It’s wild to think how different the world was just twenty years ago. The Internet in the early 2000s was in this weird, fun phase between the DIY ethos of the 1990s and the then-emerging-but-still-scrappy social media juggernauts of today. I first learned about YouTube from a print article in Newsweek, of all places, around that time. Sure, there was content online, but mostly text; slower connections meant that video wasn’t so easily obtained (getting to college in 2003 and experiencing truly high-speed Internet for the first time was life-changing).

In other words, cable television was still king. Indeed, it was something of a golden age—or, perhaps, a dark age—of trashy reality television. Survivor was an international phenomenon. MTV stopped playing music videos and just showed annoying youths screeching at each other in luxury houses. Watching shows about people shopping for houses in those pre-Great Recession days was a national pastime.

In retrospect, reality television was something of a precursor to modern YouTube, in which audiences formed parasocial bonds with television hosts. Sure, the possibility for engagement was far more remote, but people got really into those shows. But the cultural power was far greater, because everything was filtered through the Big Three networks—ABC, CBS, and NBC—and a host of related channels. Everyone was talking about, say, Lost or The Office at work; media journalists called these “water cooler shows,” because everyone would discuss them at the water cooler the next day. “Appointment viewing” was another term, because you couldn’t just watch a show whenever you wanted to—you had to watch it live or wait for a rerun. Ergo, if you wanted to be up on things at the water cooler, you had to keep your appointment!

The fewer options combined with rigid airing schedules meant that far more people were watching the same programming. The kind of scattershot fracturing of media we experience now was not really a problem. Sure, there were tons of channels and you could watch one of those instead of whatever the hit show was, and plenty of folks did; but so many people wanted to be in on the conversation. There wasn’t just a parasocial relationship with television hosts or characters; there was a social element to television.

It also meant that shows were competing for eyeballs in the same finite time blocks. TiVo and DVRs alleviated this competition slightly, as you could record one show while watching another in the same block, but it wasn’t like you could hop on YouTube and watch tons of show clips or sports highlight reels or the news.

Little did we realize it at the time, but the era of cable television’s dominance was swiftly ending. For that moment, though, it seemed stronger than ever (perhaps there’s a lesson there), and the competition for the top ratings was fierce.

The king of primetime (or, at least, one of the jester-princes of the era) was investigative journalist Chris Hansen, who’s iconic phrase “why don’t you have a seat” became one of the earliest memes. Those words meant that a degenerate pervert was about to get his comeuppance.

As morally satisfying as the show was, there was always something a bit sleazy about it (and not just because grown men were attempting to engage in illegal acts with minors), and the new A24 film Primetime (2026) explores the darker side of the program.