Life without a tv?
May 1, 2008 by upyourego
There’s a thread running on the BBC Points of View message board at the moment about someone who doesn’t have a television.
This isn’t THAT unusual, although the vast majority of the country DO have TVs there are a fair few people that don’t have them.
Most of the comments seem to revolve around the shows people would miss if they didn’t have a television and what you could do with your time if you didn’t have one.
I do have a television, I’ve always had a television and in fact I’ve had satellite or cable for as long as I can possibly remember - in fact I can remember - I was about 9 when my Dad first got a BSB dish - we later switched to County Cable (later NTL, later ntl:telewest, later Virgin Media) when BSB became BskyB.
In fact I like my television a lot - it isn’t the biggest in the world, it isn’t the best in the world but it has a Sky+ box attached to one socket, a DVD player to another and my computer to a third.
It acts as an outlet for thousands of hours of programming from the UK and around the world. From the 30 second You Tube clip of a fat man dancing - filmed on a single camera in very low quality:
To the ever brilliant, always wonderful, big budget, fully scripted Doctor Who on BBC One:
But this assumes television is more than just the stuff thats delivered over the air, through space or from a cable plugged into the back of the box.
My idea of television includes ALL visual programming regardless of its original source. This includes the videos made by the British Library, The National History Museum and even the Royal Air Force.
It’s all out there and available to watch through my television so to me it’s all television - and it would still be all television even if I didn’t have a TV but watched it instead through my computer.
A lot of the people I’ve spoken to who go on and on about how they don’t have a television and how wonderfully liberating it all is have a computer.
And on top of that they all watch video programmes through that computer and a number of them watch programmes on the BBC iPlayer, ITV.com or 4OD.
At the moment you don’t need to pay the Licence Fee to watch this programming - you just need to have a computer and broadband connection.
But, as the technology shifts more towards the on-demand side of things and more people use their computer or an iPlayer box to watch TV programmes the law will change.
I fully support the BBC Licence Fee and always have for one really big reason - the only way you can make really high quality drama content is if you have a controlled, subsides and regulated media environment.
It only works in the US because you have a MASS market but if you think about the population of the USA, the number of television channels and the wealth of the country - there aren’t THAT MANY really good quality dramas and comedies.
The UK is doing pretty well on these ground and a LOT of that is due to the BBC. The reason ITV produces good big budget drama and comedy is because they’re the only real commercial broadcaster in the UK of any size or substance - Channel 4 is owned by the Government so doesn’t have to post a profit and so I’m treating as a seperate case.
We can look at SKY ONE for an example of how little money or at least how little appetite for big budget programming there is in the USA and UK at the moment.
At one time SKY ONE was full of big budget American imports and a few pretty good home grown dramas as well. Now the schedules are rapidly filling up with gameshows and format shows instead.
And that trend will only continue for the non-public-service broadcasters. The reason Britain punches above its weight in terms of cultural influence is because of the controlled and regulated media environment.
Photo credit to this post goes to Cackhanded on Flickr.
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