Over the decades my viewing of television has changed. A relative made the first TV set within the family for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth and Prince Phillip and we sat on a makeshift tiered seating so everyone in the household could view.
It may be difficult for today’s young viewer to comprehend that with the multiplicity of channels and programme choices and households having more than one set to accommodate different family interests, we managed with just one channel, BBC1 and where there was limited broadcasting time with intervals where the Potter’s wheel was look forward to despite being repeated at some point during every week, if not days. Few if anyone of my generation had a concept of how things would change in practice except those part of creative and imaginative household or who came to read 1984
There was also a period when I first left school through to marriage and a family when I scarcely watched television, anxious to be involved in the direct activities, involved in studies and making my way in the chosen profession. The exceptions were programmes about the arts and drama. There are those today who on principal do not own a television set and prefer the radio for newspapers and the newspaper and to attend concerts and plays rather than the cinema.
Later, frequently overwhelmed with the pressures and stresses of the responsibilities of my occupation, I enjoyed the mid evening soaps and later still the early evening ones designed for teenagers. Nothing demanding application of the intellect or too emotionally challenging was the order of the day. As I believe it was TS Elliot or one of his characters who said human beings cannot stand too much reality.
The spread of the family in terms of age range meant two eras of watching programmes for the every young through to the young teenager and my mother over her last years in her later nineties enjoyed programmes which showed babies and pre school children in particular. In my childhood I longed for the film cartoon adventure although several had greater impact than the adult orientated pictures I saw with family at the local cinema every Monday and Thursday evening in addition to those at weekend, I have in mind the frightening aspects of the Wicked Witch and the death loss of the mother in Bambi. There was disappointment if we missed the short cartoon film sandwiched between the main and B features along with the newsreel. There are now some thirty channels for children including those aimed for babies and for teenagers, including round the clock Disney and cartoons, cartoons and cartoons. Through this revision to television intended for children and adolescents I relived my own experienced and filled in some of the missing gaps.
The arrival of Satellite TV was a significant dimensional change but not as significant for me as the word processing programme computer and however inadequate I had a means of expressing myself without the frustrations of the typewriter because of my inability to learn to touch type, my poor memory regarding spelling and the rules of grammar. What others take for granted or think nothing of television and the cinema and all the other arts widen individual horizons and my own.
Before the digital conversion commenced I enjoyed picking up European stations and staying in Holland I enjoyed the ability to watch a screen of mini screens. Now those who wish can have a bank of screens each showing different channels, as well as live and catch up TV through the internet, on lap top and mobile phone. Television is no longer restricted to the box in one corner of one room.
One development which must be singled out is the arrival live news programmes from the United States and then the spread of English speaking transmissions from Russia, China, France, India, the Middle and Far East as well as Europe. Associated with the news programmes but now a separate sector are the 30 documentary channels covering the natural world, science and history and crime. A feature of this development is the live broadcast, again something which was once unique I remember the first exchanges with television stations in France, the USA and Australia, the first sporting events shown live and for free and the first cameras in individual as well and the first webcams and close circuit television. I can claim to be one of the few who first predicted that a surprising large number of human beings would pay to watch other human beings doing the ordinary and the basic of life which I put forward when attending an unintentional management course in 1985 and suggested that the video (the DVD was still under wraps) would have a commercial significance to change lives.
The 24 hour reporting of news, the constant discussion and review of political matters together with significant improvement in the provision of further education, has had a major impact in public understanding and approach towards politicians and politics at home and abroad. In my youth at general election more houses displayed posters in their windows coloured blue or red and a few yellow than those whom did not, now it is rare for someone to declare any party political allegiance but after Profumo and Watergate, Sleasegate, the public perception is that Parliament comprises at best those awash in the gravy train with their snouts buried deep in the trough and with many corrupt, fraudsters and charlatans. This has been the contribution of television replacing the reporting quill of the past. Have things really changed from the days of the rotten boroughs, but do we need a second Oliver Cromwell? Perhaps the greatest change of all is our attitude to the Monarchy, accepted because of the Performance of Queen Elizabeth but will anyone else be tolerated after her, given what we now know and understand? These two transformations in public perception has ripped through the approach of the middles classes towards authority. The lower classes never took the alleged Victorian values seriously and the upper classes always knew how to act in public and disregard their espoused Christian and moral values in private, or at least away from the public eye.
