Due to circumstances outside my control, I have been at home watching a lot of TV recently… oh the humanity!
For some reason, program makers seem to think we just can’t get enough of shows…
about antiques
about auctions
about people moving to Spain (why??)
about house renovations
about home makeovers
about people buying a new house (thrilling stuff)
about people shopping, fer crying out loud
about people taking a driving test (no, I’m not joking)
and there are normally several shows on these themes (one is bad enough).
There is also a proliferation of “reality TV” shows. OK, Wife Swap was OK for a while. Now we have Celebrity Wife Swap (D-list celebs, woohoo), Take My Mother-in-law, etc. For some reason, program makers seem to think that watching some mother-in-law argue with her son-in-law is prime time entertainment.
Is this kind of stuff regular viewing in the US, also? Maybe its a worldwide epidemic.
I’m afraid it is. It’s called “let’s get rid of the writer.”
There are seasons and seasons of programs featuring folks eating bugs, living on desert islands and talking shit about each other, deciding whether or not to walk a tightrope between 51st Street and 59th Street, etc etc. What these “reality shows” have in common is this: NO SCRIPT, NO WRITER.
No wonder the sweeps turned out so awful for the big networks. What’s HBO doing? Creating new, interesting programs. With scripts and all. Hah. Amazing. What’s A&E doing? Hmmm.
Am I still in the Pit? Great…network executives are such wankers. I pit them all. They suck ass.
Here in the States, there’s three cable channels with programming that seems entirely devoted to home makovers:
TLC
Home and Garden Channel
Discovery Home
We don’t have driving test shows, but I think one of the cable networks (A&E? Discovery?) broadcasts lots of British bad driver shows. “'Ere we got white van man motoring counterclockwise 'round the roundabout … up over the verge … and onto the pavement. Looks like 'is bonnet is damaged. God save the Queen.”
Nothing about people moving to Spain (or Mexico, or Costa Rica), but there are a few homefinder-type shows, where a young homebuyer is accompanied by a real estate agent, goes through houses for sale, and eventually buys one. I wonder how these secretaries, unemployed actors and In-and-Out Burger managers can afford the decent houses in Los Angeles that they seem to end up in; single folks making $30K a year definitely can’t afford these $300,000 houses they’re ending up in.
Lots of dating, bachelor and bachelorette-type shows in the US. Lots and lots and lots of dating shows.
elmwood, strangely enough we have a lot of American TV shows about bad driving. You know, World’s Wildest Police Chases type thing, usually hosted by some guy called Sheriff John Burnell (ret.). His voiceovers can be hilarious!
We also have our fair share of British police chase shows, of course. I actually don’t mind these, as I’d rather be watching some guy doing 100 mph down the wrong side of a motorway and flip his car than watch some guy buying a house - at least car chases are exciting.
Dating shows… yep I forgot about them, plenty of them here also.
We have not only broadcasts of the original shows from both the USA and the UK - we also get to watch our own (even worse - yes, it’s possible) ‘Australian’ versions. Urrrgghhhh.
Jesus, if you think our crap is crap you should see what the rest are watching. Honestly, we get the absolute best of English language teevee fron around the world plus the most original programming (which we’re blessed with).
Not only is Herge right, but he’s missed a major part of the awfulness of it. Pretty much everywhere else in the world, if you don’t like a particular channel or network you can ignore it, turn off, choose something else and you don’t pay for it. Over here, even if you have no interest at all in the pathetic and ignorant rubbish churned out ad nauseam by the BBC, you still have to pay for it. The notion of TV you have to pay for (via a compulsory tax) even if you don’t want to watch it is insane.
Those who swallow the BBC’s relentless propaganda will doubtless chime in with the usual half-assed arguments, reciting from the standard-issue BBC drone book of ‘excuses for an inexcusable tax’, but the arguments didn’t make sense yesterday, don’t make sense today and won’t make sense tomorrow, no matter how often they are recited. There will probably be one or two posters along shortly willing to prove this point…
TV shows in other countries may or may not be crap - that’s largely a subjective opinion based on one’s own preferences. But to force people to pay for something they have never asked for, and don’t need or want, and to threaten them with fines or imprisonment of they don’t pay up, is plain wrong. The BBC should earn its keep like more or less every other broadcaster.
In most other aspects of life, there are two systems that work. Either you pay for something and you correspndingly get some say in how your money is spent, or you get no say but then again you don’t have to pay for it. The BBC wants to live in its own feather-bed fantasy wold where we, the public, have to give them the money in advance, and yet we get no say how it is spent way or wasted. Only in the BBC world could a mumbling, incoherent, inarticulate, brain-stunted sub-literate piece of cardboard like Ian Wright be asked to host a gameshow. He can’t even read an autocue. I believe, from people know or care about such things, that he was once a good footballer. Fine, so let him play football if that’s what he’s good at.
