English Entertainment
TV shows that the 90s kids miss
MUMBAI: Imagine travelling back to the time when we were young. Growing up is not an option for anyone. It is one of those inevitable aspects of the train of life that every passenger has to experience. But how you grow up is an option, more so, an option that everyone chooses to do in their own way. Some love the ‘grown up’ phase while others dwell and hate the fact that the comfort of being carefree does not exist anymore.
For a 90s kid, the world was really a unique place during that decade. The phase when comic books took shelter in the palms of our hands for most of the day, a time when a bicycle ride with friends felt no less than a dangerous mission, where tape-recorders remained a luxurious commodity, and asking your mother for money did not end with a “earn for yourself” reply.
The 90s also played a vital role in shaping our understanding of entertainment. As flat screen televisions were welcomed with sheer enthusiasm, a part of 90s kid died with the departure of CRTs (Cathode Ray Tube).
Game of Thrones replaced The Small Wonder, Sherlock replaced Tin Tin, Family Guy and Tom & Jerry provided hourly moments of laughter, whereas WWF became WWE.
For the child in all of us, let us revisit some of the series that makes travel down the memory lane pleasurable as we delve deeper into nostalgia.
Read on:
Full House
An American television series created by Jeff Franklin for ABC was aired from 22 September 1987 to 23 May 1995, broadcasting eight seasons and 192 episodes. The show narrates the story about a widowed father who enlist his best friend and his brother-in-law to help raise his three daughters. Full House is one such show that the 90s kids loved to watch.
Will & Grace
Created by David Kohan and Max Mutchnick and directed by James Burrows, the show was aired on NBC from 21 September 1998 to 18 May 2006. The story focused on the relationship between a gay lawyer and his best friend, a straight Jewish woman who is an interior designer. It showed the interplay of relationships, trials and tribulation of dating, marriage, divorce, casual sex and as well as comical key stereotypes of gay and Jewish culture.
The show aired eight seasons and 194 episodes.
Beverly Hills 90210
Yet another American drama series, Beverly Hills 90201 was created by Darren Star, Aaron Spelling, E Duke Vincent among others. The show aired from 4 October 1990 to 17 May 2000 with 293 episodes and 10 seasons. It was produced by Spelling Television and aired on Fox. The show addressed issues such as date, rape, gay rights, animal rights, alcoholism, drug abuse, domestic violence, sex, anti-Semitism, teenage suicide, teenage pregnancy and AIDS.
Law and Order
The show was aired on NBC from 13 September 1990 to 24 May 2010. A total of 20 seasons and 456 episodes were aired. The plot was based on real cases. Set and filmed in New York City, the series followed a two-part approach: the first half-hour was the investigation of a crime (usually murder) and apprehension of a suspect by New York City Police Department homicide detectives; the second half was the prosecution of the defendant by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office.
Homicide: Life on the Street
The series was created by Paul Attanasio and was based on David Simons book Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets. It was the first drama to win three Peabody award for its achievement in drama .It aired seven seasons across 122 episodes from 1993 to 1999 on NBC. It shed light on and around the homicide unit of the Baltimore Police Department, a group of determined individuals, who were committed to their grim job.
UK: The aerial is losing its grip. As broadband becomes the default way Britons watch television, the UK is edging towards a decisive, and divisive, question: should Freeview be switched off by 2034? The issue, highlighted in reporting by The Guardian, has exposed deep fault lines over access, affordability and the future of public service broadcasting.
For nearly 25 years, Freeview has delivered free-to-air television from the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5 to almost every corner of the country. Even now, it remains the UK’s largest TV platform, used in more than 16m homes and on around 10m main household sets. Yet the same broadcasters that built it are now pressing for its closure within eight years.
Their case rests on a structural shift in viewing. Smart TVs, superfast broadband and the Netflix-led streaming boom have pulled audiences online. Advertising economics have followed. By 2034, the number of homes using Freeview as their main TV set is forecast to fall from a peak of almost 12m in 2012 to fewer than 2m, making digital terrestrial television, or DTT, increasingly costly to sustain.
