Monday, January 05, 2009

4 Overdose

I'm generally not a huge fan of tv. I don't like advertisements, normally I have a good attention span, but when they come on I discover that it's less than 30 seconds long, a fact that fills me with self-doubt. Maybe if I could stay interested in commercials showing how white my whites could be, or how much other people are "loving it" I'd be a better and more complete individual. Yet somehow my will is not strong enough, and I always end up changing channel, or going to make tea.

I also fail to be interested in the majority of programming. While my mother will always have the tv on in the background (sometimes as many as three at once in different rooms, so she can pay attention to different shows as she moves around the house - an odd habit) I tend to observe an absence of interesting material, and then switch it off. I later find out that I missed something I would have liked to see, because I wasn't browsing channels at the right time.

Other's seem to have a physic ability, telling them when something good is showing, apparently that physic ability normally manifests itself as those adverts I can't bring myself to watch. It seems the trick is to either watch them, or leave your sofa only when they're on, so you never miss anything important.

The introduction of things like 4od (which I refuse to call "on demand," there is an older and better acronym using those letters) iplayer and the imaginatively named "demand five" which I've never even tried to use, should be a blessing. But for some reason, I barely use them.

There are always many things available, I only consider the options that are free, because I don't like paying for things I can't hold. I tend to go for Channel 4, because on my home connection iplayer crashes. The problem is, I'm now swamped by choice, quickly each item looks less inspiring than the first, and when the first option is "Celebrity Big Brother" that's pretty horrific.

It gets to the point where even a show titled "Catastrophe" which stars Tony Robinson and has a picture of an exploding planet won't persuade me to sit and watch. I like Tony Robinson, I like space and planet-type objects, and I like explosions, but now I'm questioning Channel 4's motives - why is it free? What do they have to gain?

Maybe my mother's state is due to years of channel hopping, maybe she's been steadily hypnotised by television, bound to always have one, pay the license, watch the adverts, unable to function without it anymore. The thought is a scary one.

I'd be a great conspiracy theorist, I wonder if I could involve Tony Robinson somehow...

2 comments:

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  2. Anonymous7:24 pm

    I gave up on TV Schedules a long time ago... I tend to torrent quite a lot of US TV, and then buy the DVD when it comes out, thus justifying my piracy :-)

    I do think iPlayer is genius though... especially on an iPhone or iPod touch, sit in bed and watch over wifi

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