For 25 years now, there's been this annual event in Los Angeles called The William S. Paley Television Festival. For the first 15-20 years, it was a glorious thing that trotted out guests and rare footage to salute the early days of television and folks who'd had long, productive careers in the medium. Now, granted, a lot of those folks have passed away or been covered and it's a little late for another Jack Paar tribute. But the festival events used to be about history and now they're about current or pretty recent programming…in some cases, about shows that have been on the air for months, not years.
Think I'm exaggerating? Here's a page of photos of 24 years of these seminars. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and work your way up to the more recent Paley Fests. See if you don't notice the change of focus.
The line-up has been announced for this year's salutes. The projects being honored are It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, 90210, The Big Bang Theory, The Hills, Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, Dollhouse, Battlestar Galactica/Caprica, Fringe, True Blood, The Mentalist, Desperate Housewives, Big Love and Swingtown! Some of those are very good shows and if the PaleyFest folks were going by the old standard, I'm sure some or most of them would warrant having evenings devoted to them. I just think a show oughta be on the air an entire week before someone pays tribute to it.