Why are the old shows better than the new ones?

Well, my title is provocative and it's not necessarily true. Not all the old shows were better. There were a lot of bad ones but we tend to forget those. We only remember the good ones. And to consider a new show better, we have an accumulating list of really great shows for it to compete against. I like to read Earl Pomerantz's blog Just Thinking... and he brought up this point and I wrote an answer. I'll copy it below but I think I missed a few ideas so maybe I'll write some more about that in another post here. But for now, here is what I wrote:

Another thing about saying older movies and shows (and many other things) are better than recent attempts: Remember that each new entertainment or event must "compete" with a growing list of things that happened before. So, it gets harder and harder to be the best or the most memorable.

I thought about this during the recent cold spell when the weather man said it is harder to set new records in certain situations (like coldest high temperature) because of the accumulating range of temperatures in the past. Of course, we're doing our best to keep setting new high temperatures which leads to another thought on this whole "the older versions are better" idea. If humans can make new heat records by ignoring the past, we should be able to improve stories, movies and music by studying the past, learning from them and improving them.

So, maybe that's what helps make it harder to improving our movies, too. Fewer people are willing to study the past to learn what was done well and where the mistakes were made. How many musicians study the masters before going on with their own attempts? How many writers study the old stories and fables before writing their own? With film and TV, it's easier. The records are more clear and there is less history. And you're only going to see "the best movie ever" less often because it's still competing with The Epic of Gilgamesh, The Iliad and the Odyssey, The Bible and I Love Lucy.