I might hypothesize that one of the reasons that such programming isn't as prevalent today as it was in times past is that people don't *have* to watch television.  You say there's not much that interests you on TV so you turn off. Plenty people are more-or-less okay with what's on, but the people who might actually effect change are just, like, "bugger that; I'd be better off reading a book anyway".  Also I would imagine that the very function of television viewing has changed considerably towards being a form of light entertainment as opposed to a force to be taken more seriously.

(I'm happy I brought this up; downloading a few of the series mentioned now).

I'm not sure what you mean there - people didn't have to watch television thirty years ago either...

Thanks, George. That's comforting. 

A major difference between then and now is the growth of commercial television and the chimera of audience ratings. Be it McD's, muzak or LCD programming, once people become used to it, they want more and more: very much as r said with making people idiots. Your average wageslave is under infinitely greater pressure in his/her day to day life than people were in the 70s: targets, appraisals, the pace of life, the way the general public behave: what those people think they need when they get in at night from these pressured, draining days is something light and mind numbing: the people who commission adverts know this, so the biggest audiences (and thus the biggest fees) for adverts come with the schlock. The Beeb feels that it needs to compete, so quality programmimg goes out the window. We're all aware that R3 tracks its happy downward spiral blissfully ignoring the comments made by regular listeners in the belief that by changing itself into a straitjacketed, streamed presenter-led clone it will magically attain higher listening figures (and as we've recently seen, it hasn't) every other broadcasting station and department is under very much the same deluded pressure, but often to a far greater extent.

The strata of parasitical managers, consultants and advisors know best (they have the paper to prove it), and it's due to them that the exceptional, the inspiring and the challenging are either ignored completely or mercilessly ground down until their individuality is lost: and once an audience has been deprived of quality for a while, it either looks elsewhere, or ceases to care. After years of being spoonfed realityTV shows and cheap infotainment, sponsored or subsidised by commercial concerns who will make a killing in increased sales by encouraging the public to decorate their homes again/redo the garden/change their diet, a huge portion of the watching public have either forgotten that well-made TV can be thought-provoking, or have just forgotten how to think. Were Marx alive today, I'm sure that he'd find that it's TV rather than religion which has become the opiate of most people: they've happily given up the right to think for themselves in exchange for a media-controlled comfort-zone, and take forgranted that the standards, norms and information imparted therein can be totally trusted.

And if you want to be really depressed, think on this: in thirty years' time people will no doubt be looking back on today as a Golden Age.