Trends in TV - Light Entertainment to Consumer Programmes

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There has been a definite trend in TV in recent years away from light entertainment and towards consumer programmes of various kinds.

Why do you think this is?

And do you think it is a Good Thing?

― MarkH (MarkH), Thursday, 12 August 2004 07:05 (twenty-one years ago)

I think any discussion about whether TV is getting better or worse should take this dramatic shift into account. For me it poses the even bigger question - is this a response to a need, a demand, or just forcing ppl to watch stuff they don't really want to watch safe in the knowledge that there will be a substantial proportion of the audience who will just watch what's there, regardless "Oh, I just come in and flop in front of the telly, I don't want to make a decision.

― MarkH (MarkH), Thursday, 12 August 2004 07:08 (twenty-one years ago)

Dunno if the shift has necessarily been to consumer-type programmes. Peak schedules seem largely comprised of soaps and fly-on-the-wall reality docos. Then again, I don't watch a lot of telly.

Why the shift? Seems like LE's been producing quite a few expensive high-profile flops for the past few years. Documentary telly is presumably cheaper to produce (get camera, follow person around, no script/studio required) and audiences find it compelling enough not to turn over.

― robster (robster), Thursday, 12 August 2004 07:43 (twenty-one years ago)

Maybe they should join forces. Coming in September: Watchdog with Bruce Forsythe

― robster (robster), Thursday, 12 August 2004 07:44 (twenty-one years ago)

Did people ever express a need/demand for light entertainment though? Or indeed anything on TV?

I agree that now more than ever there can be a safe assumption by programmers that the most common default mode is TV on, rather than TV off until something good comes on.

― Archel (Archel), Thursday, 12 August 2004 07:45 (twenty-one years ago)

I think that light entertainment followed the Vaudeville and Variety route for many years and the assumption was made that ppl wanted Vaudeville and Variety in their theatres and they had done for many years (perhaps even centuries) and so TV should simply show the old form of entertainment through the new medium. This persisted for many years, through Billy Cotton and Saturday Night at the London Palladium and the Royal Command Performances and as late as the eighties, a comedy show like the Two Ronnies would have a musical number, including additional dancers and singers and also a song by "the lovely Elaine Paige".

Possibly alternative comedy helped force these types of shows out, with its noble aim of getting rid of jokes which relied on racism and sexism?

Has the number of soaps really increased, Robster? I think it's ptobably stayed about constant. There has been a trend for soap rescheduling so there are more primetime than there used to be - Neighbours was lunchtime only originally, Emmerdale went from afternoon to evening when it dropped its Farm suffix or thereabouts. But for every soap that has appeared another has died I would've thought - and its not just the unsuccessful that have gone (Eldorado, Albion Market) but the successful too (Brookie, Crossroads).

― MarkH (MarkH), Thursday, 12 August 2004 07:57 (twenty-one years ago)

Not sure if the number of soaps has actually increased (although they big ones ('Enders, Corrie) went from 2 to 3 nights a week in the last ten years) but I get the impression they form the engine and principle battleground of BBC1 and ITV's weekday schedules.

Did you see that 'Who Killed Saturday Night TV?' thing a month or so ago Mark? That dealt a lot with alt-comedy's impact on the LE Old Guard (as well as interviewing a somewhat embittered Little & Large).

― robster (robster), Thursday, 12 August 2004 08:11 (twenty-one years ago)

missed it - I'm sure it will be repeated.

― MarkH (MarkH), Thursday, 12 August 2004 08:15 (twenty-one years ago)

Has the fact that the range of non-TV entertainment has increased so much in the last few years led to the change, perhaps? The re-release of old music and films, the large range of videos and DVDs, computer games, multiplex cinemas, the plethora of new cable channels etc etc mean that ppl are getting their light entertainment fix in places other than normal, terrestrial TV and the TV companies have to come up with new ways of wooing them back?

― MarkH (MarkH), Thursday, 12 August 2004 11:41 (twenty-one years ago)

The stalwart of light entertainment programming used to be quiz and game shows. These have died off in particular, I think.

Everyone's property consumerism obsessed these days. It's not even funny anymore. Ask The Ordinary Boys.

― Alba (Alba), Thursday, 12 August 2004 11:44 (twenty-one years ago)

just forcing ppl to watch stuff they don't really want to watch safe in the knowledge that there will be a substantial proportion of the audience who will just watch what's there, regardless "Oh, I just come in and flop in front of the telly, I don't want to make a decision

You got it.

― Dadaismus (Dada), Thursday, 12 August 2004 11:45 (twenty-one years ago)

Everyone's property consumerism obsessed these days

I watched part of a programme (it might have been Location, Location, Location) recently where a couple were going round accompanied by the presenters in an attempt to find their dream home. They had a budget of £350,000, but apart from that there didn't appear to be any objective criteria to their search...they just turned up at several different houses, the camera panned round and they said what they did and didn't like. Had I not got frustrated with the programme and switched off, presumably they would have found a house they liked in the end....neatly fitting into the schedule of the programme.

I find it difficult to see how anyone would like this programme or have any desire to tune in more than once. You don't learn any from it about buying houses or anything about the ppl buying the house other than their tastes on a v. superficial level.

― MarkH (MarkH), Thursday, 12 August 2004 11:52 (twenty-one years ago)

five years pass...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/8252901.stm

― alien vs the smiths (country matters), Sunday, 13 September 2009 06:23 (sixteen years ago)

product placement financed American TV almost from day one

― Suggest Bander-Meinhof Complex (sarahel), Sunday, 13 September 2009 17:26 (sixteen years ago)

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