feeling listless

TV The new issue of Off The Telly is out and the big feature this month (apart from this about Rentaghost) reveals the results of a survey amongst readers of the site as to how television effected them growing up and if it influenced their life choices. It's really interesting stuff and filled with really choice comments from people including Stewart Lee, Gary Russell, Paul Cornell and, well, me. I could quite happily include many here, but I want you all to go off and read the article so I'll just offer one. Ian Jones (the one contributor I've been fortunate to meet) is talking about whether television has got worse or not:

"It's neither better nor worse, just different. The TV of the late 1970s and 1980s did what it could do and was supposed to do extremely well, while the TV of today does what it can and is expected to do extremely well also. You don't have a passive relationship with your TV set. You take from it what you want, and make of it what you want. It's up to you whether you want to enjoy a programme or not, and not the fault of the programme itself. To slag off contemporary TV just because it's contemporary says more about the person doing the criticising than the object of their scorn. TV will always be great, because it's TV, and it's a wonderful, magical creation."

Too true. I have a love hate relationship with my set. I love that it allows me to catch up on all the films I've missed, and to watch some really good exciting television, that it's taught me about the world in a vivid way that I can remember. In doses, television has been as much of an eductaional tool as books and newspapers and certainly school. But I also hate what it's done to much of society -- that were all guilty of sitting, watching something which has no intrinsic value beyond moment after visceral moment, and that in some cases it can make people's live a solitary one. In the great digital switch off, the worry amongst some is that pensioners might not be able to cope with this new technology which is being thrust upon them and that they would lose a major part of their lives. How sad.