People sometimes wonder why I’m not a subscriber to any streaming service. The truth is I would be, but I barely have time to watch what little is still on free TV and at least I don’t have to pay for it.
 
I’m sure many of us remember a time when there were can’t miss shows on network television, like Cheers, All In The Family, Hill St. Blues, L.A. Law, St. Elsewhere and dare I mention it, the Cosby Show. That was the time when there was almost too much to watch and not enough VCR tape to record it all.
 
Those days, alas, are gone. It was known as Peak TV, when you could sit down for dinner with "The Sopranos" or go for a ride in "Taxi." Cable upped the ante and created classics like “Weeds” and “Nurse Jackie.”  Not to mention “Breaking Bad.”
 
Now, free TV in primetime is either almost nothing but sports (I’m looking at you NBC!), game shows or cheap-to-make reality contests, or a few still OK shows that have fewer episodes than they did in the past. And cable is a shadow of its former self as many cut the cord.
 
According to one insider, the days of the Peak are over, even for streaming, where it costs so much to make so many shows, no one can afford it anymore and with certain exceptions, there just isn’t a big enough audience anymore to justify the huge budgets.  
 
“I'd love to be able to just give you the knee-jerk answer, "Of course, there'll always be traditional television," [opines Kevin Reilly, who toiled for NBC, Fox and Time Warner, to name a few.] “I think unfortunately, everybody waited too long to figure out how we were going to prop it up.”
 
“So will it have a very long tail on it, like radio? The heyday of radio went away and we still have radio. I believe it will be around in some fashion. And as some of these assets get shed or reinvented — yeah, they might end up having a little bit more life in some ways than we thought they did."

A veteran of the Peak TV era explains why Peak TV isn't coming back