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Afterall most of the Oscar winners started in theater or do just as much live theater as they do in movies. Not to mention even in the debut roles in movies, many experienced theater actors (esp if they come from Broadway or England's theatre scene) are already praised in their first ever movie role such as Timothy Dalton's entrance in film in The Lion in the Winter.
It even seems having a theater background is almost a guarantee for a support even major role if nobody else has an lead role resume from a TV show or support roles in movies.
Is the quality of acting in theater esp the professional level that much greater?
If you act in live theater, even if it's only for a year, you get immediate feedback from the audience response. And you get it night after night, performance after performance. Which almost necessarily aids you in improving your craft.
If the only acting you do is in front of a camera, your performance is chopped up in pieces and out of chronological order, and you get zero audience response (though good directors will help guide your performance).
It's not a matter of theater being superior to film (or television), it's simply that you get far, far more training, practice, and feedback in theater than you do in film.
This is also one of the reasons the comedic acting is largely garbage, and has been for a long time. There used to be a training ground called vaudeville, where comedians would hone their craft and persona. The Marx Brothers took scenes on the road in vaudeville to make them as funny as possible before putting them in film (the stateroom scene in A Night At The Opera was one). There is literally nothing like that today. Stand up is a different kind of performance, though some comedians can bridge the gap. And Saturday Night Live is a deeply imperfect replacement, giving us some real talents, but also giving us people like Will Ferrell, who mistake "loud and obnoxious" for "comedy".