TV Hell

I hate being off sick.

Thanks to a couple of so-called friends in the office who love me so much that they wanted me to share their miserable colds, I am currently sitting at home in my dressing-gown watching TV. Nothing new there, though - although I have tried to avoid taking sickies all my working life, I was no stranger to it back in the '80s, when I was at school.

Back then, there were just the four channels - imagine that, kids, just four channels - of which two didn't even bother broadcasting in the daytime, save for the occasional coverage of a Trade Union Congress conference or an unscheduled announcement about the Crystal Palace transmitter operating on half power. The only things to watch on TV during the day back then were programmes which had been specially-made for us schoolchildren, such as little mini-documentaries showing a day in the life of a binman or a vet, perhaps a bit of Fred Harris standing in front of a huge calculator ("Basic Maths") or modern social history in the form of Yorkshire TV's awardwinning "How We Used To Live".

But these are modern times, and broadcasting has allegedly come of age, in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, such as the way TV and the media are continually contriving to infantilise us through lazy use of the English language (bringing out a brand of biscuits called "Yumbles" for God's sake? Wouldn't have them in the house; I prefer the infinitely-more cultured Jules Destrooper Virtuoso, myself.)

With the age of the internet and DVDs, multimedia learning can now be delivered in a variety of new and exciting ways, and the quaint practice of taking over half the nation's TV stations to educate the nation has disappeared.

But has it, though? It's just gone 10 on a rainy Thursday, and I'm off sick, so I sit down with my tea and toast and try to make sense of the array of channels on offer. My befuddled brain is thick with mucus, and if I start watching television, I fear I might start getting impatient with it...

BBC1 starts the day with two hours of property shows. Living In The Sun, the first offering, looks at a couple who aspire to living on the Costa Del Sol, but who can't be bothered to learn the lingo and return to a rain-drenched UK, defeated and miserable, after three months of avoiding Spanish food. The bastards. I'd even eat a plate of Yumbles (whatever they are) for a chance like that. I'm sorry, but if you can't be bothered to make preparations for a new life in Spain by learning the language first, you deserve everything you've got coming to you. I'm sure the Spanish know a thing or two about naming biscuits correctly...

Anyway, I'm not prepared to waste my time watching people whose wealth outweighs their common sense, so I move on, past a black-and-white film on BBC2 (some things never change!) and onto Jeremy Kyle (ITV1), where the perma-tanned Jerry Springer clone is busy goading warring families into airing their dirty laundry in public; as far as I can tell, a sixteen-year-old father of two is being publicly berated for being a bad dad. I can only stand a few seconds of this vulgar theatre for the terminally ignorant, and contemplate that perhaps mankind hasn't moved on that far from the days of the Victorian lunatic asylums, where people paid to laugh at the hapless inmates.

Channel 4 is busy with a decidedly more upmarket attempt to get people to better themselves by improving their CV-writing skills, while Trisha on Channel 5 starts at 10:30, immediately where Jeremy Kyle left off on ITV1. It's ultimately the same show, but this time a sexually-impotent husband is made to weep copiously on live television for the entertainment of a baying studio audience, the lurid caption reading "Marriage Has Killed Our Sex Life" screaming from the screen in one of the default Windows fonts (as a graphic designer, I find this only marginally more offensive than the programme itself.) I'm rather disturbed to think that there are probably people that sit through a whole hour of Jeremy followed by an hour of Trisha's own particular brand of misery. Is it any wonder that they say 8 million British people are on antidepressants?

BBC3 and BBC4 at least have the decency to remain closed-down until 7pm, so it's straight onto - mercy! - Judge Judy on ITV2. So that's 50% of the channels I've watched so far showing cheap confessionals because apparently there's nothing better to show. I suddenly find myself in mourning for that trusty old standby of my formative sick-days, Ceefax; it's true, you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone...

Repeats of Ironside and Quincy are showing on ITV3, literally watched by hundreds, rather than millions of people, while ITV4 (fast becoming my favourite) have an exciting line-up for the next few hours: repeats of The Saint, The Prisoner, The Big Match (from 1983!) and Minder. Now we're really cooking - if I didn't have better things to do while off sick, like writing a blog, making some nice chicken soup, or cutting my toenails - I might be tempted to sit through this.

