29th November:

That’s the problem with all those naysayers. They’re always saying nay. According to them, terrestrial telly is doomed. Recent reports on viewing habits suggest that more and more of us are switching off the traditional box in the corner of the living room (or hanging slimly on the wall if you’re a bit flash that way) and are going upstairs to sate our entertainment and current affair needs via the medium of the Interweb. This is, as all right-thinking people will already clearly have spotted, a complete red herring. Watching some fat bespectacled kid pretending to be Luke Skywalker on YouTube is hardly akin to 30 minutes of Panorama on a Monday night. Whilst it is possible to find the occasional profound nugget of sweetcorn amongst the sea of silage that is public-generated web content, most of it is either contrived, pointlessly bizarre or openly pornographic. Which is fair enough, as long as we’re clear about it.

Social commentators (who know much more about this sort of thing that I do) have suggested that the web will subtly change over the next few years. Whilst it will continue to offer every kind of content imaginable, it will do some in a much more tailored fashion, giving us less overall but more of what we actually want. Sounds quite appealing, doesn’t it? Fewer videos of fat trainee jedis and more of those buggeringly addictive click-drag games.

The recent furore over Michael Grade’s high-profile defection from the Beeb to ITV does optimistically suggest that we British do still care about our telly. Yes, ok, we are still producing crap like Big Brother years after most other European countries had the sense to see it was going nowhere and kill it off after 2 series (the people did indeed vote and the verdict was “meh, let’s go down to the square, have a coffee and watch the world go by instead”) but quality programming still has the ability to capture the public’s imagination and embed itself into the national consciousness. Stuff like ‘Prime Suspect’ and ‘Cracker’ still gets talked about years after it was shown and this can only be a good thing. In some ways, Grade’s move to ITV is a positive step because their programming output has been in need of a boot up the arse for a few years now, and he’s probably the man to do it.

The message to all involved in broadcasting is, I think, a clear and simple one: the delivery mechanism may change as technology evolves, but good telly is good telly and enough people will watch and support it to ensure its viability. Now, where was that video of the kittens singing 'Bohemian Rhapsody'?