One sector of channels which has had the greatest impact on the greater number of lives is sport. When I first subscribed the film package costs more than sport which was available at first free and then for £3 a month where as now it is £4.50 a week with the growing Satanta another half as much on top. The result is that some important national sporting events are no longer available without subscription, although many more have become available whether the sport has national popularity or is a sectional interest. I got to appreciate American Football and supported the Chicago Bears, and then the San Francisco 49ers after I was given the shirt of the latter as a Christmas present one year and they played a pre season
game at Wembley.
On downside is that with all the Football now on TV, I have never adjusted to the change in football going from Saturday at 3pm to Saturdays at lunch or tea time and Sundays likewise. There had also been a change in what people are prepared to accept on the terraces and which rightly has become all seating, in terms of the quality of performance and overall value for money. Hundreds of thousands see no point in consistently turning up to watch the favoured team lose, and yet hundreds of thousands also continue to do so, paying more and more for the privilege of expressing tribal loyalty to a team of international carpet baggers who have in fact no loyalty to them. Television has exposed the organisation and extreme politics which has become part of football as it has the use of drugs although the extent of corruption in sports has remained forbidden territory for some reason. Similarly it took a large number of deaths of the innocent to understand the nature of the violence associated with football.
I have occasionally switched on to the Religious channels of which there is a dozen and today I was delighted to find there is one provided by the Catholic Church. It is a false perception to regard Satellite religion as the preserve of evangelist and the organisers of the orgasmic and ritualistic ceremonial as there is also the cloistered reflection and the traditional praying.
I sometimes flip through the sixty odd international channels, that is channels in a language other than English to be reminded of the wider cultural variation and wider commonness but regret that only one of these is in Spanish and one in French, although I enjoy Bollywood from time to time before Bollywood came to the local cinema.
Then there are the money making sectors, the forty shopping channels, the dozen gaming and dating channels, which people continue to squander their incomes never realising that the human nature being what it is and digital technology what to has become, few individuals stop when they have won something, continuing until they are loss, then continuing in the mistaken belief that they will get into profit, such is the way the odds can not be skewed with publicised winners part of the organisation, perhaps now after billions and trillions have been gambled by governments, bankers, and professional speculators the penny will drop.
There are also sixty adult channels divided between phone me for a private chat and pulp porn, another reflection of the changing nature and openness of our culture from the days when I would feel guilty about seeing an x rated film even when an adult.
There is also the miscellaneous specialist sector, from the pub channel, to one for teachers and two pay for psychic readings and with the standard rates for adult and psychic chat is around £1.50 a minute. When I attended Ruskin College and others the likes of Platter Hall, we were but a handful of those with untapped abilities who had missed out during the normal education system, and television and the Open University, and programmes designed for schools, began to widen the opportunities for further learning for those still not able or willing to attend night school. However we appear to have gone full circle as despite the large numbers entering further education it has become an occupational and commercial conveyor belt, rather than the opportunity for lifelong learning and more importantly lifelong understanding.
I have left until almost last the music channels where I expected much and have been greatly disappointed. I spent my early teenage years trying to find Radio Luxembourg on the radio because was the only station where it was possible to listen to the contemporary popular music of the day, traditional and big band Jazz, the crooners and the female equivalent. While there is the full range of video music with some thirty channels for the young available, the one of classical and contemporary orchestral and chamber music and choral disappeared within a couple of years. My objection to the existing range is the extent of advertisement and interruptions. Better are the recordings of concerts which appear on other channels.
