Here’s How TV Genres Have Trended in Popularity Over Time

During the days of I Love Lucy and The Brady Bunch, TV shows were family-friendly, wholesome, and lacked diversity. In the 1950s especially, traditionalism and uniformity served as the basis of American culture—and TV shows in the ‘50s reflected those values.

You don’t have to look back far to see that as society shifts over the years, TV genre popularity trends in line with those changes. For instance, the Space Race era ushered in a buzz around sci-fi TV shows like Star Trek. Just before the millennium, TV series like South Park, The Daily Show, and Ellen explored homosexuality, political corruption, mental illness—at the same time the media discussed those topics more broadly.

As cultures, laws, and communities evolve, TV genres do too. Taking those changes into account, which TV genres have reigned supreme despite changing values? Which TV genres have been the most popular over the years?

Evolution of Sci-Fi TV Over the Past 50 Years

At the tail end of the 1960s, the US landed on the moon. In the same timeframe, action and sci-fi saw a massive spike in popularity. Two years prior, in 1966, Star Trek and Mission: Impossible premiered—a sharp contrast from The Flintstones, which was at the height of popularity in the early 1960s and highlighted a Stone Age family with minimal technology (who, we must not forget, rode dinosaurs).

Evolution of Comedy TV Over the Past 50 Years

With the end of communism looming, spirits were high in the 1990s—so much so that multicamera laugh track comedy sitcoms à la Friends, Seinfield, and Everybody Loves Raymond snagged the top spots for the most popular TV shows during the time.

The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air—whose storyline revolved around a black family—was one of the most popular TV shows in 1990. This was telling since a major cultural shift categorized American culture in the 1990s. For example, at the time, rap music gained a larger audience, thanks to Black culture—the TV show’s theme song was even rapped by the West-Philadelphia-born-and-raised prince himself.

Comedy (along with crime and action) nearly took over the charts in the early 2000s. Gilmore Girls, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Scrubs, and The Office won over the hearts of comedy lovers everywhere.

Evolution of Crime TV Over the Past 50 Years

Crime TV shows have historically trended upwards in popularity, but the genre was especially well-loved in 1973, 1996, and 2011.

Columbo came to the scene in 1968 and by 1971 it was the most popular TV show of the year. The whodunit-themed series followed a blue-collar detective who busted criminals and threw them in jail. In the same year, President Nixon led the charge on the War on Drugs, and mass incarceration spiked dramatically as a result.

In 1996, The Pretender made its TV debut and quickly slid its way into the top twenty list. In 2011, Homeland was the second-most popular TV show for the year (second only to Game of Thrones).

Evolution of Adventure TV Over the Past 50 Years

Adventure TV, otherwise defined as a TV series that features a blend of action, drama, and fantasy, has trended upward in popularity since its moment in the limelight in 1966. In 1977 and 1987, adventure TV shows saw a 20% and 19% increase in popularity, respectively.

In 2004, 23% of the shows in the top 100 were adventure. All-in-all, the top-rated adventure shows in the 2000s were Lost, Firefly, and Once Upon a Time.

Evolution of Reality TV Over the Past 50 Years

Although various reality TV shows aired beginning in the ‘70s, reality TV didn’t truly become a thing until 2000— and even then it didn’t become immensely popular for several years to come.

The first reality TV show didn’t snag a spot in the top twenty most popular TV shows until 2008 when Million Dollar List was a total hit. In the years to follow, The Real Housewives of New York City, The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, and RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars 2012, and Below Deck, would be the only reality TV shows to make the 2008, 2010, 2012, and 2013 top twenty lists, respectively.

Evolution of Horror TV Over the Past 50 Years

Horror TV shows seldom made the top twenty cut for any year, likely because those spots were often snagged by comedy, action, and drama TV shows—and because several popular TV series like American Horror Story aren’t primarily categorized as horror shows.

The Walking Dead, a zombie apocalypse series (whose secondary genre is horror), was the most popular TV show in 2010—which is two years before the ancient Mayan prophecy predicted the world would end.

Evolution of Biography/Documentary/History TV Over the Past 50 Years

Although documentaries have been around for ages, documentary-style TV shows (and no, not like The Office) have been around since 1960—albeit scarcely so. Documentary TV shows didn’t become popular until 2008—forty-eight years later.

For that, the genre can thank Ghost Adventures, which documented men staying in notoriously haunted properties and provoking spirits to communicate with them. It was the tenth most popular TV show in 2010.

Biography/Documentary/History—TV Genres overtime

Evolution of Fantasy TV Over the Past 50 Years

Fantasy saw a 4% uptick in popularity around 1964. After that, though, the genre didn’t see another increase in popularity until 1989 (this time 8%). In 1989, the Space Shuttle Atlantis, embarked on mission STS-24, which could have contributed to the genre’s rise in popularity.

After 1989, fantasy didn’t see another surge until 2019 when The Order, What We Do in the Shadows, The Twilight Zone, and NOS4A2 all ranked in the top twenty most popular TV shows for the year. We suspect the genre got cheated, since popular series such as Game of Thrones fell into the action genre, not the fantasy genre.

Evolution of Drama TV Over the Past 50 Years

Drama has continually increased in popularity over the years, but the genre got its boom in 2011, 2014, and 2016, when it increased in popularity by 49%, 66%, and 68%, respectively.

In 2011, American Horror Story was the third most popular TV show (yes, we were confused it wasn’t categorized as a horror TV show too). In 2014, The 100 and Outlander snagged spots one and two, and in 2016, Billions, Stranger Things, and Westworld were the three most popular TV shows for the year.

Riverdale, 13 Reasons Why, and The Handmaid’s Tale all rose to popularity between 2017 and 2019. Each show explores topics that, although controversial, still aren’t as widely talked about within society (think mental illness, abuse, and rape). The #MeToo movement, which erupted in 2017, focused on something also not talked about enough publicly: sexual assault.

Evolution of Animation TV Over the Past 50 Years

In 2004, 23% of the shows in the top 100 were adventure. All-in-all, the top-rated adventure shows in the 2000s were Lost, Firefly, and Once Upon a Time.

Evolution of Action TV Over the Past 50 Years

Action, alongside comedy and drama, almost exclusively dominated the top twenty most popular TV show list for each decade. Action sharply increased in popularity in 1966, but it wasn’t until 1984 and 1993 that action shows would become household names. In the 1980s, Miami Vice and The A-Team won over action fans and foes alike.

Action TV shows also climbed in rankings in 2010 (Justified, Hawaii Five-O), 2012 (Arrow, Chicago Fire), and 2017 (Star Trek: Discovery).
Believe it or not, Game of Thrones, is categorized as an action TV show (not a fantasy TV show). In 2010, the series ranked as the number one most popular TV show, and fans everywhere donned long white wigs and fake swords for Halloween.

Evolution of Western TV Over the Past 50 Years

Sadly, there isn’t one western TV show that made the top ten (or twenty) final cut for any decade—but that’s likely because western TV shows are rare nowadays. Western TV shows had their heyday between 1960 and 1970. But after a brief surge in popularity in 1976, love for the western genre had all but plateaued.

Westerns have waxed and waned (but mostly waned) in popularity over the past several decades, but one thing has always remained true of the genre: they tend to reflect the values and beliefs that define the current society at the time of their release.

Methodology

To find the most popular TV shows over time, we analyzed IMDb TV show data on English-speaking shows in the US from the past 50 years. To obtain our top 100 shows, we calculated the percentage of annual shows ranked highest (out of 100) per genre based on the IMDb’s categorization.

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