TV & The Internet

When I was growing up in the 60s the TV was a big brown walnut wood box that broadcasted three channels and if you missed a show- well then, that was hard luck. I used to run home as fast as I could to catch a kid’s show and gasp with horror if my mum didn’t have money to slot into the box on the back of the TV. In the UK we used to have televisions that housed a payment slot that greedily ate coins, when I explain this to my 23 year old daughter she stares in horror!

 

My daughter Ashley streams- downloads and watches her favourite TV shows on her IPod and computer, she misses nothing. If it can’t be recorded on her digital box, it can bought online later and watched at her leisure. This amazes me and displays just how far we have progressed with multi media technology.

 

But does that mean that the majority of output from the studios and production companies will be quantity over quality?

With media outlets having such a big mouth to feed, television is cooking up some pretty dire dishes.

The sheer amount of reality type shows is overwhelming.

Do we all really need to look inside people’s houses and dissect their relationships, sex lives, cooking skills, dying children, obese parents, freakish body shocks and dirty toilet bowls?

Reality TV is the scourge of the 21^st century, what happened to story telling?

Even Skippy the Bush Kangaroo was more entertaining than watching a teenage girl deal with her third pregnancy in broken Britain.

 

I am a BAFTA member and voter and take my duties very seriously, I rigorously watch all the latest movies, take notes and make decisions about the films I have watched.

This years batch of films have been rather…grim to say the least, the dystopian outlook of many filmmakers with their end of the world scenarios has left me slightly depressed, the hopelessness of it makes me yearn for Scooby Doo cartoons.

 

I am hoping this decade will get film makers away from the ‘something’s going to end the world’ stories and start coming up with happy, warm funny films.

 

This all sounds like I am discouraging about entertainment, but I adore my digital box, I stroke my internet connection and I bow down the DVD box set.

 

America has the most amazing TV shows coming out of its creative seams, with big hitters like Glee, Nurse Jackie and The Good Wife, here in the UK we struggle to match the writing and the production values that the Americans seem to have in bucket full’s.

 

Ordinary punters no longer sit back and wait for the creative folk to release their new series; people just click on the web and watch millions of videos that ordinary folk make on YouTube.

 

You no longer need a long career in television to become famous, just point a camera at your crying kid, your biting baby or your wedding dance and you will be visually exposed and watched more than a famous actor who has struggled years for recognition.

That’s the influence of the web that I like! It’s taken the power of publicity out of the hands of the people who once believed they owned it.

 

My comedy can now be viewed by an audience in Guatemala, Ghana and the Great Barrier Reef, just by clicking on my website!

 

It’s fair to say that singing sensation Susan Boyle would have been moderately famous in the UK had it not been for Ashton Kutcher twittering her audition link to his millions of followers. It spread round the web like wildfire, and Hey Presto! Susan is a worldwide hit.

 

The future of television and film looks bright and the plethora of content on the web is amazing. Children today can saunter home at a snails pace and watch their favourite kids show on their phone as the ride the bus after school.

The Guardian newspaper stated recently that nearly a third of children aged six to 14 admit regularly watching programmes illegally, either by streaming them to a television or downloading them.

 

Shows like Glee, Heroes, Lost and House can be downloaded from the internet and played back on a television or computer hours after they are broadcast in the United States.

Sixteen per cent of the 4,347 children surveyed also said they download pirated films before they are released.

“We were incredibly surprised by how young these children are — for six-year-olds to be downloading is astonishing,” said Justin Pearse, editor of in New Media Age magazine, which commissioned the study.

“Kids are leading the way when it comes to the convergence of broadcast television and the internet.”

 

Though just like me back in the 60s some of them will be paying to view, whether it be for their internet connection or to download their favourite show from ITunes, so things haven’t changed that much after all.