Game Design, Programming and running a one-man games business…

The death of UK Television

cliffski

Its shocking just how awful UK TV is these days. I am old enoguh to remember just 3 channels, broadcasting stopping totally around midnight, and no TV at all during the mornings. TV quality was actually BETTER back then.

We now have about 500 channels, and they are uniformly awful. As a creature of habit aged 50, I still optimistically find myself seeing if anything is on TV tonight. There never is. its all dumbed-down, patronizing crap, repeats, movies from fifteen years ago, or TV that honestly seems designed to rot peoples brains. The cheaper the TV the better, so reality TV is king, and anything where the ‘content’ is just random unpaid members of the public waffling is ideal.

British Tv just cannot compete with amazon prime, the disney channel and netflix. its game over. Why the hell would I watch UK TV when programs that are world reknown, cost 100x the average BBC budget and everybody is talking about…are just a convenient click away, scheduled whenever I like them? Of course I am FORCED to pay for thew BBC by law.

For a LONG time I listened to radio 4’s political ‘today’ program when I woke up. I now wake up listening to the theme music from Star Trek:DS9. I feel I’m more informed, educated, and calm listening to that than I do to the shouty, interrupt-laden cross-talking imbecilic bullshit that passes for ‘political journalism’ in the UK these days.

Just a FEW of the traits of modern TV ‘news’ (ha!) reporting that drives me insane.

  • TWO presenters. One male, one female because….why? wwe need to double the salary? I dont give a fuck what gender reasds the news, I only need one person to do it for fucks sake.
  • SMILE SMILE SMILE. Why? You just look like a drooling imbecile. I dont smile that much in a month.
  • BIG HAND GESTURES. For no apparent reason. Why the hell? just talk. I dont need you to immitate someone doing fucking origami as you explain the news.
  • TOTALLY random EMPHASIS on the OCCASIONAL word for no EASILY understandable REASON. Nobody on the planet talks like this to their friends. What on earth are you doing?
  • Completely pointless cross-focus camera effects to go from a leaf, to a street sign as somebody is talking. WHY?
  • Taking some random item in a scene and using it as the background for a CGI graph to show that you can do that. Am I supposed to clap?
  • Walking slowly towards the camera as it pans backwards to reveal that you are in a busy street, walking extra slowly, and babbling to nobody like some sort of maniac. For fucks sake stand still.
  • Cutting back and forth between the person being interviewed and the interviewer, nodding, like an idiot when we all know these ‘nodding’ bits are filmed afterwards. We understand the concept that you are still there for fucks sake.

All of this gives me the strong impression that modern UK TV is aimed at idiots. Anybody who can tie there shoelaces is supposed to get their news online, but hopefully not from the similarly dumbed-down drivel and lecturing, patronizing bullshit that is the BBC news website.

Oh By the way… climate change is in full force right now. its 45 degrees above normal in the fucking ARCTIC CIRCLE and nobody has even put this on the bloody news. You have zero future, and we are heading towards a climate armageddon. Enjoy Love Island.

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6 thoughts on The death of UK Television

  1. “Of course I am FORCED to pay for the BBC by law.”

    To be fair, you’re not. I don’t watch any live TV, and haven’t for years, so save on license fee. You might be interested in BritBox btw, has the decent shows from ITV & BBC.

  3. Maybe nobody put it on the news because the article is from February 2018…? But similar shit is going down in Siberia right now so your point remains valid.

  4. TV news has always been bad. Even the better stuff is terrible and this has been said since the birth of the format. World Service for news I tend to prefer. There is still some good stuff on the BBC today though mainly on BBC4. The Simon Reeves political travel docs are very good at the minute and I am oddly really enjoying Michael Portillo taking trains everywhere. There are nearly always good music docs on the iplayer too. CBBC is a god send for parents who don’t want their kids brains washed by ads.

    But yes overall I agree with you quality is much lower than it has been in the past though I still don’t resent paying for it. I actually wish that those of you who do resent paying didn’t have to so we can do away with this overbearing concept of everything needing to be so balanced.

    1. I know it will not seem this way but I honestly didn’t set out to all out defend the BBC but as I never read it I thought that I would see what the headline was on BBC news website and they have this as the headline:

      Hong Kong: Chinese ambassador warns UK over ‘interference’

      which I know is only a minute sample but it doesn’t really align itself with your view on their content.

  5. for some mad reason, I’ve actually been thinking about this article a lot since I read it last night. Was it a deliberate choice of yours to write in a tabloid sensationalist post ironic style or am I possibly reading too much into it?

    I apologise if that seems really obvious to anybody else what Cliff was going for here but this is the fist article of that I’ve ever read (I came to your blog after hearing about Democracy 4 being in development after having played Democracy 3) so I am not really familiar with the usual style of writing.

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