I quite agree, and I am a fan of the BBC’s output - at least 80% of what I watch or listen to is BBC stuff. But those of us who do want it shouldn’t be subsidised by those who don’t. Now that encrypted pay TV is well established, I can’t see any reason why the BBC (BBC TV at least) shouldn’t move towards being funded by voluntary subscription, like HBO is in the States.
I thought Airport was pretty good. It is currently on Discovery Wings but I first it appear on BBC America with other similar shows that I no longer remember the name of. There was one that followed some folks from a certain street and one that followed student drivers. The student driver was pretty funny with that wife of a bus driver that just could not manage to figure out how to drive a manual and finally had to get a restricted license to only drive an automatic.
To someone who have never been to America it there were good glimpses into the real England.
Oh…and don’t forget to send over more Mr. Bean and Read Dwarf. Oki Thx!
I was just thinking today about how awful TV is. It is extremely rare that my daughter or I watch TV, but she loves her videos, so we keep the machine and pay the licence. We are paying a television licence for a VCR.
I can’t view digital channels either - yet I’m paying for them.
All the same, I agree with London_Calling that our TV is better than in any other country I’ve ever been to. It’s just on a sliding scale between truly goddamn mind-crunchingly bad. and I would rather eat my own entrails in a slug-spunk sauce than watch any more of this putrescent pubescent pus.
The Brits have Channel 4, which shows some really interesting arts programming and documentaries, and generally they have better TV than most of the world (except for the US, of course). South Korean programming, for example, is made up entirely of inane gameshows, pop music programs, and soap operas.
If you think Changing Rooms is bad, you should see the American version. They drag it out to an hour, and the host is the most annoying woman in the entire world. She’s hyper, has an incredibly high-pitched voice, and basically flounces around being useless and annoying. She can’t even sew. Carol looks like a brain surgeon next to her. They get the dumbest designers possible and get them to deliberately do totally outrageous things to see how upset they can make the homeowners. I don’t watch it anymore.
OK, Hildi is a terrible designer, but don’t you be talking smack about Paige Davis. Paige is not “useless and annoying.” She’s cute as a button, is what she is.
Changing Rooms
That makeover show
The British version of Antiques Road Show
Three Non-Blondes
The Office
Monarch of the Glen
Coupling
Absolutely Fabulous (very rarely)
There are a ton of reality shows on there. For these hideous shows, BBC America cancelled my beloved EastEnders. Instead of watching Kat, Phil, and Laura, now we get show after show of room makeovers. Joy.
I miss EastEnders. Big time. I’ve even told mr. avabeth that we have no need for digital cable now when I move there, unless of course, they bring back EE.
Compared to… who? Paxman can’t host everything, you know. Program makers pick a host that they think can host a show that the public will enjoy. sometimes they get it right, sometimes they get it wrong. Not everything can be perfect and it’s an absurd tactic to pick out one thing wrong in an organisation that gets so much right. I certainly don’t agree that the BBC churns out rubbish.
But of course plenty of people who have swallowed Rupert Murdoch’s hymnsheet of Anti-BBC rhetoric can churn it out ad-nauseum
Rupert’s gigantic media conglomerate dance to his whim like the Pied Piper of Pay TV.
See how easy it is to generalise opposition to a viewpoint?
I don’t think the Licence fee is a fair system for those who don’t want to watch the BBC, but how else should a state broadcasting system like the BBC be funded? should it simply bow to the corporate sector and start running adverts like the rest of the channels? what should it cut in order to become more profitable?
should the programmes that are shown are only pleasing to me and you and noone else? Is there honestly not one programme on BBC that you would watch?
Should the person who likes watching Changing Rooms have that cut so that the money could be used to bring Hancock’s Half Hour back from the dead? (Literally, of course).
If you complain about having to pay for a TV licence but not wanting to watch BBC, what exactly are you watching? Sky? ITV?
Grenada Men and Motors?
The Office - genius, no other word for it. Ricky Gervais is comic genius, his timing, the way he delivers the lines, everything. Most of the cast are “straight men” (except for Gareth), but he pulls it off brilliantly.
Coupling - good silly fun. I like this show - not too demanding, but still makes me laugh. Mostly jokes about sex, but at least they are funny jokes!
Avabeth, I too like EE. If you want the latest gossip then let me know - I can spill the beans for you.
