Television VS Film: Are the Two Comparable in the Modern Day?

Film has long been the canvas for some of the most famed stars in entertainment history; whether it be actors, directors, or writers, it has been considered the pinnacle of accomplishment in the media industry for decades. Television has consistently featured standouts with high production costs, ranging from Twin Peaks in the early 1990s to Breaking Bad in the late 2000s and early 2010s. However, the medium was never quite considered to be at the same level as film by both audiences and those working in the industry alike. In recent years, television has been on the rise, with more ways to watch than ever before, and productions becoming more costly, it is hitting heights that once seemed out of reach for the format. Thanks to these advancements, TV is now considered by many to be at a comparable level to the film industry, and those within the entertainment world seem to agree. A migration of stars is occurring from film to TV, with the daily average viewership of TV in Europe in 2024 being 3 hours and 13 minutes a day, according to EBU it is becoming clear that TV is aiming for the top spot.

A New Era of Entertainment

To understand why such major players have been shifting to television, it is important to understand how it came to be and the advancements viewers have witnessed in recent times. When television began, both the technology and programming were rudimentary in nature, in stark comparison to how complex it is today. There is no one inventor who can be attributed to the creation of the television, as a multitude of visionaries had a hand in its inception. While they became commonplace in households across America in the mid-20th century, there had been preexisting models since the 1920s. Beginning with the mechanical television, which used research dating back to the 19th century, was introduced to the world by Scottish inventor John Logie Baird in 1927. However, it was considered to be too technologically complex and of poor quality to be mass-produced. Next came the electric television, which, thanks to the invention of the dissector tube by Philo Farnsworth in 1927, was first unveiled by Russian-American inventor Vladimir Zworykin in 1929. These progressions allowed for the creation of the TVs we have in our homes around the world today.

The programming shown was vastly different from that of today, as most productions in the first two decades of television were not prerecorded, but rather live. While there is still live programming today, such as the News and sporting events, there was once a time when almost everything shown was filmed live, as if a play was being put on in your living room. It was not a place where you would commonly see A-list actors of the time, such as Humphrey Bogart, performing. Fast forward to today, stars are abundant in leading roles on television, such as Jeremy Allen White on The Bear, whose names hold enough weight alone to bring in higher viewership. This sort of production style all shifted in the 1950s with the CBS sitcom I Love Lucy, the first TV series to be prerecorded on 35mm film on a multicam setup, revolutionising how TV was filmed and pioneering the format for later sitcoms, still seen on our screens to this very day. Yet, it was still decades away from the heavily serialised and multi-million dollar productions we have today.

The Emergence of Quality Television

The 1980s-90s saw a renaissance in the media produced for TV, along with becoming a birthing ground for future movie stars. Many of the most famous and critically acclaimed shows first aired in this period, ranging from sitcoms such as The Fresh Prince of Bel Air to mystery dramas akin to Twin Peaks. Anything and everything was becoming widely available on TV. Whether you wished for suspense, a quick laugh, or a long cry, there was something for everyone, and all in the comfort of your own living room.

Television was at an all-time high in the 80s, with the big three of ABC, CBS, and NBC having a near monopoly of TV in the United States from the 50s to the 80s. Everything shifted in the late 80s when a multitude of smaller stations started gaining traction, most notably Fox. After being established in 1986, Fox, along with other stations, began to take more control and gain a larger viewership, as this large influx of new networks allowed for more variation in programming. With EBSCO having stated that “the Big Three saw their collective audience share drop to 61 percent by the early 1990s.”, just a few years after Fox broke through. Fox’s biggest breakout was actually a spinoff from the sketch comedy show The Tracey Ullman Show, being The Simpsons, which was originally a segment on said show, which became their biggest property and is still ongoing to this day. 

Nowadays, they are more commonly referred to as the Big Four, while other stations such as HBO and AMC progressively grew in fanship over the years, now becoming comparable networks to the Big Four in terms of the quality of series they produce. This shift of power in the 90s forced networks to make rash moves, while they all had popular shows during the decade such as Friends on NBC, Roseanne on ABC, and Everybody Loves Raymond on CBS, their growing competitors were producing shows on par or even surpassing their most popular properties, with the 21st century bringing a whole new era of TV on the level of many Hollywood blockbusters.

The New Era of Television

The 2000s brought in TV series that revolutionised how audiences viewed TV, most notably beginning with HBO’s The Sopranos in late 1999. The show followed Tony Soprano, a mafia boss operating out of New Jersey, as he balanced a life of crime and his familial duties as a husband and father. Such a simple premise, yet the show was complex, presenting riveting drama through both Tony’s crime family and blood family, whilst tackling an abundance of once taboo topics on TV. Issues such as mental health, questions surrounding morality and mortality, and social commentary on a wide array of topics, including racism and homophobia. These topics were typically relegated to film and were sparse throughout shows of the past, which are now common themes on TV.

