TV or not TV?
by Keygar
I haven’t
really watched a lot of TV since the 80’s. When I say TV, I mean live, free to air
channels. Around that time I began to get fed up with the increasing
suggestiveness, violence and just mind numbing dumbness of many of the shows,
particularly the “sitcoms”, not to mention the ever-increasing bundles of
advertisements shown. Those ads also were becoming offensive. It got to the
point where I was usually only watching sports shows. I could mostly enjoy
these without fear of involuntarily being witness to a sexual encounter between
two burly, ugly, hairy chested football players. I still watch sports on TV,
but now I record it first, then play it back. This way I get to gleefully fast
forward the advertisements telling me I may be important, unimportant,
incompetent, impotent or incontinent.
Ten years or so
ago, I thought I’d found the answer, PAY TV. I did my sums and happily
concluded that we could afford it. When the technician waved goodbye after
installing the “black magic” box on top of the TV, I couldn’t wait to get to my
new gleaming silver remote control. At last ad free quality programmes. WRONG!
Soon I was on the phone again. A surprisingly offended operator reluctantly
processed my request
to disconnect the pay TV. There were more ads on the pay channels than free to
air channels, mostly promoting themselves, and the quality documentaries were
about 10 years old and repeated almost on a daily basis. I decided to now spend
the money I was saving, on not watching “The mating techniques of the Siberian
Ground Rat” (every day, with close ups), between ads promoting such movies as
“The unusually brutal murder of a dysfunctional family with an axe dipped in
anthrax”,…. on purchasing my own video tapes and dvd’s. Although some of the
titles I bought were a bit dated, at least I could now watch entertaining,
clever, ad free movies and shows, and watch them when I wanted to, not at 2
a.m. in the morning, which is when most of the normal TV channels show anything
decent, well some of them anyway. Hence my current proud collection of films
and series from “Star Trek” to “Abbott and Costello”, carefully indexed and
housed in the ever shrinking space of our linen cupboard, much to the chagrin of my wife.
Is it just me
or what? When I was a kid, I’d come home from school to watch some innocent,
clean, entertaining fun shows like “Get Smart”, “Gilligan's Island”, or “F Troop”.
They made me laugh and relax and feel good about life. You didn’t feel
embarrassed watching them in front of other people or mum and dad. Kids now get
dropped in front of soap operas after school, those shows being full of sexual
innuendo, unreal situations, sad and pathetic people and general social
misfits. Talk about feeding kids junk mind food. And what about the
never-ending video music shows. These mainly feature semi-naked bimbos,
cavorting around overtly and deliberately suggestively, singing unimaginative
brain numbing repetitive songs, for want of a better word, with voices no
better that those that can be heard at the annual business karaoke party. These
soft porn, cheap to produce, junk programmes are slapped in the face of kids
and adults alike by TV station bosses who treat the public with UTTER contempt
and see them only as sucker consumers of a cheap product to whom they can off
load the latest “MOST POPULAR TV SERIES IN THE HISTORY OF PLANET EARTH ABOUT A
GAY DWARF WHO FALLS IN LOVE WITH AN EXTRA TERRESTIAL DESPERATE INTELLECTUALLY
CHALLENGED HOUSEHUSBAND”, or similar such thought provoking and edifying
contributions to human kind.
Live free to
air TV news programmes are a humorous disgrace. Thirty minutes minus ten for
commercials leaves just twenty minutes to fill with twaddle. The first five
minutes are rehashed stories of events that occurred a week ago, but with a
slant designed to reflect the station manager’s bias, in an attempt to swing
public opinion their way. Then ten minutes reporting the awe inspiring
activities of those self absorbed, dysfunctional, immoral, grossly over paid
attention seeking dopes TV stations tell us are “celebrities”, followed by a
five minute worship service to the nation’s god, SPORT.
Perhaps the
bosses who run these stations will receive a special punishment from God on
Judgement day, which is coming just as surely as the next ad break. Not only
will these monuments to poor taste and greed in human form spend eternity in
hell, but they may also be forced forever to watch their own TV programmes,
with ads.
So here’s one
of probably a whole army of people who have abandoned live TV, and embraced
community radio stations, dvd’s, pvr’s and recorders with timeshift facilities
(for the technically minded). If the question is, TV or not TV, guess my
answer. To all you TV show sponsors and company advertising executives out
there, my popcorn smells lovely.
I’m
off to watch a couple of “GET SMART” episodes on my dvd player. BYE!
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