1992: The Year That Changed Television (and Everything Else)
“You’ll always be my sisters. Always.”
On May 9, 1992, Bea Arthur delivered those final words on NBC’s The Golden Girls in a series finale that saw the Emmy-winning comedy bid adieu to Arthur’s Dorothy Zbornak, the sharp-tongued substitute teacher who was leaving Miami for a new life with a new husband. The last scene of the beloved and iconic sitcom was filled with real tears (including mine, an emotional 12-year-old viewer at the time) as Dorothy makes repeated attempts to say farewell to the women who became her family over the course of seven cheesecake-filled seasons. It was, as they say, the end of an era.
However, 1992 represented an end of an entire television era. The Golden Girls wasn’t the only landmark show signing off at the closing of the broadcast television season that year. Three other popular sitcoms aired their finales after enjoying successful runs that dominated the previous decade. ABC’s Growing Pains saw the Seaver family leave New York for Washington D.C. to support mother Maggie’s new job. Who’s The Boss? found housekeeper Tony Micelli, now a college professor, returning to Connecticut to be with his one true love — and former employer—Angela Bower. Meanwhile, over at NBC, the final episode of The Cosby Show saw Theo Huxtable graduate from college before his parents, Cliff and Clair, danced off their living room set and into TV history. And kicking off their final seasons later that September were two comedies that would be forever tied to the same era: Cheers and Designing Women.
“I was in mourning all summer, inconsolable,” says Gregory Bonsignore, author of That’s Betty! The Story of Betty White, as we exchange DMs about our respective childhood viewing habits and mutual obsession with reading issues of TV Guide and Entertainment Weekly cover to cover. “Luckily Saved by the Bell: Hawaiian Style was there to console me. I am not kidding when I tell you how often I still think of that last scene of Growing Pains, going back for the family portrait, seeing ‘Mike Seaver was here’…and then bawling my eyes out…It felt like everyone I knew as a kid was moving away.”
Indeed, it was the first time I remember having to say goodbye to so many characters I had grown up with, my first time experiencing what was basically…loss. And it wasn’t just happening with comedies. Other TV viewers were grieving for the one-hour dramas that were also coming to an end. MacGyver, the Reagan-Bush-era actioner that showcased the charisma of Richard Dean Anderson’s uber-resourceful hero of the same name, wrapped up after seven years of homemade bombs and death-defying assignments. Knots Landing (a.k.a. The Last Primetime Soap Standing) would kick off its final and fourteenth (!) season in the fall — putting one last nail in the coffin of the 80s Primetime Soap Trifecta that included Dynasty and Dallas (sorry, Falcon Crest). And in the midst of all those farewells, the biggest one arguably came from late-night legend Johnny Carson, who signed off one last time on The Tonight Show in May of 1992; millions of viewers watched Bette Midler serenade the host while he held back tears behind his desk in that historic Burbank studio.
With so many television chapters closing, little did I know something bigger than my prepubescent feelings was bubbling up at that time. There was a palpable sense of change in the air — an undeniable, out-with-the-old-in-with-the-new paradigm shift within American culture.
One big contributing factor: the 1992 Presidential Election. When Bill Clinton campaigned throughout the country that year, blaring Fleetwood Mac’s “Don’t Stop,” insisting that America keep “thinking about tomorrow,” the message was clear. “This was an anthem calling out to everyone [saying] this is going to be a new era,” explains Jim Colucci, author of Golden Girls Forever and the upcoming Love Boat Forever. “Talk about an inflection point. They were underlining that saying, ‘Hey, everything’s about to change. We’re going to go Democrats, we’re going to go younger, we’re going to go more progressive, and of course that, to use Ronald Reagan’s words, ‘trickles down’ into the pop culture we had that year, in that era.” In other words, if there were any remnants of the 80s left in the 90s, they were swiftly wiped clean in 1992. While the proverbial torch was being passed in politics, there was also a significant changing of the guard within entertainment — notably on TV.
And younger they went: The kids who grew up on 70s television were now entering their twenties in 1992. Generation X — yes, two whole letters before Z — suddenly became the hot demographic in the eyes of marketers everywhere, a group of fresh-faced, flannel-wearing youngsters who were starting take hold of the zeitgeist (and the economy). In 1992, shows like MTV’s The Real World attempted to paint a portrait of post-adolescent Americans as they adapted to young adulthood in the final decade of the twentieth century. Elsewhere, Melrose Place, a drama about twentysomethings living in a trendy L.A. apartment complex, dared to break the rules straight off the bat, resembling the ethos of its core target audience, by debuting in the middle of the summer. (Back then, it was rare for a broadcast network drama to premiere during a season typically known for reruns.) The programming tactic from Fox, a network still in its infancy at the time, worked. It lured young viewers to what TV Guide eventually called “a Gen X Dynasty,” thanks to Heather Locklear showing up in a miniskirt as conniving Amanda Woodward at the end of the first season.
