I disagree, though I see where you're coming from. My humble take on those days is that there simply was more to each show, so while it was harder to maintain high quality over many episodes, I feel that that simply means you had a higher chance of watching something good with there being so much out there.

Take Cowboy Bebop, it's 26 episodes of just some of the best television out there. Not just best anime, no, best television ever made, and there might be one filler episode in the whole thing? A 26 episode season of anything just isn't a thing anymore, and imho having even shitty TV is better than none at all as it's art, and the amount of unique/novel/risktaking art being produced in a society is one of many barometers for that society's health.

The risks just aren't being taken anymore, you only see "sure deals" now, and that leads to stagnation and eventually death of culture, and yeah, that is what's slowly happening. The media ecosystem is a reflection of the psyche of the the society that made said media, and right now that ecosystem is just a bunch of vultures feasting on the recently deceased bloated corpse of what remains.