The Sopranos paved a path for what on-air television would go on to become, and networks all decided to join this new era of TV, both in the US and internationally. In the wake of The Sopranos, audiences were greeted with shows such as The Wire, Mad Men, and even the popularisation of the now abundant limited series format with Band of Brothers in the US. The UK also saw shows such as Shameless and The Office, which became so popular that they were adapted in the States for American audiences.

This was only further expanded upon in the 2010s, where shows such as The Walking Dead, Game of Thrones, and the highest-rated western TV show of all time, Breaking Bad, dominated popular media. While shows in the past did hold strong viewership and were extremely popular while releasing, but this new wave of TV was timeless; it would not decay over time but rather marinate and stay with audiences and studios for years to come, and into the new era of streaming.

Birth of Streaming

Where once there were video rental stores akin to Xtra-vision and Blockbuster, the 2010s brought in a fresh format for audiences to digest media more easily than ever before. Netflix was the pioneer behind the modern streaming services we see today, although that was not how it began. Founded in 1997, it was originally a mail-order DVD service that delivered media right to your front door, trying to edge out American services such as Blockbuster, which were once scoured across all of the US. The model was a success, as Blockbuster filed for bankruptcy in 2010, with only a singular Blockbuster remaining today, situated in Bend, Oregon. It was not until 2007 that Netflix started streaming content online, and their first original show was not released until 2012. It is a common misconception that the first Netflix original series was House of Cards, which premiered in 2013, but the series Lilyhammer came out a year prior and set Netflix on the trajectory we see today.

Netflix went on to fully focus on their online services, creating both original content, such as Stranger Things in 2015, which just came to an end after a decade-long run on New Year’s Day 2026, and adaptations of previously existing IPs, such as Marvel’s Daredevil in 2015. They found rampant success with this new model, and other companies decided to follow suit. HBO MAX, Disney+, and Amazon Prime are some of the biggest contenders trying to take Netflix’s crown, most of which own powerhouses from the past that are only available on their respective platforms, not to mention the original content created for each service.

The budgets of these series quite often far outweigh the costs for many films we see in cinema, with the reported budget of Netflix’s Stranger Things season five being $50-60 million dollars episode, according to a report from Puck News, totalling almost $500 million. To put this in perspective, the reported most expensive movie ever filmed, according to several reputable sources, such as No Film School and FilmLocal, is Star Wars: The Force Awakens, at a whopping $533 million. It is important to note that the final season of Stranger Things was an eight-episode event, running for a median length of 77 minutes an episode, compared to the two-hour, sixteen-minute-long feature film, so its budget is more spread out. Yet, for a single episode to cost a minimum of $50 million far outweighs the cost of some feature films, such as the Academy Award winner for Best Picture, Moonlight, at a reported $1.5 million according to Indie Wire. 

At this rate, the budget for TV will soon surpass that of most feature films, especially those that are independently produced, as the success seen from Netflix’s recent endeavours is a sure-fire indicator that other platforms will follow suit. This can already be seen occurring, as A-List stars have become more prominent on the smaller screen in recent years, some of which returning to the format they had left for a film career. With examples including Apple TV’s Presumed Innocent with Jake Gyllenhaal in the lead, HBO MAX’s The Penguin with Ireland’s own Colin Farrell, and Harrison Ford in both Apple TV’s Shrinking and Paramount+’s 1923, all produced for streaming with some of the biggest actors in the film industry in prominent roles.

A primary issue with these services is the pricing. To own a subscription to all available platforms in the Republic of Ireland would cost a significant fee each month if you wanted to access unique content from each respective service. The big three of streaming, Netflix, Disney+, and Prime Video, would run for a combined total of €28.97 a month, just shy of €350 a year to access their combined content. This does not even account for those that are unavailable in Ireland, such as HBO MAX, which has had its content locked behind other services such as Now TV. There may be one show you love on Amazon Prime which forces you to keep your subscription going, or several on Netflix, and all of this money adds up for consumers who want to witness these series legally.

Is TV the New Film

With all of these advancements in technology and manners of viewing taken into account, one primary question remains: Is TV the new film? Well, there is no straightforward answer. With Netflix trying to broker a deal with Warner Bros. to buy not only their existing catalogue, but the whole filmmaking studio itself, it is looking far more likely that the death of cinema may be inevitable. Netflix has been trialling their biggest new releases in cinema in recent times, but they have a very limited window, such as the most recent feature from Rian Johnson, Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery, which had around a two-week run in theatres before releasing online. RTÉ have claimed that the global sale of cinema ticket sales dropped 8.8% in 2024, not just in Ireland but worldwide, so it is fair to say that many viewers have shifted to watching content purely at home. Yet, many fans, including myself, are against the notion of removing films from theatres entirely, and are openly insulted that the cinema experience may be ripped away from them. This being said, film was crafted to be viewed in the cinema, and TV was always meant to be an alternative for the home. TV will never replace film, and vice versa, but the two can become more intertwined than ever before, with actors, directors, and writers splitting their efforts between the two mediums, and, with higher budgets on top of this, TV can evolve far beyond what it was in the past and is at this moment.