‘CSI’: ‘Interesting experiment’ lasted 16 years

When a writer refers to a moment in television as “seminal,” he or she is often employing hyperbole. After all, the medium is everchanging — we’re currently in a cultural climate that produced more than 400 scripted televised shows last year and has been called an era of “peak TV” by the very people who make it.

But some moments simply are seminal. Not for lack of a better word; just because they are. Oct. 6, 2000, contained one of those moments: That evening was the premiere of a show called “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation” on CBS.

On Thursday, along with a spate of other shows, the final iteration of “CSI” — this one called “CSI: Cyber” — was canceled. With that drop of the guillotine, CBS has officially ended the “CSI” era, which lasted 16 years and produced about 800 episodes.

In a television landscape where breaking through the crowd is increasingly difficult — the sheer numbers alone make the feat formidable, and the splintering of delivery platforms adds a second punch — the success of “CSI” remains almost singular. The set-in-Las Vegas original ran for 15 seasons and spawned three other series: “CSI: Miami,” “CSI: NY” and “CSI: Cyber” along with a generation of similar shows, such as “Bones” and the hyperpopular “NCIS” series. Over confrontational aspects of law enforcement — the arrests, the foot and car chases, the interrogation room — “CSI” dramatized the gathering of forensic evidence, the DNA testing, the science that would take place behind the scenes in those other shows (if it existed at all).

That was 16 years ago, of course. That was before “CSI” became the mostwatched TV show not in America but on Earth and not for just one year but for five, The Huffington Post reported.

The show became so popular, it had real-world effects. According to “The Anthropology Graduate’s Guide,” it, along with its imitators, “stimulated a new generation of students to enter the field of forensic anthropology.”

In partnership with CBS, the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History was granted $2.4 million from the National Science Foundation to create a forensic science exhibit, which opened in 2007 at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, before touring the nation.

That’s not to say it didn’t also cause controversy.

Its stories often — if not mostly — centered on violent crimes, many of them sexual in nature. The Parents Television Council called it TV’s least familyfriendly show in 2003, citing plotlines involving cannibalism, S&M sex clubs and snuff films, The Associated Press reported.

U.S. prosecutors even began complaining that the show had real-world effects in the courtroom.

CBS CBS has officially ended the “CSI” era, which lasted 16 years and produced about 800 episodes.