With networks losing their primetime staples from the 80s, it was time to fill the voids with a fresh crop of sexy, new titles. With Knots Landing on its way out, CBS attempted to woo younger audiences with 2000 Malibu Road, a sudser starring Gen X royalty Drew Barrymore and Jennifer Beals; it tanked. NBC, still suffering from the loss of The Golden Girls and poised to lose its Boomer-centric L.A. Law, debuted The Round Table, a short-lived Aaron Spelling drama with a catchy soundtrack from Toad the Wet Sprocket; it lasted one month.
“80s TV was more [about] broadcasting,” Colucci continues. “It was meant to play to everybody, but if you look at what happened in the 90s…the 90s got way more specific in terms of the target. It was about urban, young singles, usually white — almost always white…Pop culture went from the 80s mission of ‘entertaining everybody’ to depicting different types of comedy settings to really narrow in on what people thought were demographically and politically important. And they probably also reflected the backgrounds of a lot of the creatives who were getting in the door to pitch [at networks].”
Next up was Mad About You, debuting in the fall of 1992 and starring Paul Reiser (My Two Dads) and Helen Hunt (Girls Just Want To Have Fun). It was seen as a more sophisticated approach to married life, focusing on urban, young Manhattanites Paul and Jamie Buchanan, a couple with (gasp!) no kids, enjoying a very metropolitan life that was still accessible enough for a broad audience. Also premiering in 1992, long before “representation matters” became a trending phrase, Fox’s Martin and ABC’s Hangin’ with Mr. Cooper attempted to carry the comedy torch, left behind by Cosby, for Black America. Meanwhile, in the world of dramas, networks took more risks, putting spins on formats that were once tried and true in the 80s. CBS premiered Picket Fences, a new kind of procedural drama that blended nuclear family dynamics with quirky criminal cases and courtroom antics in a small Wisconsin town. And even though it debuted in 1993, the pilot script for ABC’s NYPD Blue was written in ’92, forever changing the way network police dramas would be made. “When I talk to people and showrunners and writers about the 80s and early 90s television,” Colucci tells me, “everybody points out NYPD Blue as the big sea change.” Whatever came before (Moonlighting, Miami Vice, Magnum PI) was now seen as fluff compared to the gritty realism and more risque content that populated 90s crime dramas.
“I had no interest in Melrose Place or Picket Fences,” Gregory Bonsignore tells me over another DM. “It wouldn’t be until some paleontologist’s lesbian wife left him alone in a coffee shop with a girl in a wedding dress that I would feel whole again.” That coffee shop was Central Perk, the centerpiece for NBC’s Friends, and even though the widely successful sitcom premiered in 1994, it was a result of Gen X content hitting at the right time, “at this inflection moment when we were all looking for change,” adds Colucci. “The 90s became about that. Friends and NYPD Blue became the models for where we were going in television. It’s not going to necessarily be fluff. It’s going to be younger, edgier, hipper, more progressive.”
Another contributing factor to the dramatic shift in American culture in 1992 was the emergence of the internet. The World Wide Web was just starting to penetrate the mainstream, signaling the last hurrah for the conservative 80s while a younger, more forward-thinking generation discovered a new way to entertain themselves and explore the world. The technological revolution was just beginning.
One can easily argue that TV viewers in 2022 are experiencing a similar shift with the seemingly undying popularity of social media platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube and the continued dominance of streamers like Netflix, Hulu, and Disney+. Swap out Gen X with Gen Z, and the parallels to 1992 are undeniable. The biggest difference is an unprecedented plethora of entertainment options at our fingertips, a wide selection that is both broad and more niche than ever before.
So, where do we go from here? Moving forward is the expected, natural answer, but what does that look like? For those who remember TV before the internet and social media, like me, going back is always an option too. Shows that have become synonymous with the 80s are now small-screen treasures cherished by any elder millennial or young Gen Xer who’s nostalgic for entertainment that thrived during a certain time in America. “The part I’m nostalgic about,” says Colucci, who identifies as a Gen Xer, “is having the mission that we could all watch the same thing and have watercooler talk and really be united by this pop culture, before we got so fragmented.”
But change is inevitable, and both of us agree that change isn’t a bad thing, especially when it comes to television. “It brought us into a new classical era,” he says.
It’s all about specificity these days, which conjures up the paradox, “If you wanna make something universal, make it specific.” Hence why we’re still experiencing Peak TV, which continues to provide opportunities for more voices to be heard from more communities than ever before. Colucci notes, “I think the move toward really capturing a specific kind of character and doing it well, even if that means you’re keeping the world of the show within one community…if you’re writing them with truth and making it really great and making those characters people the audience will recognize, it will be beloved.”
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some Golden Girls episodes to stream on Hulu…
@TheFirstEcho
