Programme ratings

The most unlikely programmes get these surprisingly huge audiences, 7M at the last count. Everyone congratulates the programme for its cutting edge, insightful, raw drama, searing dialogue, what-ever content with the usual awards to follow.

Almost nothing to do about the quality of the actual programme. It is all to do about scheduling and the lack of any quality alternative. Despite the talk of the youth migrating to view on demand TV, the majority still settle down to watch scheduled TV. You only have to look at the keenly contested 8:00 and 9:00pm slots to see this. The problem and the irony is that with the ever increasing channels to choose from there is the stark lack of choice. American serials, the non-ending repeats of repeats and continually recycling old films. More often than you would care for there is little choice on offer at the key viewing times. Cheap to make reality show exploiting human vulnerabilities, game or makeover shows predicated on the same weakness and just occasionally a documentary that does not endlessly trail the content with a recap of the content incase you missed the laboured elementary point that was about to be made, except of course, first we must be shown what is coming up.

That may be the only diet our cousins across the atlantic can cope with but we Europeans are made of sterner stuff. We can take sharp, fast, insightful documentaries, just as we can absorb dramas with a credible plot that is sustained across all episodes and characters that grow and develop and can actually mouth dialogue that bears some resemblance to every day speech. With the everyday pap american skewed programme offerings is it any wonder when anything, anything that treats its audience as adults and gives them something tangible to watch and think about gets disproportionate viewing figures. Even if its apparent depths are superficial rather than sustainable, it is still better than alternate offerings. So a silent protest by the masses ever searching to find content that is not mind numbing infantile in concept.

Long gone are the expectations of routinely offerings of programmes of quality. But what a real treats when that occasional titbit does surfaces attracting veiwers well beyond its actually hitting power.