Greg, and the TGIF block which was unique to them. (CBS attempted to copy it but their block was short lived and not successful like ABC). But ABC also had several workplace sitcoms like the previous ones I mentioned, single adulthood and single motherhood was very prevalent in the 90s sitcoms. And while Everybody Loves Raymond was a young married show starting out in the 90s, it was much more popular once the 21st century started.

1950s television ended around the time "The Danny Thomas Show" and "Leave It To Beaver" went off the air in 64' and 63' respectively.

One could say 60s television ended officially with the "Rural Purge" that happened with CBS in the early 70s with Gunsmoke being the final show of the bunch to be cancelled. Felt like an end of an era.

70s television ended in the early 80s when shows such as Mash and Happy Days were being cancelled. Other's like The Jeffersons, Three's Company, and Alice were also on their last legs in the early 80s too and were all cancelled before 85'.

80s television ended in the early 90s and Cheers was the harbinger of the end of an era.

90s television arguably ended with Friends. Besides Frasier, it was the last major show from the decade to really define an era

I just remembered that I once made a thread (https://www.sitcomsonline.com/boards/showthread.php?t=387373) asking whether or not Leave It to Beaver went off the air at the right time. Basically, LITB was a show that was representative of the era of the Cold War and President Eisenhower plus the ‘innocent’ youth of the time? The show went off the air a mere months before President Kennedy was assassinated, which depending on who you ask (https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-the-1950s-begin-and-end-for-you/680916), officially (https://www.city-data.com/forum/history/1860122-how-long-would-you-say-each.html) and symbolically marked the end (https://rec.music.gdead.narkive.com/GFWGZ2aY/when-did-50s-begin-and-end) of the 1950s culturally. Soon afterward, the Beatles came along (which in itself, marked the beginning of the "Swinging Sixties" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swinging_Sixties#:~:text=The%20Swinging%20Sixties%20was%20a,%22pop%20and%20fashion%20exports%22.)), the world was never the same.

I would hardly say early 20s marriage was the focus of the 90s. Seinfeld was entirely 90s and didn't have anyone married (besides recurring characters like the old parents). George subconsciously made sure of that poisoning his fiance. :lol: And besides the monster hits of Seinfeld and Friends, 90s NBC had all the friend hangout/workplace sitcoms like Caroline in the City, Wings, NewsRadio, Just Shoot Me, Veronica's Closet, Suddenly Susan, etc. (While Joe and Helen were married the last two seasons, Wings was still primarily a friend/workplace sitcom). Because of Friends and Seinfeld's smash hit success there were all the single hangout 90s copycats like The Single Guy and Union Square they tried to fill must see Thursdays with. Mad About You was NBC's only long-running 20s marriage show, then there were the teen focused Fresh Prince and Blossom which weren't replicated in the 2nd half of the 90s. Plus all the friend hangout or workplace sitcoms on other networks like Coach, The Drew Carey Show, Living Single, Spin City, Ellen, and Murphy Brown (Murphy started out late 80s but was largely a 90s show and of course the main character was a famous single mother who rejected marriage.). Grace Under Fire was a single mom comedy where she preferred that to marriage. 3rd Rock from the Sun was an alien family comedy where none of them were married. Then there was Frasier which was a mix of family and friend hangout, Frasier's marriage having failed after Cheers and never getting remarried. ABC had more family/married 90s comedies than other networks like Home Improvement, Roseanne, Dharma and Greg, and the TGIF block which was unique to them. (CBS attempted to copy it but their block was short lived and not successful like ABC). But ABC also had several workplace sitcoms like the previous ones I mentioned, single adulthood and single motherhood was very prevalent in the 90s sitcoms. And while Everybody Loves Raymond was a young married show starting out in the 90s, it was much more popular once the 21st century started.

Seinfeld didn't constrain itself by 90s culture. Hence, why it is still so popular in reruns today.

The other shows you listed were from the 90s and not families, but had a mix of older and/or unattractive people, and were forgettable shows.

With Friends, they were all the same age and young. And the writers were smart enough not to wed Ross and Rachel so early in the show. It's ratings remained strong in the last four years in the 2000s as well. If it was just a 90s show, it would have seen declining ratings and gone to irrelevance in those 2000 years. The show would have had Rachel and Monica probably getting married to their high school or college lovers, like Dwayne and Whitley on A Different World, Zack and Kelly on Saved By the Bell, or Becky and David on Roseanne.

1950s television ended around the time "The Danny Thomas Show" and "Leave It To Beaver" went off the air in 64' and 63' respectively.

One could say 60s television ended officially with the "Rural Purge" that happened with CBS in the early 70s with Gunsmoke being the final show of the bunch to be cancelled. Felt like an end of an era.

70s television ended in the early 80s when shows such as Mash and Happy Days were being cancelled. Other's like The Jeffersons, Three's Company, and Alice were also on their last legs in the early 80s too and were all cancelled before 85'.

80s television ended in the early 90s and Cheers was the harbinger of the end of an era.

90s television arguably ended with Friends. Besides Frasier, it was the last major show from the decade to really define an era

'Friends,' Letting The Good Times Roll On and On (https://web.archive.org/web/20160908231055/http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5705-2004May5.html)

By Tina Brown
Thursday, May 6, 2004 (https://web.archive.org/web/20040513203758/http://www.tvtattle.com/); Page C01

Since the finale of "Friends" has been declared a national day of mourning, I am trying to whip up an appropriately solemn sense of loss. If NBC can charge up to 2 million bucks for 30-second ad segments, there must be something more going on than the hope that the cast's Special Bond will survive, along with Joey's spinoff. After all, how nostalgic will we feel when "Fear Factor" or "I Want a Famous Face" eventually die their well-deserved deaths?

