^ That article is hyperbolic dreck. Pop culture will always follow trends, that's precisely what pop culture is. If it's not superheroes, it'll be something else, and so on and so on. There is nothing that needs to be "protected".
Television has a tendency to get stuck in ruts- what's successful must be repeatable for every season until eternity- but I honestly don't find the recent explosion of these shows to necessarily be some sign that the medium is slowly dooming itself to a comic book hell. At least not yet, and not greater than any other trend that has dominated before. Like, I definitely don't feel like there are fewer great shows on television now than there were at any particular unspecified before-time.
The problem is that we are now in an environment with 4 corporations, and they want to promote their properties.
So that same article talks about the universe in this way:
So, once Marvels formula has deprived the movie of (a) time for the characters, (b) the potential for the story to unfold in a surprising way, and (c) meaningful consequences, we then get each characters maximum 10 minutes of focus (which is now more like five or six) cut down even further, with ads for other Marvel products. In Age of Ultron, we lose several minutes of valuable time that could be spent developing our characters to visit Wakanda and establish Andy Serkis as a villain, not because hes important to the plothell totally disappear after this one scenebut because theres going to be a Black Panther movie. Thor has to be taken out of the action for a while so that his scientist friend can help him hallucinate the premise of Infinity War. Captain America gets a flashback that doesnt relate to the plot, but does remind you that he used to date Peggy Carter, who you can catch every week on ABCs own Agent Carter! Etcetera.
So one concern is that a show that would be canned normally gets extended over and over again because it serves as an ad for other properties.
Youre correct that there are always fads, be it westerns, space, reality shows, crime procedurals, whatever, but once theye overstayed their welcome, theyre all quickly eliminated for the next best thing.
But with this comic thing, you have ABC / Disney / Marvel thats all one company and REALLY wants to push their thing, and you have DC Comics / Warner Bros / CW who have the same incentive to push THEIR product.
Quality and ratings suddenly become secondary to the promotional potential, and even toys.
That's nonsense now. It might have been true ten years ago. But not today. There's no limited ammount of space for tv shows. Their numbers are growing and growing constantly. And this is CBS. You really think yet another CSI or NCSI procedural would be better use of their air time than Supergirl? At least it's somethin fresh and new compared to the rest of this network's shows.
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Of course there are still limits.
Look at how the CW has morphed. They have ten hours available. Thats it. If 30% of that is taken up by comic book series, that leaves little room for other types of CW shows.
In fact, we're looking at a TV landscape with zero high school teen dramas. Imagine a world without The OC, Gossip Girl, 90210, etc. Thats the world we live in now! This has always been a popular genre, but it's been pushed aside to allow a universe to sell action figures.
Remember how UPN was essentially the black sitcom network for a bit? Moesha, The Game, etc etc? When they merged with WB, and they lost 10 hours of programming slots, guess which TV show genre got dumped?
It then took over a decade to get a new black family sitcom. And based off how successful blackish has been, the demand was obviously there.
"But we live in a Netflix world now"
Yeah but not even Netflix has an unlimited budget.
We live in a reality where we have limited budgets, a limited set of quality writers, and a limited set of people who are both good actors and attractive. If all your good writers are stuck pushing out superhero drivel, limited to a format where they can't actually write, then we all suffer.
Agree. I mean, take Supergirl for example. Let's say CBS decided to pass on it - what would be on their schedule instead this fall?
Red herring. CBS hasnt been a destination for quality in decades. They made Under the Dome a success for gods sake.
