1994 vs 2004: Many Life Changes During "Friends" Run (May 10, 2004)

Except for Courtney Cox, who we saw on the 80's sitcom "Family Ties", none of the others were household names, except maybe Jennifer Aniston I saw on the Fox-TV Julie Brown show "The Edge" in 1992, but in May of 1994, the cutural life of the Internet has changed the way we live while "Friends" was running through all of ten seasons.

What was life like before "Friends" in May 1994: here's what the cultural landscape looked like then.

TV Shows that are still on since then: "The Simpsons," "COPS," "America's Most Wanted," "Saturday Night Live," "60 Minutes," "Law and Order," "NYPD Blue," technically "Frasier" but that series ends this week, "48 Hours," "20/20", and "Monday Night Football."

TV Shows that went away during that time: "Married...With Children," "Full House," "Coach," "Roseanne," "Home Improvement," "Beverly Hills 90210," "Melrose Place," "Seinfeld," "Wings," "Mad About You," "Step By Step," "The Fresh Prince of Bel Air," "Blossom," "Family Matters," "Murder, She Wrote," "The X-Files," "Murphy Brown," and many others I didn't watch.

TV Shows that debut and left during the Friends range: "Buffy, the Vampire Slayer," "Sabrina the Teenage Witch," "Party of Five," "Touched By An Angel," "Futurama," "Family Guy," "Dawson's Creek," "Unhappily Ever After," "Spin City", "Chicago Hope," many hammocked network flops in time slots after "Friends" and "Seinfeld", and whatever else. "The Drew Carey Show" would have ended in May, but ABC, foolishly enough, decided to burn off the entire season of it starting in June.

As for the way we Internet:

In 1994, we once used Compuserve, AOL, Delphi, Prodigy, and a mass of defunct BBSs to log onto the online service for private forums, selected news and views, and non-standard proprietary e-mail service through their downloaded interfaces or terminals. Today, we use any ISP we choose to surf anywhere on the Internet outside of any ISP-supported realm, read any news from anywhere, participate in USENET forums seen worldwide, use standardized SMTP e-mail to communicate, and subscribe to pay websites on our own.

In 1994, we accessed the online world using a 14.4kbps modem. Today, we can use 56k modems on a phone line, the maxed-out rate, or we can dump Pac Bell and take up cable phone lines and wireless phone providers to use the 56k modems on. Today, we can also dump the dial-up 56k and use DSL and Cable for wired high-speed Internet access, or subscribe to wireless Internet.

In 1994, most of us never put up a website unless they were at an educational, government, or military institution. Today, anyone can build their own website and pay for their own domain name on the cheap.

In 1994, businesses had only the expensive mail and media ad to get their messages across. Today, they can put up a website and anyone can type in "theirbusinessname".com to read more about it, saving them tons of money on wasted postage.

In 1994, radio broadcasting was restricted to their immediate areas. In 2004, with the help of streaming its signal on the Internet, their coverage can be worldwide if they wish. The early days, back in 1995, were so bad in fidelity that the stream was good only for voice and talk programming, and the stream rate had to be 8-11kbps since many people still had 14.4k modems in use. As the modem speeds rose to 56k, and high-speed Internet came into play, radio streams can go up to 128kbps under good conditions. You can listen to "Dr. Demento" and other syndicated radio shows from an out-of-town radio station streaming on the Internet since 1996.

The online services and BBSs had some Internet access service available, though rudimentary, chaged extra for it, and mostly full of text before Mozilla changed all that with a visual browser that can display what a webpage looks like without the help of a terminal or online service program.

In 1994, shareware was distributed on 1.44MB floppies and cost about $5 from several computer stores. Today, you can download shareware from your home, and register to pay for the full version of it.

In 1994, the Internet was just a series of websites full of text on a gray background. In 2004, a webpage can be full of multimedia and graphics effects.

In 1994, you bought music on CDs and cassettes. In 2004, you can download songs in a compact MP3 or other formats, though illegally free for the most part. Piracy of music, software, and now movies on the Internet are running rampantly out of control and the legal people are filing lawsuits against people accused of sharing copyrighted stuff illegally.

In 1994, we bought and rented movies on VHS. Today, they're on DVD discs.

