The Box

It's probably quite old-fashioned these days to refer to television as "The Box", or, in one of its elongated versions, "The Goggle Box". After all, TVs are no longer boxes. No, they're high definition (or maybe just ready for it), three dimensional, flat, plasma, apps, PCs, pads, tablets and so much more. And mostly made in the far east.

The technology that has brought us all of these options and is continually developing new media through which to view, has an almost sigmoid quality to its growth but it also has a uncomplimentary reverse paradox. The greater the variety of (and access to) visual information and, in particular, entertainment, the lesser the quality of output. 

The programming available in the UK on terrestrial or free-to-air channels alone is becoming depressingly dismal and devoid of enlightenment. As an example, here's ITV 1's schedule for Sunday, 27th November:

14.45 - Almost two hours of X-Factor garbage. Talentless no-hopers prepare to be paraded in front equally talentless 'judges' called Gary, Tulisa, Kelly and Louis, who are in the business of making the pretence that anybody gives a shit about anything other than advertising revenue.

16.25 - Bergerac investigates the tedious, mind-numbing murder of the final resident of Midsomer (until some new ones move in, despite their life chances being about as good as a Biafran kid in the seventies). Interestingly, the Midsomer producer is Brian True-May. Does this mean that the Queen guitarist and astro-physicist is a false one?

At 18.00, there's an apology for a news bulletin before, at...

18.30 - Harry Hill burps about some shite. The next series will probably be Ant and/or Dec's TV fart, followed up by Alan Carr's TV defecation - Live!

19.00 - The Cube: Philip Schofield gets enthusiastic about watching wannabe Z-list celebrities fiddle about in a perspex, square-shaped bubble thing - oh, yes...it's a cube! Really stupid people can win £250,000 but, of course, they don't.

20.00 - Gary, Kelly, Louis and Tulisa factor some more Xs by verbally tossing off about the arses you watched in the afternoon while somebody called Dermot O'Leary talks some bollocks. Wouldn't you just love this guy to turn out to be Michael O'Leary's brother? Actually, everything would be worth watching if presented by the self-publicising CEO of Ryanair.

21.00 - I'm a Celebrity - Get Me Out of Here. This should be titled "No You're Not - Fucking Well Stay There", or, "I'm a Viewer - Get Me Hemlock". Watching Derek Jarman's film, 'Blue' would be more entertaining. Commentator's have informed us that this televisual equivalent of sitting in a barrel of cold vomit is losing its audience. There's a fucking surprise, then. Perhaps it should have read that the audience are losing it. Either will do. The fact that the whole thing is set in Australia reminds me of all the good things about transportation of undesirables in the nineteenth century.

There's another brief nod to current events in an apology for news journalism at 22.30 before...

22.45 - Has-been presenter and pensioner-goader Jonathan Ross gets the graveyard slot with a couple of end-of-the-pier magicians. The show is called, prosaically, Penn & Teller: Fool Us. Yeah...stick a "more" in front of the final two words of the title and that just about sums it up.

Not only is the programming complete bollocks and an insult to our collective intelligence, but throughout the whole experience we are bombarded by messages from the sponsors every few minutes suggesting that we are craven, selfish bastards if we don't spend at least ten thousand pounds making Christmas so special for our 'loved ones'. Recession? What recession?

And this is just one day, in one one week of a year of insulting programming that goes to prove that Warhol was correct about fame but I doubt that even he foresaw what we now experience. 

Thankfully, there remain some alternatives - usually on the BBC - although even "Auntie" has begun to plumb previously unexplored depths with the gratuitously stupid Gervaise vehicle about a dwarf, but then it elevates itself to more familiar higher ground too with the superbly observed comedy "Rev." and their usual high standards in journalism, drama and documentary.

When my father brought home our first 'Goggle Box' in 1961, there were only two channels. Maybe we should try that again?