There is absolutely no way Halt and Catch Fire would have made it out of S1 and into high gear. I'm not sure Buffy would have made it either.

I think you're overlooking 2 things about today's market place compared to the 90s when most of these shows premiered. Today, through either a streaming service or piracy everything is on demand. Today I choose not to watch a show whereas in the past if I wasn't making sure I was in front of my television at a certain hour I didn't have a second chance to see that shows episode. You can argue VCRs solved that problem, but juggling blank tapes, video store rentals and porn really made that too much of a hassle.

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The second thing is 20+ episode seasons that told episodic stories doesn't really exist today. Today all 8 to 12 episodes for that season are written before the cameras starts rolling. These shows you're talking about had a crew in preproduction for a future episode while a separate crew is filming a different episode. And there's a crew that's working post production on an episode that just got finished filming. Today actors have ample time to rehearse everything, but the writers don't have time and opportunity to change a plot mid season or realize two actors have shit chemistry and a whole season shouldn't be wasted trying to get the audience to ship them.

Breaking Bad and Xfiles could survive, IMHO, in this era. Seinfeld could maybe survive with the Netflix model but it seems hard for a 20 minute comedy to survive in a weekly release model, but I do keep checking to see if a new Ghosts has been released. (which reminds me to turn on my TV)

TNG would be doomed if the original creative team had to write 12 episodes, film them all and then release them either all at once or weekly. So many fans of TNG would drop in to watch a episode of TNG in the first couple of years (remember TNG was on multiple channels in each city before Congress changed syndication rules) and not come back for months. Nothing like that exists in todays market.

Parks and Rec.

To think, Breaking Bad at its peak had like barely 10% of the peak viewership Big Bang Theory had at one point. 🤔

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Seinfeld definitely wouldn't have made a 2nd season. The first is really awkward and kind of shitty.

Always Sunny was dark and while the first season is incredible probably is too over the top to make a 2nd season.

Shortening attention spans. I can’t believe how fast the internet wants to make snap judgements. The Last of Us is a great example, the amount of people online saying it’s one of the greatest shows of all time after a few episodes was nuts. Conversely then there’s a polarized backlash of sorts with people saying it’s terrible. Jesus, give it a full season at least before judgement. So many great shows were slow burns with just good first seasons. I did not like Game of Thrones on first watch, the beginning of S2 I found to be a bit slow and gave up. Came back years later after more of the show had come out, stuck it though, and it turned out to be one of my favorite entertainment experiences ever.

Mr Robot

American Dad was a bit shaky in season 1

X-files you are missing a bit on context.

It debuted the 1st year that Fox had programing everyday of the week.

While overall X-Files was lowly rated, it was about average for Fox viewership (it would be like comparing Ted Lasso's viewership numbers to Young Sheldon)

It aired on Fridays, when viewership was lower overall

When looking at broadcast TV there are other things to consider other than just overall ratings. DOW, that I mentioned above, is big. Also how much of it's lead in show's audience does it retain. Is the show gaining viewers each week, maintaining or losing.

Star Trek: TGN was released in syndication. It was the 3rd highest rated syndicated show in its 1st season. Highly unlikely it would have been canceled anywhere

Seinfeld is interesting. 1st season was only 5 episodes, so hard to get a following on network TV with that low a number. 2nd season started bad but was given a 2nd shot and moved to after Cheers, where it preformed really well and the rest is history. There is a good chance that it could be a causality in today's environment.

Breaking Bad is another potential case. It was one of AMC's most watched shows when it debuted, just the network didn't have many people watching at the time. It was also just their 2nd original drama series that was released. I may be a casualty it today's environment if it was released on one of the big platforms, but likely would survive on one of the smaller ones.

Clicked on this thread to say The X-Files and Seinfeld. You beat me to it, lol.

Star Trek has enough of a built in audience that (especially on a streaming service), I think it may have had a chance to succeed though. Look at Discovery. It’s absolute shit and on Season 4.

Streaming services don't really do late night shows, but imagine Netflix killing Conan's show in year one and he just went back to being a writer

Firefly.

Seinfeld would have been a case of getting yanked off the air on broadcast TV, based on the early episodes.

I'm not sure I understand what you're asking.

Is the question is basically asking which procedural 90s shows would have failed to perform well in S1 if it was released in the modern streaming era? Well, pretty much all of them since audiences are not going to respond well to a procedural these days. Poker Face is a cute surprise, probably not indicative of a procedural rebirth.

Married with children

You’re comparing apples to oranges.

1. Streaming services know exactly how many people are watching something whereas Nielsen is a guess.

2. Streaming services have no ad revenue to help the budget so they cut bait when nobody is watching. A network can let the audience grow because they still have revenue coming in from ads and cable fees.