Original Desmond

today Game of Thrones is by far the most discussed show.

The most discussed show isn't necessarily the most popular. Some mega popular shows like Friends just don't warrant much post or pre viewing discussion

What are other ultra discussed tv shows in tv history ?

Pre/early internet, what shows would people discuss religiously the next day at work ?

I remember the original X Files series generating quite a lot of discussion

The Cow

pre-internet: Dallas
internet age: LOST

morriscroy

Beavis and Butthead. (For different reasons).

Michael Corvin

Lost leaves everyone in the dust, including GoT.

mcnabb

I think in the 1970's All in the Family was probably the most discussed TV show.

It was the #1 show so it had millions of viewers as the storylines and dialogue on the show were never seen on TV shows before.

They tackled every issue with a Conservative Racist Archie Bunker vs a Liberal Freeloading Meathead.

I have been watch reruns lately and its scary how many of those issues discussed (gun control, race, nationalism, equal pay for women) are still being debated today.

I can only imagine people discussing every episode after it aired in the 1970's.

resinrats

I figure while viewership was much higher for those old shows, shows in the Internet age are discussed much more. Back then it was all face-to-face or maybe a phone call to a friend. How many people would people realistically talk about it with? Maybe a few co-workers and even then, not that long. Talk 10-15 minutes and that's it for the week.

Now with the internet, a popular show on this board alone can get multiple pages per episode and people still talking about it days/weeks after it airs. Helps that it has 100's/1000's off people across the world reading the thread.

rw2516

During it's original run Vegas and small time bookies made odds and took bets each week on whether Dick Van Dyke would trip over the ottoman .

bluetoast

Didn't he trip over it like 80% of the time? I remember they barely used the intro where he sidesteps it.

Count Dooku

This is basically true.

For example Happy Days was the #1 show on TV. It was a pop culture sensation spawning many catchphrases, but it only generated Wednesday morning conversation.

Did you see the show? (Of course) Wasn't it funny? (Of course) It was funny when this happened or that happened. Fonzie's so cool. I wish I could get chicks like he does.

TV happened every night with tens of millions of people watching the same shows on the three networks, but the shows only existed for that night. Saturday Night Live was probably the rarest of shows where anybody thought about it more than 24 hours after it aired.

A show Like All in the Family would generate think-pieces. However, people in 2016 need to know that the view of television was very different in 1976. TV was the boob tube. It was not a medium where "art" happened, and so TV was not deserving of serious discussion.

I guarantee you that more was written in the mainstream media during the 2000s about the meaning and significance of The Sopranos than there was serious writing about all of TV during the 1970s.

slop101

How about Simpsons? Mostly since it's been around for so long, and that there are many college courses (even at places like Berkley, Stanford and Harvard) taught on it. That counts as discussion, right? Though outside of that, most Simpsons discussion is probably casual references people make to it in their daily lives, which is more than you might assume, more than any other show.

Original Desmond

I don't really think people would discuss simpsons episodes indepth after every one. As a whole given it's longevity, it;s had it's fair share of discussion

But i'm really referring to fan discussion before and after each weekly episode. Shows which really got people 'talking about it by the water cooler'

Yes totally agree about Lost

Count Dooku

The funny thing about Lost is that it confounded ABC that they could not find a show to put on after Lost to piggy-back on its audience.

They tried shows like Lost. They tried shows that were nothing like Lost.

It never occurred to them that what people wanted to watch after Lost was a show about Lost.

Chris Hardwick! Where were you when ABC needed you?

Red Dog

Yeah, I was going to say Dallas in its heyday.

Groucho

There was MASSIVE discussion of Simpsons episodes on Usenet back in the day. Trying to figure out all the references, etc.

Count Dooku

The "Who Shot J.R."-thing was certainly a phenomenon. It's estimated over 80 million people tuned in to see the shooter's reveal.

Part of what ginned the conversation about Dallas was that it was considered a soap opera, and there was a real industry surrounding the discussion of soap operas in magazines like Soap Opera Digest, also Star and The National Enquirer, and People.

Dallas aired on Friday nights, so it was not a show that generated water-cooler discussion. If it did have an audience that would hash over the weekly developments, that audience was predominantly female, and so it would have been under-the-radar of mainstream notice.

Finisher

Seinfeld has to be up there.

PatD

This failed TV show from the 60s has been pored over and analyzed for 50 years, from fans to social critics:

Let's see if we're talking about "The Sopranos" in 50 years.

Count Dooku

It is important to remember that counting the people that watch Game of Thrones on HBO, and the illegal downloads, still doesn't total more than 10 million an episode. Until its final episodes, Breaking Bad never had more than 2 million viewers per episode. Lost usually was in the 10-15 million viewer range. So what counts as massive interest is very relative.

JAG ran for ten years and had more viewers than all the above shows, and nobody ever wanted to talk about it. . . not even the people who worked on it.

Count Dooku

This is not what the OP posted about: discussion of the show while it is on-the-air, specifically episode-by-episode.

davidh777

The X-Files was the Lost of its day, and in the early stages of listservs and other new forms of communication.

PhantomStranger

Simpsons and X-Files definitely saw a lot of Internet discussion in the 1990s, though you have to remember there was a much narrower audience online at that point. The Masses didn't really get on the Net until the 2000s.

Lost has to be number one since the Internet became a mass market phenomenon. One of the primary Lost boards.

http://forum.thefuselage.com/index.php

DthRdrX

Regardless if you consider it a show or sport, Pro Wrestling. Hundreds of wrestling rumor/news websites are why I got the internet back in 95/96.

If we are talking regular scripted shows: X-Files in the 90s, Lost in the 00s, and I'd put Walking Dead ahead of GoT now.

Count Dooku

http://www.hitfix.com/whats-alan-wat...ing-television

this is a good read

DJariya

Lost used to get over 30 pages of discussion in this forum per week. Some of it was actually live play by play scene by scene (I don't know why)

Now sometimes an entire season would be lucky just to get 2 or 3 pages.

But then again, the amount of TV content has exploded in the 6 years since Lost went off the air (400+ scripted show were on the air last year) and my guess is (for this forum at least) there's just not enough time and eyes for all these shows to be seen and watched in a timely manner. Netflix and streaming services has certainly hurt people being compelled to watch live TV nightly.

Game of Thrones currently gets around 10 pages, but even then it's audience is limited since it's on premium cable.

PhantomStranger

Lost still had most viewers watching it live or nearly live. Serious television viewers today DVR practically all serialized content, which puts a dent in the number of people that can even discuss a particular episode soon after airing. I think The Americans falls prey to that trend.