In 1994, TV sets were still just analog. Today, we get hi-def TV channels along with analog, but by 2007, the analog TV channels over the air will be history, and no timetable set for the end of analog TV on basic cable.

In 1994, you had just the newspapers to trade and sell stuff. Today, ebay and other Internet sites rule the way to trade.

In 1994 you read the news from your local newspaper only. Today, you can read any news from any newspaper that publishes them on a website, exposing yourself to many news you're not finding on your local paper.

In 1994, you were limited to the 12-36 radio stations in your area that you can tune in to, more than 90 percent of which are irrelevant to your musical tastes. Today, they're competeting not only with the out-of-town radio stations on the Internet, they're all competeting with Internet-only radio stations such as dfsxradio.com, cable TV all-music services, MP3 collections you downloaded, and since 2001, satellite radio. You can listen to genres that are not heard in your terrestrial area and learn far more about the music you want to hear than ever before. I bought over 500 CDs mainly from listening to Dr. Demento and other funny music radio shows in the years I've spent listening to the show on the Internet. I spent $0 on music I heard on Channel 933 and Star because none of that music appeals to me at all, thought these radio stations plugged the heck out of the likes of Jay-Z, J-Lo, and other pop acts whose music are unmemorable at best. I been listening to online radio longer than Sarah Michelle Gellar has been slaying vampires.

In 1994, dance music was rarely played on a radio station near you. Today, thanks to the Internet revolution, dance and electronica as a genre has florished all over the Internet with radio stations specializing in a flavor of the genre, websites selling dance CDs, and downloads from everywhere. The revolution was not televised in San Diego at all, and our neighbors in Los Angeles had two short flings with all-dance that ended too soon. Both of the satellite radio services feature 4-5 full-time dance stations.

In 1994, if you missed a radio show, that was it. Today, many people upload illegal copies of radio shows, many of which I download and enjoy, on USENET's binary newsgroups or share them through Kazaa and other peer-to-peer software.

The first TV network to embrace the Internet debut the following month in June 1994: fX. It was the first network of any kind to regularly encourage feedback through e-mail addresses, and a visit to their website, too lengthy to memorize then, let the web surfers visit the network for information about their programming. fX featured a morning show called "Breakfast Time" with Tom Beregon and Laurie Hibbard, and "Backchat" with pre-Survivor host Jeff Probst, who is probably glad that "Friends" is finally off the air! Some people such as yours truly got a dozen letters on his TV show "Backchat" between 1994-97.

Which, oddly enough, brings us to "Friends." This show, we can note, could be argued that the show, struggling in ratings at first, got successful through word of mouth and discussion on the forums on Compuserve and AOL and readers and participants downloaded GIFs of the cast of the show, then got hooked on the show and brought it to the top of the ratings by the end of summer 1995, so popular that NBC let "Friends" lead off Thursday nights for the next nine years. Somehow, I just can't get that "Smelly Cat" song out of my head. Around 1995, personal websites about "Friends", as well as other then-popular TV shows such as "Seinfeld, "Melrose Place," and of course "90210," as well as a multitude of fan-based celebrity websites, the TV shows, getting free publicity, thrived with never-before used unauthroized fan sharing of show information. "Friends" was probably the first TV show to debut and rise during the consumer-based WWW era. Other established shows also benefitted from WWW publicity, as well as giving life to long-gone TV shows of the past.

In 1994, the WB and UPN netlets haven't signed on yet. Today, we have these plus the stuggling PAX netlet.

In 1994, an animated Christmas card began circulating on the Internet from a few private websites and FTP download sites. This card got so popular that the two cartoonists responsible for it were signed by a cable network to produce a dozen episodes based on the four foul-mouthed eight-year-olds witnessing the battle between Santa Claus and Jesus Christ. In 1997, the most anticipated TV series ever, thanks to word of mouth on the Internet, debut in August: "South Park," which garnered record ratings in the 1997-98 season, even beating the ratings for ABC's "Prime Time Live" in the Wednesday 10pm slot.

With "Friends" riding off into the sunset last week, with the rise of alternate services to telephones and postal mail, your friends will always be there for you, thanks to the rise of e-mail, AIM, WWW, USENET, wireless phones, mIRC, walkie talkie, etc.