Want to know why? Because they collectively put up with being treated like simpletons, and can't be arsed to raise objections to having their intelligence insulted. Either a lot of them don't even twig they're being treated like idiots, it doesn't matter enough to them anyway when they have 900 channels of shit to browse, or they just can't be bothered to do anything that requires thought.

Viewers should switch off when faced with the following:

Rant 1: Constant reiteration of the programme content thus far, usually after each commercial break, as a sop to channel hopping aka attention deficit disorder (as mentioned on another thread). If the programme content is so thin you have to stretch it out using this device, MAKE THE BLOODY PROGRAMME TEN MINUTES SHORTER. Don't insult me by treating me like a goldfish. And if you've just jumped in here from 'My Cousin Says He's My Daddy' or whatever, PISS RIGHT OFF back there, because I don't want something I'm watching ruined in order to try to tempt morons like you into watching thirty seconds of this before buggering off to try 'Celebrity Tat Auction'.

Rant 2: Having found a programme to watch that actually has something interesting to say, the viewer is then usually insulted by the introduction, approximately three seconds into the closing credits, of a trailer complete with artificially loud voiceover for another programme. I want to hear the theme music. I want to reflect for a few seconds on the moving or engaging drama I have just witnessed. I want to see who the actress was that played the waitress in the cafe. I DON'T WANT TO LISTEN TO SOME TWAT TELLING ME ABOUT ANOTHER PROGRAMME. To add insult to injury, the credit text is usually shrunk to a quarter of its original size while a still from the promoted programme is shown, so you can't read it, even if you try. Having spoiled your enjoyment of the preceding hour or more of television with this interloping loudmouthed advertisement, they then compound the insult by enlarging the credits back to full size just in time for them to end, before launching into another interstitial, this time in its rightful place, between programmes and not on the last one's closing moments. And if it's the BBC, even the proper interstitial isn't long enough to go for a wazz or make a cuppa. FFS.

The audience is always brighter than you think. And, even if they're not, you have to treat them like that. Otherwise they will never think for themselves and become as unthinking as the executives assumed they were in the first place.

Some are lazy, some aren't. Some are incredibly bright and some aren't. "All human life..." and all that.

Vulpes: the one that wazzes me off is the historical documentary featuring a reconstruction, usually a pretty hammy one at that. Jeez! If you tell me that A was murdered by B, I don't need to see an actor in period costume pretend to stick a sword into another actor in period costume! Honestly, I'm not the brightest lamp in the house but I'm really not that thick.

It's the programme makers thinking they've got dim. People are perfectly capable of watching things that may be considered taxing, but because everything's aimed at teenagers we all have to suffer.

Having said that, I still can't work out how they get all those little people inside the television set.

The programme makers are responding to what is popular. They try any number of cretinous ideas, as exposed in the mag and podcast a few months ago, and what flies is then milked to death, cloned and repeated ad nauseam. The tyranny of the EPG is purely because the majority of the audience are so thick they can't get beyond a one line title such as "Fuck me I have a hairy fat dirty house" or whatever. Look at the press, radio, even the BBC news FFS, wittering on about "Simply", X factor, Big Brother, 'Enders etc etc. People actually LIKE this shit.

Actually there is some decent stuff on if you dig around, and watching it all via the PVR I can avoid any real time programming and adverts, but the majority, it seems, sit their, mouths open, sucking it all in.

Utterly utterly depressing.

I want some proper paint-blistering embittered bile. With lots of obscenities. Anyone here familiar with http://www.tvgohome.com/ which was where I first encountered Saint Charles.

Even better.. http://thegestalt.org/simon/cunt/ a compilation of all the Nathan Barley entries. Brooker at his most inspired. And, frankly, obscene.