But critics say the rush to switch off risks abandoning those least able, or least willing, to move online.
“I don’t want to be choosing apps and making new accounts,” says Lynette, 80, from Kent. “It is time-consuming and irritating trying to work out where I want to be, to remember the sequence of clicks, with hieroglyphics instead of words. If I make a mistake I have to start again.”
Lynette is among nearly 100,000 people who have signed a “save Freeview” petition launched by campaign group Silver Voices. She fears the government is about to “take [Freeview] away from me and others who either don’t like, can’t afford, or can’t use online versions”.
Official figures underline the fault lines. A report commissioned by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport estimates that by 2035, 1.8m homes will still depend on Freeview. Ofcom’s analysis shows those households are more likely to be disabled, older, living alone, female, and based in the north of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
Freeview is owned by the public service broadcasters through Everyone TV, which also operates Freesat and the newer streaming platform Freely. After two years of review, DCMS is expected to set out its position soon, drawing on three options proposed by Ofcom: a costly upgrade of Freeview’s ageing technology; maintaining a bare-bones service with only core PSB channels; or a full switch-off during the 2030s.
The broadcasters have rallied behind the third option. They argue that 2034 is the logical cut-off, when transmission contracts with network operator Arqiva expire. By then, they say, the cost of broadcasting to a dwindling audience will far outweigh the returns from TV advertising.
Ofcom agrees a crunch point is approaching. In July, the regulator warned of a “tipping point” within the next few years, after which it will no longer be commercially viable for broadcasters to carry the costs of DTT.
Others see risks beyond economics. Questions remain over whether internet TV can reliably deliver emergency broadcasts, such as the daily Covid updates, in the way that universally available DTT can. The UK radio industry has also warned that an internet-only future for TV could push up distribution costs and force some radio stations off air if PSBs no longer share Arqiva’s mast network.
“It is a political hot potato,” says Dennis Reed, founder of Silver Voices, who says he has “dissociated” his organisation from the government’s stakeholder forum, which he believes is “heavily biased” towards streaming.
The Future TV Taskforce, representing the PSBs, counters that moving online could “close the digital divide once and for all”. “We want to be able to plan to ensure that no one is left behind,” a spokesperson says, adding that rising DTT costs could otherwise mean cuts to programme budgets.
The numbers show the scale of the challenge. Of the 1.8m Freeview-dependent homes projected for 2035, around 1.1m are expected to have broadband but not use it for TV. The remaining 700,000 are forecast to lack a broadband connection altogether.
Veterans of the analogue switch-off, completed in 2012 after 76 years, recall similar fears of “TV blackout chaos”. Around 6 per cent of households were labelled “digital refuseniks”, yet a targeted help scheme and a national campaign, fronted by a robot called Digit Al voiced by Matt Lucas, delivered a largely smooth transition.
This time, the BBC is less keen to foot the bill. Tim Davie, the outgoing director general, has said the corporation should not fund a comparable support programme for a Freeview switch-off.
Research for Sky by Oliver & Ohlbaum suggests that with early awareness campaigns and digital inclusion measures, only about 330,000 households would ultimately need hands-on help ahead of a 2034 shutdown.
Meanwhile, viewing habits continue to fragment. Audience body Barb says 7 per cent of UK households no longer own a TV set, choosing to watch on other devices. In December, YouTube overtook the BBC’s combined channels in total UK viewing across TVs, smartphones and tablets, albeit measured at a minimum of three minutes.
That shift may accelerate. YouTube has recently blocked Barb and its partner Kantar from accessing viewing session data, limiting transparency just as online platforms consolidate power.
“When the government chose British Satellite Broadcasting as the ‘winner’ in satellite TV it was Rupert Murdoch’s Sky instead that came out on top,” says a senior TV executive quoted by The Guardian. “There already is such an outsider ready to be the winner in the transition to internet TV; it is YouTube.”
Freeview’s future now hangs on a familiar British dilemma: modernise fast and risk exclusion, or protect universality and pay the price. Either way, the aerial’s days as king of the living room look numbered.
