Get On, Clip In, Fall Off

Thank God for the BBC

While packing my bags before checking out of a hotel in Eureka, Nevada I turned on the television for some background noise only to be harangued by a booming, echoing voice talking at length about faith and obedience. The owner of this voice was onscreen in a rarely-changing close-up against a black background, wearing a severe suit and male-pattern baldness. It looked like something from Nineteen Eighty-Four and took me a moment to realise that this was the NBC affiliate station in Salt Lake City, Utah. The riveting Saturday morning programming was the General Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

As it turned out this was one of the most exciting things I saw on television in the USA, where channel surfing is a way of life. It's possible that I've been spoiled by growing up with the BBC and Channel 4, but it was starkly obvious that turning on the television out there is something to do only when there really is nothing else to do.

Programming comes in five-minute bites before breaking for even more commercials, and the commercials aren't worth watching either. This means that the viewing experience is dictated by the ability to split programmes into bite-size chunks. The average news programme takes the form of one item, followed by a brief plug for what's coming up after the break, commercials, welcome back, next item, rinse and repeat.. it's all incredibly frustrating from the viewer's point of view. I could feel my attention span shrinking as I watched, as before a programme ever got going it was time to break, yet again, for commercials. Under these conditions, getting to the end of a half-hour programme became an exercise in endurance akin to watching Gone With The Wind from start to finish without a toilet break after drinking 3 pints of beer.

While I'm sure there are centres of excellence and quality in broadcasting in the US, the absolute, overriding concern in the commercial sector is delivering the largest number of audience eyes to advertisers. What this means is that programming rarely challenges either the viewer or the industry (you don't want anything that might annoy advertisers enough for them to withdraw their business), with the result that 99.99% of network output is repetitive, bland pap. Public broadcasting scrabbles around for funding through voluntary donations and government grants but still manages to produce some of the highest-quality programming as well as large amounts of children's programming and British imports.

There are good bits buried in the murk, of course. I was delighted to discover TechTV, a channel aimed at, well, techies which cheerfully tells it like it is. I spent a happy half hour watching a programme about how people who were considered to be nerds at high school survived their teenage years (I've seen enough John Hughes movies to be very glad I never had to go through that stuff) and came away wishing it was available in Europe.

As far as everything else was concerned, it's probably most telling that after the first few days I only turned the television on once or twice, despite having lots of hotel rooms to hang around in feeling bored.

Posted by mpk at April 15, 2004 2:04 PM | TrackBack