Has the "Multichannel Era" killed off quality Television?

Swings and roundabouts methinks when it comes to the quality of Television today against yesterday. Obviously the picture is far sharper and programmes are less twee than what previous generations would have watched. Sport is the big winner in my opinion as coverage is generally far greater than previous years, though that is not to say that some of the best commentators were from yesterday. It must be said of course most Sport does cost a lot more to watch than before too due to the likes of Sky and BT...

While there are fantastic Drama series around these days, there were before too. However I feel many other favourite types of programming of yesterday are probably worse in quality despite the better sound and vision. For example several Quiz shows these days take no skill to actually win them, many (not all) Factual/Documentary series seem dumbed down (compare World In Action or This Week to Tonight...), Soaps are shown too many times a week meaning the Scripts are dull (and stories seem to go on forever) and Children's Television only seems interested in Animation these days...

Of course it must be said good programming is shared around more than 4-5 channels these days but when you see the likes of the 'bimbo' Channels taking up valuable space on TV platforms that hurts the medium rather than enhance it. It's great to have more than 5 channels, but in my opinion we have far too many these days (especially when the Internet has changed the game, eating up advertising revenue etc). Having so many channels has also hurt the quality of our commercial Public Service Broadcasting, with channels such as ITV/Channel 5 spending less on programming such as News, Regional programming and as previously commenting on before Children's TV.

Sorry to sound like an old...but there is good and bad with everything so-called 'progress'...

Also, I've said it before, but I am confident TVS would have been the first bankruptcy of the ITV network had it been successful in 1991,

Yet none of the ITV stations did go bankrupted, I think that might be were part of the problem lay, We should have let GMTV HTV and yorkshire go under.

Admitedly not the cause of the decline but I do think one reason comedy is struggling to make a comeback in primetime is due to the move away from 30 minute shows where possible. Apart from Birds of a Feather ITV didn't deliver anything on their pledge to fill the Thursday 8.30pm slot with comedy - and it's a shame they haven't used Birds to try and expand their comedy output to an hour for at least eight weeks of the year and launch a new comedy off the back of it.


And going back to the original question and I kind of miss the crap you used to find on ITV and C4 especially after 11pm, some of which was actually far more entertaining than it should have been. At least back in the 90s they commissioned shows through to about 2am in the morning at weekends at least - and served up a variety of badly produced cheap "yoof" TV. The trouble nowadays is TV shows the same banal rubbish at the same time every night rather than offering a bit of variety in their below par offerings.

Birds would have benefit from a 40 minute slot. With adverts, what used to be a 28 minute programme on the BBC is now 22 minutes on ITV, and it shows... the humour/plot doesn't get as much time to breathe.

Yes I agree the likes of Eurotrash and even Prisoner Cell Block H was/were far more entertaining than some of the dross screened these days...the whole so bad, it's good syndrome.

One of the first things I noticed about non-terrestrial channels when my parents got cable back in 2001 was that there was often little variety in the schedule Mon-Fri; the same programmes would often air in the same time slot five days a week. This was reasonably uncommon on the terrestrial channels at the time. Nowadays, it's near standard. The same quiz shows are on daily, even weekends in the case of Deal or No Deal. In the old days, once or twice a week was the most common scenario.

I think that's because viewers in daytime are now used to multichannel style scheduling, that having the same programmes in the same slots daily on the main channels works as well for them.

And certainly since DSO, terrestrial viewers have a much wider choice which helps distinguish the type of programming they show in these slots.

Tyne Tees would have gone bust had YTV not won, or had the two companies not merged.

YTV would have gone bust had Tyne Tees not won, or had the two companies not merged.

Neither company were economically viable without the other. YTV might have just about held on for a couple of years before being acquired -- Tyne Tees might not even have made it into 1994.

How HTV survived on their own for a number of years is a source of bewilderment. TSW would have been in a really bad way had they won and would probably have gone bust also. It's not just TVS.

Tyne Tees, of course were in a position where they were a hair's breadth away from having their licence revoked in 1993. The ITC should have carried out their threat; that they didn't showed the other PSBs that they could get away with treating their commitments with contempt. Problem being that if they had carried out their threat, YTV would have gone pop and the whole system might have come crashing down.

HTV had around £20m of debt in 1992. They were arguably saved when Flextech bought into it in 1994, taking a 20% stake which cleared the debt. It was part of a wider deal which was to see HTV producing lots of shows for Flextech. (That part of the deal never came to fruition as the stake was passed on to STV within a year.)

However, HTV dramatically turned around its fortunes throughout the 90s, increasing its profit every year since 1993.

I see a lot of people are saying it was a mistake for Granada and Carlton to merge into ITV Plc

It seems to me that there is no way the different regions could have survived. Radio stations even struggle to keep their local radio stations without merging into each other to survive.

The world is a much different place to 20 years ago. The Internet has probably been part of the death of viewer and listenership which is what advertisers need.

If they kept the regions - there would be a major amount of debt and eventually.... they have to merge anyway... or close.

I just feel everything will move online eventually.

The problem isnt so much the merges it was who was controlling the merges, and I do believe if other ITV stations like LWT and thames had been kingmakers who might have had a better ITV overall.