TV FAQ Uncommon answers to common questions John Ellis Published in 2007 by I.B.Tauris & Co Ltd 6 Salem Road, London W2 4BU 175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010 www.ibtauris.com In the United States of America and in Canada distributed by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of St Martin’s Press 175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010 Copyright © John Ellis, 2007 The right of John Ellis to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or any part thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. ISBN 978 1 84511 565 4 A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library A full CIP record for this book is available from the Library of Congress Library of Congress catalog card: available Typeset in Basset by Steve Tribe, Andover Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ International Ltd, Padstow Contents I Questions about TV as a medium 1. What is this book about? 2 2. What is ‘television’? 7 3. Is there such a thing as ‘good TV’? 13 4. Does TV ‘dumb us down’? 18 5. Does TV distort what it shows? 22 6. Can we trust anything we see on TV? 27 7. Has TV changed politics? 34 8. Is TV rubbish? 40 9. Is TV an agent of globalisation? 45 10. Does TV exploit people? 51 11. Does TV make you fat? 56 12. Is there too much violence on TV? 60 13. What’s the point of Jade Goody? 64 14. Who was that? 69 II Questions about TV genres 15. Does the news make us anxious? 73 16. Does too much horror stop people caring? 77 17. Why do TV stories never seem to come to an end? 86 18. Why are sitcoms not as good as they used to be? 90 19. Why are there so many detective series? 95 20. What is a ‘precinct drama’? 99 21. Why are there so many soap operas? 106 22. Whatever happened to the single TV play? 113 23. Is there too much sport on TV? 118 24. What is ‘reality TV’? 124 25. Why are there so many challenge shows? 128 III Questions about using TV 26. Why is foreign TV such rubbish? 133 27. Why do they keep breaking the rules? 136 28. Why don’t you switch off and do something interesting instead? 139 29. Why did they axe my favourite series? 142 30. Why are there so many repeats? 145 31. How do I find my way round the repeats? 148 32. Will any TV last? 151 33. Is any TV actually live any more? 153 34. Why does all TV look the same? 157 35. Why does old TV look so weird? 161 IV Questions about technology and the TV industry 36. How does this stuff get made anyway? 166 37. What is a channel? 171 38. What is a schedule? 175 39. Does TV exist to sell audiences to advertisers? 182 40. Why aren’t there any ads on the BBC? 187 41. How can I get a job in TV? 192 42. Who pays for TV? 196 43. Who regulates TV… and why? 204 44. How do you work the remote control? 212 45. Is TV bad for the environment? 217 46. Will downloading replace broadcasting? 220 Notes 224 Where can I find out more? 230 Index 234 TV FAQ iv I Questions about TV as a medium Q1 What is this book about? This book tries to answer common questions about TV as we find it in the first decade of the twenty-first century. These stretch from the political, ethical and cultural to the technological and industrial and the plain inconsequential. Yet they all illuminate an aspect of the complicated modern phenomenon that is television. They all relate to each other, directly or indirectly, as is shown by the frequent cross- references between sections indicated by a ‘»’. Television as a social phenomenon is difficult to comprehend because it involves technology, politics and entertainment, yet TV itself is such an everyday, taken-for-granted medium. A lot of what it does is supremely unimportant yet, at the same time, TV is the primary source of much of our information about and impressions of the wider world. If » Q5, Q6 modern society has become a mediatised society,» then television has been central in that transformation. The vast majority of people watch TV almost every day and for » Q8, Q11 substantial amounts of time.» It brings vital information, the problems and disasters of the day, along with much that seems trivial or mundane. Many of the problems of understanding TV come from regarding these as conflicting activities, rather than tracing the interrelations between the two. Politics has been transformed by the growth in psychological understanding that has developed » Q7 in TV dramas, soaps and chat shows.» Television can be found everywhere in modern society; it provides much of our entertainment and information about the wider world; yet it is still regarded as an inferior medium. There is plenty of bad TV about – some of it astonishingly inept – just as there are plenty of bad paintings. Hardly anyone rejects painting as a medium on the basis of those bad examples, yet some feel able to reject TV as a medium based on the dissatisfaction or revulsion aroused in them by some of its programming. Much writing about TV, both popular and academic, treats the medium in disparaging tones. Many of these criticisms tend to assume that TV could do things for which, as TV FAQ 2 a medium, it is ill-suited: to explain or even solve the important issues of the day, to be consistently inoffensive or even to uphold particular public moral standards. That TV is expected to do these things is partially the fault of the medium itself in its past and current forms. TV is a medium that aspires to cover everything and to be accessible to everyone. It aims to be universal in its reach, inclusive in its coverage and intelligible to everyone. Not » Q4 surprisingly, it fails to present complex arguments well.» It is also a medium that regularly fails to take a moral stance. Individual programmes can be fiercely » Q27 moralistic in tone, or can flout moral conventions.» As an entertainment medium, TV sometimes seeks to shock. As a medium of information, it generally tries to avoid didacticism and preaching. As a result, TV tends to be morally ambivalent. Many TV programmes, both fictional and factual, show things and suspend explicit judgement on them, within the bounds of a wide consensus about what constitutes socially acceptable behaviour. Within these boundaries, evil characters tend to be understandable, and good characters are hard to find. Beyond the boundaries, however, lies an undifferentiated evil populated by al- Qaeda, teenage hoodlums and paedophiles alike. TV as a medium suspends moral judgement within the boundaries, but seldom explores beyond them. And these boundaries differ depending on the national culture that is involved. TV is not so much immoral as amoral. It shows a wide range of social attitudes, and can tend towards the sensationalist. But the come-ons often seem worse than the actual programmes. The idea of the Big Brother house with its round-the-clock surveillance was greeted with horror before people saw it; when they got the idea, they criticised it for its great stretches of tedium and trivia. Indeed, compared to cinema, novels or newspapers, TV contains a remarkable amount of mundane material. Television is also a medium of the moment. It is convenient to use, always available at the touch of a button. The majority of its programming addresses the moment in » Q33 which we live.» This is at once the strength and weakness of television. It makes it a medium that addresses people Q1 What is this book about? 3 as it finds them, in their everyday lives. It relates to the common comings and goings of life, designing its programming to fit the concerns of the moment and the » Q38 patterns of daily, weekly and seasonal change.» Yet it also makes television seem like an ephemeral medium, of no » Q32 lasting value.» I prefer to see television as a medium that is temporarily meaningful. Many programmes contain allusions to the moment in which they co-exist with their audiences, to the extent that the passing of time makes them hard to understand: many programmes from the 1950s are more incomprehensible now than are novels » Q35 from the nineteenth century.» Yet the temporarily meaningful nature of television is also its strength as a medium. Several of the questions in this book relate to the feelings of connection with television that are produced by this address to the present moment. It lies behind the particular ways that TV entertainment and drama have developed, producing genres like the sitcom, the long drama series and the soap opera. The temporary nature of most television output may blind us to its role in transforming modern society. Television has been part of wider trends towards developing a consumerist society (by promoting its trappings through adverts and programmes) and a more personalised society (by developing discourses and understandings of the emotions). Television has also mediated the increasing complexity of modern life to modern citizens.