ChatterBank1 min ago
Naff Tv
69 Answers
Why are all these tv celebs all copying each other. They all appear to be following the same format. Road trips in a van, coast walks, train trips, nature walks, wildlife in Britain, the latter their is very little of, but they keep banging on about how amazing our wildlife is, all in all the wildlife in Britain is pretty naff. Theres been one on tonight called pub walks, how ruddy boring tv has become. And tonight we have Sue Perkins who now decided to spread her wings on the .. Big American road. Its been done time and time again by other celebs??? :0)
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It all comes down to money.
In real terms, ITVs income from advertising has dropped by well over 90% since its peak days because advertisers now prefer to use social media, etc to promote their goods and services. Similarly there's very little advertising revenue for all of the other commercial channels. Hence none of them have got much money to spend on actual content.
The BBC has had its income hit too, through
(a) the government requiring them to fund BBC World Service from the licence fee (when it was previously funded by 'grant in aid' from the government) ;
(b) having only been allowed to raise the licence fee by less than the rate of inflation for many years in a row ; and
(c) being required to fund free TV licences for people over 75 years of age who're in receipt of Pension Credit (when free TV licences were previously funded by the government).
The cost of producing a single one-hour episode of a 'quality' BBC costume drama is well over a million pounds. (It peaked at £1.4m in 2019). So neither the BBC nor any commercial broadcasters have got enough money to fund a lot of 'quality' content.
As a result of all that, broadcasters (and the production companies that provide them with content) are always looking for ways to make their programming cheaply. So we end up with countless programmes about cooking, auctions, property improvements, car renovations, canal journeys, train journeys, antiques, tattoo parlours etc, alongside cheap-to-make quiz shows.
In order to try to make some of those programmes appear to be at least a bit interesting to viewers, production companies then engage the services of minor celebrities to present them.
So its not the celebrities who're actually looking for new things to do but the production companies who're offering them the work (which many of them probably can't afford to turn down).
24/7 TV doesn't help. They've got to fill all those hours with something so if they can make programmes that can be repeated ad infinitum the better, programmes that can be on in the background whilst people do others things. Don't need concentration.
TV didn't really start before the 6pm news at one time. No breakfast TV, daytime TV was schools programmes and children's TV. Shutdown around 11.
ITV dreads BBC losing the TV licence, that thin ad revenue would be spread a great deal thinner.
The positives are iPlayer and ITVX. An opportunity to watch some excellent dramas and documentaries at our convenience. There is even something worth watching on More4
As Buenchico points put, the constraints make cheap and cheerful tv not only attractive, but essential.
The appeal of the programme lies almost entirely on the level and breadth of the appeal of the presenter.
The problem with that is, the presenters that do draw audiences are, by default, overexposed.
This was something the BBC was guilty of decades before being forced into it - remember their relentless and ultimately futile attempt they made to get us to like Patrick Kielty? They finally gave up, but it took months of relentless exposure.
That's the price the viewing audience pays for a broadcaster that is never spending money it ever had to earn, and run by people who wouldn't understand the word 'accountability' if it jumped over the bank counter and smacked them in the face.
As time goes on, and more providers scrabble for dwindling audiences, the plethora of cheap television will only grow, until we weed it out by voting with our remotes.
Chipchopper - It's not a 'dream holiday', it's work in a nice environment.
The presenter will be fully occupied with rehearsal, learning scripts, briefing, travel, and yes, some time to enjoy the location, but never enough to call it a 'holiday'.
I travel as a Guest Speaker on cruise ships, I am flying to the Caribbean next Friday for the third time in nine months.
I am constantly told the same - a 'free' holiday, but if people saw the months of writing and preparation before, the days taken up with working, and the constantly being aware of being 'seen' which makes relaxation difficult, they would see it's not as 'free' as they imagine.
I am not complaining, far from it. I am privileged to do something I love, and it's hardly a shift down a coal mine.
But neither is it quite the 'free holiday' everyone is keen to tell me it is.
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