For years, since I first had a VCR (1980) I've stopped being a slave to the schedules. As soon as you start to fast forward (or these days skip) advert breaks surely you immediately exclude yourself from a commercial broadcaster's target audience and really don't have much leverage with the them if you don't think the shows are for you.
That said, I think there's more than enough on television these days. I do all my (non football) viewing from harddrives and they're never empty and always have a variety of types of programme to watch.
The BBC has no excuse but are they really worse than they used to be or are we more fussy because we actually have more choice?
Pre-VCR there used to be two ways of watching television
1. Look at the schedule in the Radio Times & TV Times and switch it on when a programme you want to watch comes on
2. Switch it on when you get home from work and off when you go to bed.
Commercial broadcasters have never really wanted the first type because they only ever watched the middle commercial break(s) and missed trailers etc. the broadcasters have always tried to get (and keep) the second ever dwindling group.

I clearly remember reading about an experiment when I was doing Psychology AO level 20 years ago. It compared two cages of rats (although, I have to say, I remember them as hamsters): one cage was bare. It contained food and water, and nothing else. The other cage was what we would now recognise as a stimulating environment: it was decorated with red ladders, swings, wheels, toys and the like. The internet, in its infinite wisdom, tells me that this was the work of Marian Diamond at Berkley in the early 1980s. Diamond found not only that the stimulated rats lived to the age of 3 (the equivalent of 90 in humans), but that their brains actually increased in size. The brains became more efficient thinking devices, sprouting new cells that connect neurons. She also examined sections of Einstein's brain, apparently, and found that his brain was unusually proficient in such neurological connections.

Ok, so change the rules: instead of rats, think humans; and, instead of environment, think of what televisual entertainment surrounds us. If you watch inordinate amounts of reality based television laced with moments of emotional pornography, it is safe to say that not a great deal of stimulation is taking place. The audience is not being made to work; rather, they are responding to undemanding representations of human behaviour. On a more damaging level, they are being subliminally told that 'real' life is far more interesting and engaging than fiction can ever be; in other words, they will hardly ever need to invest in notions of stylised drama - opera? What's the point? That's not how real people behave, etc - or in anything that isn't 'realistic'. If, however, you watch more dense dramas such as The Wire, which has been deliberately fashioned so that the audience cannot possibly get everything first time around; which makes us, in David Simon's words, sit forward because we have to engage with it, and work a little to watch it, then we will become used to being treated as if we're a little brighter, and our brains may even grow as a result.

So, the short answer is that many TV viewers will be dim if that's how they're treated.

I was always a bit in awe of the sorts of shows grown-ups watched just cos they seemed more well grown up.
Now I'm a grown up myself I'm aghast at how infantile a lot of what we're expected to watch is.
I'm talking here about the really popular shows. I know theres still intelligent viewing if you know where to find it.
Having said that even the engaging stuff is at the mercy of mistrust
(that is mistrust of the viewers IQ).
I don't know if anyone saw the BBCs adaptation of "Small Island", but what would have made a fine 4-part series was galloped through in two parts (which I beleive is known as "Telescoping").
I don't know wheter this sort of thing is done because of lack of cash or because those adapting it aren't convinced we have the patience to stay with a story that needs time for telling properly
(to watch you would think the entire 1940s lasted an hour and a half).
Also the racial themes at the centre of the book seemed to be simplified - so for example a black mans experience of prejudice in the work place was reduced to a single unpleasent incident at a Sorting Office.
It's a shame becayse the two leading Actresses Ruth Wilson and Naomie Harris were both superb.

Who are the mysteriouse "Majority" who will watch any thing? Not me, not my mate, not any one I know. I wonder where they live? In TV Town?
Err NO. Joe Public just wants to relax and watch a decent program the same as ever. However, as previously stated there are more outlets for this with games and dvd's but less funding for all the channels. BBC an exception.
There is more air time to fill with more channels but less money. You do not need to be a genius to see how that stacks up. Even in these desperate times "Come Dine With Me" brings a smile to a tired brow.

Television is an industry whose time is almost up. It did well for a time, but now its flaws and limitations are all too apparent.

