Good morning BaddaBing BaddaBlog readers! I hope you are having an awesome Wednesday and are ready for a pop culture knowledge mic drop. This is Pop Culture Wednesday; the place where anything and everything related to media is examined, evaluated, and critiqued. Today’s topic is an interesting one and I have my buddy Andy (yes, he’s not always a wet blanket) to thank for it. The question is a simple one, but is also extremely dense and merits unpacking. The question is, “which is the leading media industry, T.V. or Movies?”

Determining which of these industries is better than the other is difficult, as it is hared to find a way to objectively which is superior to the other. Sure, revenue is the go to answer for something like this, but that can be difficult to calculate across entire industries and can becomes even more difficult when you consider and try to categorize content that is trying to bridge the gap between television and film, like Sherlock or the upcoming The People vs. O.J. Simpson special. So instead of focusing on the funds each industry annually pulls in, I’m going to focus on the creative content generated by each medium.

Movies have been considered for a long time to be superior to television. Movie actors are held in higher regard than television actors and the content created for the big screen is often considered to be more artistic then that of its T.V. counterpart. This is totally understandable when it is acknowledged that movies have been around much longer than television. The movie industry is much older and more refined than television and has changed numerous times through out history as the medium has been pushed beyond what was considered possible numerous times.

This is reflected in lists that rate the greatest movies ever made. The American Film Institute’s Greatest American Films Ever Made list consist primarily of movies that are either groundbreaking for the medium or works that are extremely artful. However, the list is also extremely dated. The top movie on AFI’s list is Citizen Kane which came out in 1941 and the most recent movie in the top thirty is Schindler’s List, which was released in 1993. While their truly are some astounding pieces of cinematography and stories in the world of film, it seems very much like it has plateaued.  Some great and astounding movies have undoubtedly been released in my lifetime, but I can not say whole wholeheartedly that a movie has come out during my existence that was a game changer for the industry.

Television, on the other hand, seems to be on the upswing right now. Programming has been created recently that has reshaped the television industry for the better. Works like Game of Thrones and Breaking Bad have proven that television can be just as compelling and deep as film. Television has also recently been recognized as being a better medium to tell certain types of stories. For instance, Stephen King’s epic The Stand is being adapted into a television mini-series due to it having too large a scope to be done justice on the silver screen. It is undeniable that television is growing right now and in a couple years or decades it could be more highly regarded than the film industry.

So, in short, I think film and television are pretty even right now in terms of quality and content. That may change in the near future however, because movie have not done anything truly groundbreaking in the last decade or so, while television is constantly in the process of releasing better content and pushing the boundaries of the medium. Television may surpass film in the future, but then again an earth shattering movie could come out in the next year or two that totally reshapes the industry. Anything could happen, life is chaos.

There you have it, the best answer is that there is no answer. Although, I’ll admit that I personally prefer the content on television as I enjoy the weirder and more creative programming that occasionally appears on that medium. If you liked this post please leave a like down below and if you feel inclined to leave a comment while you are down there, please do so. As always, you can subscribe to this blog in the upper right tab via your email. Alternatively, you can stay up to date by liking the official BaddaBing BaddaBlog Facebook Page, or by following me, @LucasDeRuyter, on Twitter. I hope you all have a great rest of the week and be sure to come back here on Saturday for the next installment of Game Grind.

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