Commentary: In defense of network television

The fall came, and as in decades of falls before it, the broadcast networks rolled out a passel of new TV shows.

For many years, this audiovisual harvest festival arrived with great hoopla. This year, it seemed to creep in almost without comment, the usual commentators being more concerned with debating the best worst character on "Succession" than with noting that Patricia Heaton has a (very good) new sitcom on CBS. Given how television works now, in all its many platforms and delivery systems, with new series premiering any old time on the cable or web or wherever, and with the Attack of the Ten-Thousand-Foot Streaming Giants dominating the media news, the network fall season might seem to be edging toward irrelevance. Some would say as much of the networks themselves.

I would disagree.

For years, the go-to metaphor for TV was a "vast wasteland"