Here's a reason to miss "Friends": nostalgie de la boom. Through "Friends" we could keep on living the good life of careless Clinton-era prosperity. One of the silliest wish-fulfillment fantasies of "Friends" was that a group of professionally average (but unusually good-looking) people in New York in their mid-thirties could have plenty of leisure time, along with plenty of money, to hang out and obsess about their relationships rather than just work all the time -- which is what people here really do.

In the mid-1990s, when the show began, the city's workaholism and materialism was in overdrive, fueled by the dot-com heyday. The defining mood of that time was set by an iconic New Yorker cartoon, by Bob Mankoff, that was attached to every upwardly mobile fridge. It featured a stressed looking man on the phone, his appointment book open, saying, "No, Thursday's out. How about never -- is never good for you?"

None of the "Friends" characters worked for a dot-com company, but the ethos of that time framed the mood of the show. Okay, not the sleepless nights of an Internet start-up, but the assumption of a groovy Silicon Valley working environment, where the staff hangs around the water cooler exchanging creativity, swapping wisecracks and playing video games; the faith in spinning a stock-option fortune like so much digital cotton candy without hurting a soul; the you-don't-have-to-wear-a-suit era of T-shirt people with gentle, unthreatening hair who ended up on the cover of Fortune worth a billion dollars -- it all seems so long ago. Right now the Google IPO is bringing the memories flooding back. For the past week, hard-charging business types have been talking sentimentally about Google like old flower children going on about Woodstock. But they know Google is a blip, an anomaly -- a mellow acid flashback, not the dawn of a new era.

After 9/11, when the jobs disappeared, Work not Play became the fantasy of choice. Hence the popularity of "The Apprentice," with its sharklike young competitors selling each other out to get ahead. Gordon Gekko is back. Process rules. When was the last time employees felt as primal as they do on "The Apprentice" about their place of work? Between downsizing, outsourcing, conglomeratizing a mysterious, volatile economy, business life today is complex and insecure. You can't see around the corners. Actual, measurable tasks and fast feedback are disappearing in the culture of layers, the filters of perception. In real life, an assistant brand manager working in the information echelon of the service economy rarely feels the thrill of traction, the buoyancy and verve that once made American business intoxicating.

"The Apprentice" is already a nostalgia piece as much as "Friends." Embodied by the fascination of the Donald's retro-custard hair, it's an ode to the days before the PowerPointification of America. Trump, or perhaps one should say the Trump figure Trump plays on TV, is as much a crazy fantasy for management as for employees. A boss man who can bark "You're fired" without copious papering of the files, without sweaty hours with his human resources director, without even sweatier hours with his communications guru? Dream on. He'd have hostile workplace environment suits up the wazoo.

"Friends" reflects the boom years, too, with its characters' total lack of interest in what's going on in the world. They're focused purely on themselves and each other. Even after 9/11, "Friends" managed to keep coasting along mainly by ignoring the event altogether, pretty much as "Sex and the City" did. Archie Bunker and Meathead used to argue about Vietnam and Richard Nixon on "All in the Family," but no one on "Friends" ever argued about weapons of mass destruction or what to do about Iraq. Politically, the "Friends" characters exuded a vague undertow of social liberalism. It was safe to assume that they were pro-choice, that they didn't condemn premarital sex out of hand (that one we could definitely assume) and that they subscribed to the pleasantly PC view that a family can be assembled from whatever is to hand -- in this case, your friends. The world of this show in its 10th year still seems so communitarian and mild it's like a different planet from the current bifurcated America of two irreconcilable political solitudes, right versus left, where eyes bulge and voices rise whenever the holders of opposite views meet by mistake.

A TV executive in Los Angeles who has been screening next season's crop of pilots tells me he's convinced that the next generation of sitcoms can succeed only if their creators discover a way to tap into the post-9/11 zeitgeist of fear and anxiety with a new kind of comedy. "We haven't found a way in the sitcom form to joke about airport security or terrorism or outsourcing yet," he said. "But somebody will."

Good luck. Surfing between images of torture and bulletins of death, we're going to be glad for the reruns of "Friends."

That sounds about right, due to the abundance of long-running 80's shows ending then; such as The Cosby Show, The Golden Girls, Who's the Boss?, Growing Pains, Cheers, and Night Court.

There was an article in our local newspaper a few years ago which pointing out, culturally speaking, decades don't come in neat little packages defined by numbers. For example:

-- The 1960's, culturally speaking, began with the Kennedy assassination in November 1963, since the earlier part of the decade had more in common with the 1950's that the 1960's, as a whole.

-- The 1970's, culturally speaking, began when the last U.S. troops left Vietnam in March 1973.

-- The 1980's, culturally speaking, began when Ronald Reagan was inaugurated as President on the United States in January 1981.

-- The 1990's, culturally speaking, began with Bill Clinton's inauguration in January 1993.

-- The 2000's, culturally speaking, began on 9-11 (September 11, 2001)

-- The 2010's, culturally speaking, began with the inauguration of Barack Obama in January 2009.


I known this doesn't entirely relate of television, but the culture of each decade is widely reflected in the TV shows. For example, the infamous "Rural Purge" of 1971, which led to the cancellation of numerous Westerns and rural-themed Sitcoms in favor of more socially-relevant shows such as All in the Family. On the other hand, the election of Ronald Reagan as President was reflected by a decline in socially-relevant type series and more Family Sitcoms such as The Cosby Show, Growing Pains, and Full House.

That's about what I was going to say. I would make an opinion that the 1950's as a whole was from the end of WWII until the JFK assassination in 1963. I think from 1964 people wanted more revalence in their TV programming.