If anyone in government had any imagination, they'd now be looking at turning the Beeb into the UK version of HBO - quality documentary, drama and radio that is not ratings driven - but financed by the licence fee. The surviving TV companies (and I predict a huge cull of channels over the next decade) can then compete for the available business in whatever way they like.

But it's not just TV that's going to face this issue - the internet is rapidly approaching the same point in its lifecycle. The likes of YouTube, Facebook, MySpace and Twitter will be gone within a couple of years and we'll soon tire of whatever comes next.

Bottom line - we'll be reading books and singing songs around the piano again within 20 years as our main form of entertainment (and if I'm right, you'll find me huddled in a corner cursing myself for not buying Steinway shares)!

Shows that actually treat the viewers like adults are increasingly rare.

One of the most depressing features of television at the moment is the way the news is presented - especially political interviews: Paxman, on a million a year, berating some sweaty little backbencher who works a 70 hour week for 65 grand. I always thought David Frost was a bit of an oik, but I seem to remember his political interviews involving a genuinely adult discussion.

The current default setting for attitudes towards politicians is mistrust, contempt and alleged 'satire'...but it can't be satire if everyone is doing it. Have I got News For You is now just a bad joke: the richly-paid Hislop and the increasingly bored Merton point at things and laugh. When Peter Cook impersonated Macmillan in Beyond the Fringe, it was shocking because it was in direct opposition to the then contemporary attitudes. Everyone mistrusts politicians these days, so to continually point this out is uncharmingly pointless.

And one last ranted point: why do chat shows always have to try and be funny? I'd much prefer the perpetual teenager Ross to actually ask some decent questions, rather than try and work in another joke about masturbation. He doesn't even listen to his guests; he just sits, glazed, dreaming up his next gag of dubious taste.

It's the producers.
BBC Breakfast continually has me screaming in despair (I start with Today on R4 but the GLW likes things a bit more lighthearted so the radio goes off and TV on).
This morning they had a reporter live on Oxford Street to report back on the start of the Boxing Day sales. He was in Selfridges telling us which handbags were in the sale. Apparently Louis Vuitton never discounts articles for a sale. This is BBC news at its cutting edge best!

Learn to cherry-pick,or better yet just watch box sets,in our drum the telly's used mostly as a monitor.The few times their is a show we wish to see we record it and fast forward through the annoying bits.I do agree though that t.v. is fast becoming the sole preserve of knuckle-dragging morons.Thank the heaven's for B.B.C. Four.

disaster

so I put Radio 4 on, or Spotify™ because there's so much music I missed - Moody Blues are band no.1

And less than ever worth watching.

Anyone seen anything good over Christmas? Certainly not in these parts....

Screenwipe
Doctor Who
The Gruffalo
The Royle Family
Outnumbered
Top Gear in South America
TV Burp

No, not really :)

but the Beeb also has to fill it's schedule. So even if they didn't have to worry about ratings and they removed all the dross, what would they put in there ? Bearing in mind they still have to fill all those channels.

Then again, I'm still waiting for the whole TV network paradigm to collapse entirely. The iPlayer is just a step along the way, and is really only there to keep the audience and content tethered in a particular geographical region. iTunes is more the way of the future but a rip off right now IMHO. As long as content (shows) are licensed to a distributor (like a network), nonsense like this will go on, but I can't see it lasting forever. When we the consumers can get the content direct from the producer (eg HBO) when and where we want it, over broadband infrastructure that can cope, and at a price or advertising model we're prepared to accept, the networks will go the way of the buggy whips and dodos. Then the producers will only be making content that sells (as in the movie business) rather than packaged by the 100's of hours of mixed crap as they frequently do at present. It's why Microsoft, movie studios et al have been messing around trying to get digital rights management standardised and reliable enough to allow content out of the door.

So, assuming we go from broadcasting to pointcasting, and assuming the content owners know who you are, and it's funded by advertising, it'll depend on whether advertisers want to reach you. If they can only reach you through The Wire or The World At War -style serious quality and there's enough of you, you might get some more. If you still watch crap then guess what you'll get.