subject: Television - Have We Seen It All Before [print this page] Television - Have We Seen It All Before Television - Have We Seen It All Before
Television can be a great form of entertainment, information and debate. These days there are channels for everything, sport, documentaries, history, sci-fi, cartoons, films, comedy, music and much, much more. So how is then that when you come to sit yourself down on the sofa for a night in front of the box, you can't find anything to watch?! Is it because there is so much choice we have now become more particular and fussy about what we wish to watch? Or perhaps it is because there is genuinely not that much on worth watching? It seems too that these days a good proportion of television is made up of repeats. So whats happened to original programming?
Repeats of television programmes appear to be on the increase, which is fine if you never saw it the first time around! It s not just repeats of programs that can become repetitive however. Storylines in popular soaps can leave you sitting on the sofa with a severe case of dj-vu too!
For example, it seems at the moment in TV soap-land that a serial arsonist is on the loose. Eastenders was one of the first to be struck with the Queen Vic being burnt down. Then the restaurant II Nosh in Hollyoaks was also reduced to a cinder. And in typical soap fashion, to celebrate Coronation Streets 50th Anniversary viewers will be treated to "Four Funerals and a Wedding" and witness the new restaurant The Joinery burn down, along with some other tragic events. So it appears as soon as a soap features a gripping storyline, all the others jump on the bandwagon too....hmm, makes you wonder if all the writers went to the same scriptwriting school?
The popular reality show formula seems to have been regurgitated into many TV programmes, and for a variety of channels too. Our screens are saturated with various reality shows, with singing competitions, ballroom and street dancing, dancing on ice, general talent shows , and seeing celebs squirm in a jungle!
It all comes down to the ratings war. Television channels are forever battling it out with each other in a bid to attract the largest audience figures. Take Saturday nights, where the BBC has its Strictly Come Dancing and ITV has The X Factor. These two shows cause great debates amongst the viewing public, first being which you follow more ardently. This caused controversy right from the start when the two shows were shown at the same time. However ITV has rescheduled its X Factor to a later time slot, in an effort to retain/attract more viewers.
Oh well, at the end of the day, I guess if you get fed up with the telly, you can always grab a DVD. Or switch it off altogether and read a book or play some board games or hey maybe even talk to each other now theres a novelty!