Bring back the testcard, that's what I say. The fact that the same handful of adverts play out to miniscule audiences on a constant loop in daytime demonstrates to me that the advertisers don't really see much value in daytime TV. Imagine how much energy we could save by closing down these moribund stations when they have nothing of any particular substance or value to show. With nothing to watch on TV, those who don't work would find better things to do with their time, like reading books (ooh, now that could be dangerous) or learning how to cook instead of relying on additive-loaded ready meals, or making their own clothes instead of being told what to wear by the fashion fascists who pop up every five minutes on daytime TV.

In my day, my mother used to put the radio on in the mornings while she did the housework, because there was no television as such. This fuelled my imagination far better than any TV show ever could. In fact, I'm going back to the radio now - Jeremy Vine's excellent Radio 2 phonein starts at 12, then I'll probably endure an hour of Steve Wright (who these days had lost all the vitality his show once had, and sounds like he's presenting from his deathbed) before Danny Baker on BBC London at 3, which will probably be the cerebral highlight of my day.

With the exception of the children's channels, which aren't going to get my attention unless they suddenly start showing some classic Tom and Jerry or Road Runner, the other 40 or so channels are essentially showing variants of all the abovementioned programmes, which immediately makes me question why, with all these channels at our disposal, we are instead making our choice not between channels, but essentially from three genres - wall-to-wall repeats, patronising "improve your life" programmes, or confessionals.

1978: three channels. 2008: three genres. A case of "plus ça change, plus ça meme chose"...?

Links:
White Dot
Gives a number of reasons for not watching TV, and ideas for what to do instead. Includes an anti-TV survival guide, articles, and interesting products.

Transdiffusion
A look back at the days of television for schools and colleges

Revenge of the MP3 player

I must be cursed, or something. The new MP3 player - or should I say MP4 player, for this is what it was - arrived a day or two later after my last post, all the way from Tokyo via eBay. Which was all very well and dandy - an 8GB iPod Nano clone for a meagre £5 (plus the small matter of £15 shipping!) And a built-in radio. And look, it even plays videos! My prayers are answered!

Only the radio's preconfigured for the Japanese FM band, so I can't listen to the radio. And it refuses to play videos. And the conversion software supplied with it is full of viruses. And to cap it all, it's not even a bloody 8GB player at all, more a 1GB player which has been hacked to display a capacity of 8GB in Windows!!

So I wrote off to the seller to tell them that the item was not sold to me as described, and to enquire about a refund. Much to my surprise, they wrote back apologising for "any inconvenience caused" (this is a matter of fraud, which in my opinion elevates it far higher than a mere triviality), although on reflection I decided not to bother; I considered that I probably won't get a refund for the extra postage costs, and besides, a 1GB MP3 player is better than none at all.

When it works, that is - because today, the 15th day of ownership, the whole thing has died on me, displaying nothing but an eggtimer icon. Frankly, it should be a donkey's face, because that's how I feel right now. As someone who prides myself on my inability to get caught by scammers and fraudsters, I cannot believe I have been so foolish.

What options do I have, then?

Well, I could send the faulty player back, but frankly I don't know whether I can trust the seller to refund all my costs.

I could always report the seller to eBay, but then at best eBay will only cancel their account, leaving them free to start again; a little light research tells me that apparently, MP4 players like this are the second-highest cause of fraud on eBay.

Or I do nothing, which means the scammer is free to carry on his little game and makes me feel like a coward and an apath.

The internet has been good to me over the years, providing me with boundless entertainment and keeping me in gainful employment. Fifteen years in, that bubble has finally burst. I lament the passing of the old-fashioned shop; at least if I had bought a faulty player from Dixons or Currys, I could take it back, complain to Trading Standards or take some kind of action. I am instead left feeling impotent and 20 quid worse off.

Support your local shops, then. You'll miss them when they're gone.

L

R.I.P. Jazz, 1995-2008