Last there is the television film. For many years the Christmas Treat was the showing of one of the latest blockbusters while television caught up with the back catalogue of B Westerns and early comedies and low budget crime thrillers. I was able to relive and recreate the years spent going to the local cinema every Monday and Thursday for the change of programme, to the Saturday morning children’s show and with extended family relatives sometimes on a Saturday or Sunday night to watch he latest film on a general release after it had played for months in London. When Satellite TV commenced I resisted the film channels because I knew they would quickly dominate my life at the expense of time taken to find the “art films” especially the serious films in languages other than British and American English. It is only over the past couple of years that this aspect had been remedied, first with Film Four TV Channel Four films, now a free channel with the digital system and then with World Films. There is still the tendency of these channel to acquire a comparative small stable of films which are then shown in cycles and this is understandable given the limited public interest and the availability of the surround sound High Definition DVD and Internet and Mobile Phone download.
It is not surprising that with the growth in the availability of channels award programmes for TV should have increased and the prestigious British Academy splitting those for Film and TV into two nights. As with the award programmes for music this tends to mean an award for everything. Unlike those for film I had seen few of the programmes and performers nominated for awards..
I missed those for the best Actor and Actress although I had seen The Curse of Steptoe and Hancock and Joan, and Margaret Thatcher, The Long Walk to Finchley. I had also missed June Brown’s nominated performance where she was the only character in a half an hour length episode of East Enders. June served in the Wrens in the later stages of World War 2 was married at seventeen but her husband committed suicide after a period of depression. She was then happily married for 45 years until the death of her husband. She had six children one of whom died after sixteen days. It is this experience of life which she brought to the character of Dot Cotton, a chain smoking busy body with a great religious faith and a wicked son who tried to kill her and who then found happiness later in life with another O.A.P. and who in real life is recovering from a stroke.
June joined the cast of East Enders in 1985 and was an important member for eight years. She had a break of two and then has been a regular ever since although now in her eighties. She has had a varied career since the 1970 when her children reached secondary level or were in their last years in junior school. During the years she also appeared in major productions on stage and films as well as on TV including the Duchess of Duke Street.
I was however pleased that Wallender with Kenneth Branagh won the drama series although I would have been just as happy had it gone to Spooks. Dr Who was also in the running.
I was pleased that Jonathan Ross was not successful and the Entertainment award went to Harry Hill. The X Factor won another of the Entertainment Awards.
The surprise was that Lewis Hamilton Winning the Brazilian Grand Prix was the Sporting event choice and not the Olympics. One reason may have been the loss of the contract from ITV to the BBC.
The one omission noticed is an award for a programme intended to be of an educational nature and was there an award let alone awards for programmes deigned for children and for adolescents?
Few comedians have been made Fellows of the Royal Academy with the last being Eric Morecombe and Ernie Wise, Jenifer Saunders and Dawn French have now been added.
There are similarities between the two Comedian duos in that a feature of their seven series over a twenty year period from 1987 was the appearance of guest celebrities such as Alison Moyet, Roy Castle, Michael Grade, Jules Holland, Harry Enfield, who got an award for the first time on the same night, Joan Armatrading, Joan Bakewell, Toyal Wilcox,, Ben Elton, Kirsty McColl, Lenny Henry, Lulu, Robbie Coltrane. Jerry Hall, Kathy Burke, Eleanor Bron, Felicity Kendall, Julia Sawalha, Ruby Wax, Brian Cox, Denise Van Outen and Amanda Holden.
And again similar to Morecombe and Wise they appeared in various charity shows together for Comic Relief and once for Amnesty. However Morecombe and Wise never established separate career while one was alive. Jenifer Saunders won a BAFTA in her own right for her role in the series Absolutely Fabulous and as a consequence she joined Rosanne and Friends, became the face of Barclay’s Bank and BBC America, while Dawn French established a role as the Vicar of Dibley with a penchant for eating chocolate and in Lark Rise to Candleford for one season and for the Chocolate Orange Adverts.
They are perhaps best loved for their Christmas Specials and after tours in 1999 and 2000 have again appeared live on stage in 2008 which they have or are taking to Australia. Their single feature shows have also achieved international recognition with for many the Silence of the Lambs the most memorable. For others it would have been the Sound of Music, Gone with the Wind Thelma and Louise and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. As with Morecombe and Wise, their work can viewed time and time again still appear fresh and funny. They were worthy new additions to the Fellowship which has not always been the situation in recent years.
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