Pop Culture: Is there a cure to 'Revivalitis'?

Try this: grab your favorite TV guide and look at the listings. Now guess what year this is. What's on these days? The "X-Files," "American Idol," "Roseanne" "Will and Grace" ... revivals, reboots and remakes. It's television nostalgia at its fullest.

When "Roseanne" came back on ABC last week, it drew 18.9 million viewers in front of their television sets (and another 6.7 million viewers have watched it since then by means of DVRs and other streaming devices -- so a total of nearly 26 million viewers, according to ABC). That's an enormous number. That's the highest-rated sitcom broadcast in more than three years. That's huge for the resurrection of a show dead for two decades. That's the reason why the new "Roseanne" has already been renewed for a second season -- proof that television nostalgia is a trend far from going away.

One way or another, the last three decades of TV from the 20th century are coming back to life. "Animaniacs," the cartoon produced by Steven Spielberg, got a two-season order at Hulu with new episodes set for 2020. But fear not, there will be a plethora of reboots and revivals before then, like the "Charmed" reboot on the CW, the "Lost in Space" remake coming soon on Netflix, "Murphy Brown" on CBS, and so on.

This trend is not news. Networks and streaming services have been bringing back old shows for a few years now, but nostalgia mania is now peaking. It's overshadowing pilot season orders, making it feel like all we have to expect is old content being reheated for a newer audience. Take an old concept, give it a new spin, and you have your television programming for the year to come. What happened to creating original programming then? What is happening to fresh, new ideas? The thing is, it's easier to sell a reboot or revival than a completely new show. With a reboot, you have a story already built-in; with a revival, you have a known name, stars, even a fanbase. In either cases, you are not starting from scratch. And as long as these nostalgia-driven shows perform well with viewers, the industry will keep feeding on this trend until one of them bombs dramatically.

All revivals and reboots are not terrible ideas. "Roseanne's" revival is worth checking out, Netflix's remake of "One Day at a Time" is an absolute must-watch and "Will and Grace" is currently NBC's No. 1 comedy. Perhaps the new versions of "Cagney & Lacey," "Magnum P.I." and "Party of Five" will be worth viewers' time. But viewers also have a part of responsibility in reboots overtaking the television landscape. Our viewership feeds the industry's belief that nostalgia is what we want to see on our screens, and only a craving for new, original content can cure what should be called "revivalitis."

Marine is a Southeast Missouri State University graduate with a master's degree and former intern at the Southeast Missourian. She has been writing about pop culture for more than six years.