Enrico Salad

Is more TV choice good for us?

Many, many commentators have been banging on for ages that TV is being "dumbed-down", even more so now that we have 100s of channels to chose from. It is obviously not reasonable to expect that all these channels can produce hour after hour of quality programming, nor do we expect to have every channel continuously re-running the "classics". But what do we get instead? Usually lots of cheap-to-produce reality pap, such as "How Clean is Your House", "10 Years Younger" or "You Are What you Eat". It seems like most of the time with these shows the participants involved could do with going on all the programmes at once.

However, I have to say I enjoy watching these programmes in a morbid kind of way. It helps to make most of us feel a bit better about oursleves and in some way contributes to the public service ethic of TV that we used to get all the time in days or yore (yes people, you will get fat and die of a heart attack if you eat takeaways everyday and stuff your face with cream cakes all the time).

I myself welcome the reality pap which exposes to eveyone what a state we have got oursleves into, and hopefully it will spur a few people on to change their lives for the better.

Anyway, I have to cut this post short now, as "It's me or the dog" is about to start (haven't seen this one before) followed by "Supernanny". I need to be ready to shout condescendingly at the TV and nod sagely when the bleedingly-obvious advice is dished out......

posted by Enrico @ 8:06 pm