The Golden Age of television, IMHO, is kind of a sham.
I won't deny there's a severe uptick in the quality of shows - acting, writing, directing, etc.. I, for one, think anthology shows and episodic shows have merit, but in the 90s when serialization was ramping up (for scifi) i thought it was refreshing. When BSG kicked off - i thought that the grit, the drama, the characters were all awesome. Same thing for Lost (at first).
And of course, this extends beyond scifi. American Horror Story, The Walking Dead, and so forth - and goes beyond speculative fiction all together. Orange is the New Black, House of Cards, Breaking Bad. We're seeing the rise of "good" super-hero shows - Daredevil, Agent Carter, Jessica Jones.
The problem you run into is this - the thing being sold is basically the same thing over and over - mystery driven cliff hangers, grit and serialized drama. And everything, is "SO AWESOME AND YOU TOTALLY HAVE TO CHECK IT OUT".
I used to be one of those assholes who didn't "watch tv". I mean - i had a childhood love affair with star trek, and baywatch (i know, i know). And i spent a lot of time watching various "trash" up late at night. Beavis and Butthead, Elvira hosted movies, USA's Up All Night movies, etc.. but once i hit college, i just got tired of it. I wanted things that weren't perpetually on-going, that had a theme, where a writer or director was trying to say something and that something wasn't always communicated purely via narrative and sometimes... the narrative could have obvious holes in it. I wanted movies like.. from Wes Anderson and David Lynch. I wanted pieces that made me think. And i'd always posit that because movies can potentially be so singularly controlled by someone's vision (much like a novel) they had the ability to be "high art" more than tv ever would. TV by it's very nature has to sell ads. TV, by its very nature, is meant to be on-going. The number of moving pieces and financial pressures kept it from ever giving you anything remotely inaccessible - no I <3 Huckabees, or Pi, or anything like Lars Von Trier would do, or Eraserhead, or Waking Life, or Fight Club even. No Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind. No Brazil. No Videodrome.
But then Sopranos came, and after that so many shows started to follow. And this style of tv didn't explode with scifi really until Lost. And it was exciting for a time. But now it's just so burned out. I found myself abandoning my "tv sucks" mantra and getting into one show after the next, queuing up so many i couldn't keep up with all the great things YOU MUST WATCH NOW. And frankly.. one day i just stepped back and i realized, that on some level we've all turned into housewives and grandmothers watching their "stories" (aka soap operas). we're all on the edge of our seats for what happens next!
While the drama is a step up from what tv was.. while effects and acting are better... it's STILL just tv. While the financial pressures, in light of online markets paying for whole seasons up front, have kinda changed, it's still just tv. and it's endless.
Everything is always the next Firefly, or the next BSG. Or the next Lost. Everything is a Mad men or a Boardwalk or a 24. And it's just so ..fucking tired.
My only exception to this is Black Mirror. Short, sweet, self contained anthology stories that can have all the benefits movies do in a tv format. but beyond that? Bah. The more people scream at me now about what i MUST BE WATCHING, the more time i'm going to spend not watching that very thing. The hype has become so absurd and my cup runneth over.
People say this level of hype is b/c the market has grown so competetive as of late and they hope to not get cancelled. IMHO - that's just another reason why tv sucks. If you can't tell a story in the time allotted to you, then IMHO - you have nothing to say. You're just making up plot entropy bullshit to string people along as long as the money flows. At least old tv shows existed in a less competitive market, and could afford to get comfortable in it's own skin for a season or so. Not anymore.