I think it is really interesting, since people were already watching a lot of TV before the recent leap in quality. They were willing to watch those old school network dramas and sitcoms (and still are, see: Big Bang Theory) but when a few cable networks tried bumping the quality up significantly we saw how many people wanted to watch something better.

And youtube is a much better platform than television for evolving the cheapest, crappiest "content" that is just barely good enough to get people to continue to watch. Twitch is especially interesting in this regard.