Things I hate on television

I agree the way things look is very important. Which is why, in an age where there are so many channels are screaming to get themselves noticed, the established broadcasters would be better off holding onto their identities for longer.


Populist "make 'em famous then kick 'em in the gutter" **** such as Big Brother, Survivor and Fame Academy. Genuine reality TV, ie. news and current affairs, is all we need to fit the description.


The technology has been in place for several years now; if you run trail after trail then ident it's a naff-looking way of managing junctions. More live announcements would provide a more personal touch and allow CAs to connect with viewers. Slides were still in regular use even after the BBC1 rebrand. What's wrong with combining slides and trails?


Admittedly I'm not an industry professional but there's no need to be so patronising...I understand automation to mean the playout of programmes, announcements etc from servers etc. Despite the wonderful things computers do, they are still sheep-like machines which carry out literally what they are programmed to do. So if there's a late change of timings for ad breaks (as was the case on SMG last week), things look messy.

Humans aren't perfect by any means but a team in the gallery would ensure at least one of them could try to put things right!

So you will deny them television? Who are you to decide that your day and prime-time enjoyment is more important than their night-time enjoyment? Shift and pattern working is one of the major realities of modern society, but you would deny this no doubt.

Your assertion that the stopping the channel 6 hours out of every 24 would lead to "better programming" is naive at best, but you sit there and triumphantly say:

Your case is empty, Simon.

It's much the same arguement as "Free2Play" on Freeview, or the radio channels. With Free2Play you can either:

1) Have it
or
2) Not have it, and waste the bandwidth as nothing else will fit in the remaing space

Similarly it's either:

1) Have programmes overnight even if repeats
or
2) Not have anything at all, display a test card and waste time as no ratings winners at likely to be scheduled for 1AM.

Personally, I'd prefer to have programmes on, even if I rarely watch at Nighttime.



Well personally I think we should all be forced back into the seventies where there were no DVDs and noboby had the internet and TV channels displayed test cards all day.

I don't think it matters at all regarding the time of day - if I want to go on online I will. It's easier to come home drunk and whack the TV on than go rent a DVD or go online.

Besides, wouldn't renting a DVD in most cases class as watching a repeat?



But BBC3 and BBC4 don't have enough content to go 24hours and they aren't very good for the few hours that they are on for in many cases.

Music channels serve their purpose at night, as do channels such as Cartoon Network.

Aren't the target audience of cartoon channels usually in bed overnight?


Not true of course (about TV channels disaplaying test cards "all day") - ITV began at 9:30am while BBC1 and BBC2 offered fragmented programming in daytime. So there was always something on - if not on one channel than another.

Anyone remember that show hosted by Vanessa Feltz that got axed over the fake guests/staged audience reactions fiasco?

Oh, and Trisha; I managed to find myself seeing about three minutes of it this morning as me and mum were flicking through the channels to find something decent to eat our breakfasts to and Jeez, it was the most execrable pile of old poo I'd ever seen!!

And to think this is why schools moved to C4.

say rice say rice and pea

Pardon? You've lost me.......

Hmm... perhaps things would be better if BBC2 and Channel 4 were scrapped. Then we'd have three main terrestrial channels to share programmes across.

Naturally, that will never happen, but if it did I reckon things would be a lot better.

I take it you've never watched "Bo Selecta" then . . . ?

Hardly. American schedules generaly follow the same pattern weekday after weekday, even on Christmas day, particularly on the independents. The only thing that causes a change to scheduled programs on the networks are major events like the OJ trial or somebody flying a plane into the WTC.

Which is diffrent from what it actually is in real life.



I think you'll find that there are very few channels that broadcast completely automatically with no human supervision. It's only the extreme minority channels and the very cash strapped that do - i.e. shopping channels, RSLs, Open Access and the like on SKy.

As for sheep like, there is normally always some sort of facility for manual intervention