The State of Television

Do you remember in the "early days" when we were promised blisteringly brilliant television and rapid access to anything our eyes could possibly want to watch, all as part of the great digital revolution? If so, perhaps, like me, you're feeling a little cheated...

As far as I can see, the digital television revolution has actually turned out to be little more than channels showing almost constant repeats on a perpetual cycle. What's more, we're paying through the nose to watch them. Whoever dreamed that up really must have some marketing prowess. He or she really has performed the impossible -- making us pay a premium for a very large and very old archive of past programmes.

As I flick through my NTL channel guide, I'm staggered at the banality of it all. Even the main channels now have a nasty habit of not only repeating their programmes in the digital channels, but also then provide omnibus versions. We're being conned and for the most part we seem to be oblivious to it.

My partner and I have pretty much reached the conclusion that the money we're spending on NTL cable television is pretty useless as it's not entertaining us at the moment, and hasn't done for some time. In fact, as neither of us are fans of reality television we're pretty much lucked out anyway as that seems to be the main ingredient of today's television. I find it hard to feel entertained by watching people I don't know sit in a house, or decorate, or swap wives, or pass their stools for inspection, or dance and sing only to release a single or two and fade back into their usually well-deserved obscurity shortly thereafter.

Of course, then we started to wonder what shall we do without a television full of repeats? We're both computer addicts and so an XBOX is looking likely at the moment, or maybe we'll just beef up our home network and really start some serious gaming.

Either way, I think our NTL television is on the way out...

I can only agree! All I have now is freeview and that is worth it just to get Torchwood on beeb 3!
Becky

I agree! All i watch is CSI (all 3) Scrubs and Torchwood. Guess what, their all finished now and being repeated!!!

I get you - I barely watch TV these days.