A long-time friend--my age plus a few years--recently discovered Hulu, and her friend (appropriately enough for Thanksgiving) suggested she find the iconic turkey-bombing WKRP in Cincinnati episode. Actually, my husband and I still go round-and-round about whether the Funniest Moment in TV History is its "Oh my God! They're hitting the ground like sacks of wet cement! Oh, the humanity!" or a curtain-clad Carol Burnett sending up Gone with the Wind. Anyone who grew up with TV in the 70s (or re-runs in the 80s) knows exactly what moments I'm talking about.
In the case of WKRP, it's likely you caught all or part of it (in re-run form) while waiting for Thanksgiving dinner to be ready, making it redolent of human associations. At least, that's my first memory of it, coming from small-city Wisconsin, where "channel-surfing" meant twisting the dial to find the four non-static channels among the 13 available.
But it occurred to me (with more nostalgia-infused wistfulness than I want to admit to) that such generational solidarity of cultural experience will likely run a bit thinner as time goes on. How many of todays tweens, teens, and twenty-somethings will reminisce about where they were & what they were doing when Ashton Kucher beat CNN to the million Twitter follower milestone? Granted, I haven't raised any tweens or teens (much less twenty-somethings), but I'm guessing that won't happen all too often. This isn't the internet's "fault," per se--the cable TV explosion seems, to me at least, to have been the thin end of the proverbial wedge, splitting a phenomenon that began with the family gathering around a wireless whose choices were more limited than the ABC/CBS/NBC/PBS menu of my childhood.
Not that I consider this diminishing commonality any blow to civilization, much less the coup de grace. In fact, if it makes it more difficult for manufactured celebrity and buzz (or over-processed mediocrity in general) to make it far enough off the ground hit my radar, I'm on top of it. Diversity isn't free, although it may often seem that way when its price is compared to that of conformity.
