From the exchange on cable vs network:
Goodman's article is dumb and clearly intentionally myopic, but Todd's article struck me as significantly worse.
"And one by one, the big cable drama series for the year flopped either with critics or viewerssometimes both."
Yikes, this is such a cynical sentence. Are we really saying that "great" television must be a hit with a wide audience of viewers? There's no evidence to suggest that the audience who watched Terriers didn't like it, simply that there weren't enough bodies to get it renewed. Applying the same standard would basically preclude Mad Men from being "great", which Todd later categorizes it as.
Who cares if a channel can't launch a show or it gets shitcanned after a season? Clone High? Wonderfalls? Roots? Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy? Faulty Towers? The Office? Firefly? Party Down (nope, apparently not great, because it got cancelled, Todd explicitly says this) Are we really saying that a show needs to be renewed or continued for five seasons and sold into syndication to qualify as "great" tv.
Also from Todd's article - "Shameless... was [not] a ratings smash". Yes, it was. Good god, ratings coverage is terrible. Shameless was absolutely a ratings smash regardless of any judgments about the series' quality.
Todd then argues that The Office and How I Met Your Mother, as "network comedies long past their prime but still able to provide solid laughs". I'm sorry, but you can't spend a paragraph marginalizing cable comedies on the basis that they're merely good, not great, and then evoke two shows that even you admit are running on empty to own them. I mean, literally, the paragraph starts with "Curb is an amazing comedy but it's well past its prime" and then ends with "Cable TV can't compete with well past their prime shows like The Office", errr, okay.
"At the same time, the broadcast networks have discovered theres money to be made in programming to niche audiences, again, if the programming in question is cheap enough." <-- this argument is also not true. Broadcast networks aren't intentionally programming to niche audiences, and claiming that Community and Parks & Rec would have been cancelled five years ago doesn't support that claim. NBC is a struggling network. They cancel shows that underperform. They don't cancel shows that don't underperform. The bar for underperforming is lower than five years ago because they're a struggling network. If NBC had CBS' ratings, they wouldn't renew those programs today.
Poniewozik's article is better, if only because of the three he's the only one actually asking the question rather than advocating a side in a horserace.
I have essentially no input to the question. As a non-American, the terms "network" and "cable" are pretty different in my country, I tend to receive American content from all over the place in that NBC shows might air before/after FOX/ABC shows on the same network, "cable" shows might air on the majors here, "broadcast" shows might air on obscure networks here, etc. There's never been a year of television where there hasn't been more good stuff to watch than time to watch it, so I don't really care where the content is coming from.