The Paley Center for Media used to hold these great festivals to celebrate and discuss great television shows of the past — night after night for a couple of weeks. I attended some wonderful ones with pioneers and show creators of programs that had endured a test of time.
But at some point — one suspects a need for the kind of funding that would come with promoting current product — they turned into festivals about shows that were still on the air. In some cases, they were saluting shows that had just debuted and had only generated the kind of interest that might cause the tickets to those events to sell out quickly. I don't fault them for this so much as I miss the events about shows that weren't currently in production.
This year's PaleyFest is being held, for obvious reasons, online. Here's a chat with Seth Meyers and the folks behind Late Night with Seth Meyers, a show I think is very well-written. This qualifies, by PaleyFest standards, as saluting an older series…