Having technical skill is not something that gets lost because of the increased crunch. TDs aren't as skilled anymore because they aren't as skilled. The good ones work on the hundreds of sports productions happening around the country these days — and with good reason — those jobs pay well and are a lot of fun. I'd argue that a super skilled TD would be even more useful in a show where time is a concern, because they would be able to cram more effects in to a shorter amount of time. The problem with that is that most switcher effects that are used to compensate for time lost are recallable effects — ones where the TD just needs to know which macro to select on the bus to call up the resizers, DVEs, timed effects, etc... and those are all controlled with the push of a button. The effects we're pining for are all based on the fader bar (a handle on the bus which controls the speed and amount of an effect, whether that's wiping, dissolving, etc.) and that particular skill has been lost in the industry as a whole with time.
Not a TD myself, but I have friends who are, and this topic came up. You hit the nail pretty much on the head. So many effects on modern switchers are automated, and you just can't automate something like that. You have to have a TD that is able to ride the bar with perfect timing. A few can, but most can't do it reliably.
Having technical skill is not something that gets lost because of the increased crunch. TDs aren't as skilled anymore because they aren't as skilled. The good ones work on the hundreds of sports productions happening around the country these days — and with good reason — those jobs pay well and are a lot of fun.
Even in sports, these are skills are in danger of being lost. More and more sporting events are being produced remotely; instead of sourcing a full in-person crew for an event, they send a skeleton crew to the stadium (cameras, uplink, an ops manager) and produce the bulk of the broadcast from a studio (director, producer, graphics, replay, audio mixing) in Bristol or some other hub city.
Remote productions are popular with networks, even before the pandemic forced more of them, because they keep travel costs down and the same crew can work multiple events in a day. But they come at a cost. The camera & audio footage you get is being beamed through a satellite from hundreds of miles away, so effects that demand timing and precision are out. And if you're working three sporting events a day, you don't have any TIME to innovate. Those jobs are exhausting even for skilled TDs. You're working sporting events up to 10 hours a day, 6 days a week. You have to use macros out of necessity.