While algorithms do affect how shows are surfaced, produced, promoted and discovered on streaming platforms, I'm unconvinced that television is more formulaic, unoriginal, and uninteresting now with dozens of online streaming sources and literally millions of channels (e.g. youtube) vs. cable (local monopoly streamer, hundreds of channels) or broadcast television (local oligopoly, tens of channels dominated by three national broadcasters.)<p>Most importantly, the barriers to creating and distributing video are lower than ever: we carry high-quality video cameras built into our smartphones, we can easily edit those videos using inexpensive (or free) and widely available apps or web services, and we can easily and cheaply make that video available to about half the people who live on the planet.<p>It seems to me that we are in a golden age of television in terms of quality, quantity, and variety. Regarding quality, it seems that many of the best writers and actors are working in television; moreover, streaming supports watching an entire series from the beginning, which can support longer story arcs without necessarily having to recap everything each episode. Compared to a 2 or 3-hour movie, a series watched from beginning to end can potentially tell a longer and possibly more interesting story with a larger main cast and deeper character development. Regarding quantity and variety, streaming supports a larger number of niche shows with smaller audiences, while wider geographic distribution means that we have access to shows that we would never have had the opportunity to view in the cable and broadcast eras.