Well, perhaps the question is: better for who? I can't watch most mainstream TV shows with my little kids. Witcher, GoT, etc. Perhaps mainstream TV of the 70s was forced to be better for a broader audience.

The shows are better for me, more entertaining, more exciting, etc, but not better for everyone in the house. The sharding of entertainment into different age groups leads to people not sitting together and watching a show together, and instead we're all in different rooms with headphones. imo that's worse.

I suppose it could be argued that the streaming services don't count as "American TV". They aren't exclusivly American and the bulk of their content doesn't follow any sort of TV format.

So if we were looking specifically at the major broadcast channels: ABC, NBC, CBS, and PBS, then I think the TV of the 60s/70s is probably easily much better.

A lot of people of a certain age think this. It's the old "The Golden Age of Science Fiction is 12" effect. People just have subjective fondness for TV, movies, and music from their youth. Later generations may just find them cheesy.

Americans used to all get the same news from the big 3 TV networks. That's very different now. Not only are broadcast TV news stations more or less party propaganda for one party or another, but many other news sources are even more divisive.

There are strong arguments that the change in media since that time has led us to and/or fuels the division in the US over all kinds of issues.

My argument: The Prisoner.