TV Turn-off
Monday, September 22nd, 2008I remember reading an article in a newspaper a few years ago, asking what our lives would be like if there was no television, if we all switched them off for a day, a week? At several points in my life I have lived without TV. When I was born and up to the age of about four, then later when my father suffered a major injury and our TV died and my mother couldn’t afford to replace it whilst he was in hospital, even later during a tour of Scotland when I wasn’t interested in anything other than ‘Taggart’.
In the eighties my uncle moved in to our flat in Streatham with his portable TV. I had been living in poverty without a TV, feeding myself and baby on £10 a week whilst my partner was up north in a seventies revival musical - then it was a novelty being Tv-less. Now I switch it off , at will, for days at a time because who ever the programmers are, they only seem focussed on young audiences and the kind of stuff I like watching is clearly in the non-commercial bracket or maybe it’s because I’m not a robot but a human with eclectic tastes. I like to dip in and out of genres, prefer quality to quantity and genuinely enjoy good acting and performers who prefer to entertain rather than to shock (although I can cope with that in small doses).
In fact, I am in danger of becoming a ‘new audience’ there is so little for me to watch on the tele despite the variety of channels. I read that young people are switching off from mainstream TV - really? As a parent this is great news, but as a parent I know it’s because they’re glued to their computer screens having their brains sucked out by msn, bebo, myspace, deviant art, my yearbook, IM, etc., downloading i-films to watch in the privacy of their bedrooms.
”New method sought to measure audiences”, no let’s have A NEW MEASURE TO STOP APPLYING METHOD TO broadcasting ?
