Rant Of The Week: Is TV Dead?

Welcome to my nice little corner of the internet. Do you like how pretty it is? My dear friend Missy helped me with all the prettifying. Honestly I have no idea what this place is going to turn into yet. Since finishing university I have felt myself 'dumbing down', so this place is going to help me do brain aerobics and keep in tip-top condition. I guess you could call it a lifestyle blog. I mean it's going to talk about my life after all. Most importantly this place is where I am going to write. I feel my Nail Polish Blog doesn't always give me a chance to talk with my own voice, to vocalise my own opinions and sometimes I get too complacent just slapping some polish on my nails and taking photos. You wouldn't believe that when I started university I was a radical feminist and didn't even wear make-up.  Such a lot has changed. 

Anyway today's post is going to be a Rant Of The Week post, it's just something I knocked together quickly as this topic has been on my mind for a while. Warning yes I am ranting, you might not agree, that is fine. I would love to hear your thoughts on this topic. I am not trying to be offensive in any of my (ranty) posts so I kindly as you do the same in your comments. Okay??

Is TV Dead?

Being unemployed means I am normally entranced by my computer monitor watching re-runs of my favourite American television series. It's been a fantastic marathon of twists, turns, sex and scandal with the occasional demon-hunt throw in for good measure. Yet every time I turned to someone to recount a moment or to tell them that they should watch it because there life depended on it I would stop. This show had aired in 2007 and was pretty out-dated by today’s standards. So my incessant quoting of the show went unnoticed -apart from the fact my family started to suspect I was going mad. 

The accessibility of television on demand means that it is no longer a social form of entertainment. Long gone are the days where people would discuss last night’s episode of Doctor Who because most people will have not watched it yet. Myself included. My television schedule for instant is normally a day behind that of what is broadcasted due to my own ritual of downloading my favourite programs on iplayer before going to bed and then watching them the next day. Therefore it is disorientating to start a conversation about TV shows not knowing if you are behind the times or in fact spoiling another’s viewing pleasure because they’ve just Sky+’d it. But then it gets worse, thanks to inventions such as TiVo or Hulu or Netflix you no longer do you feel forced to watch TV shows only at their appointed airtimes, but also when you do watch your favourite shows you have no clue what channel they're on- or even what service provider is carrying them to you. And this is of course without starting on about the assorted pick-your-favourite chocolate box that is DVD’s.

I’m not going to lie, TV on demand is a god-send if like me you are always busy at those moments when something really good is just about to start. But then I start to rely on it too much. Where has the fun gone from rushing to make your cup of tea in the break of Coronation Street if you can just pause it? Or the tradition of sitting down at the same time every week to watch something, knowing that everyone else is watching it too- at the same time- when you are the network planner and can pick what you want to watch and when you want to watch it?

Nobody ever says “What’s on TV tonight?” anymore. But this is because time is irrelevant. It stands still. It has no place in the modern Television viewer’s home. So what does this mean for the future of television? As we all know, Television is run by those Fat Cats who make their livings telling other people what to watch and when, while cramming in more and more adverts to pay for it all. Plug in a device or switch on that computer and you are short-circuiting that system. Throw out all the frustrating-to-open DVD boxes or turn on that on demand player and pretty soon it’s just a screen with choices on it. You might as well cut out the middle man and put those computer chips into our brains now. Television is dead, long live a indistinct, amorphous hard drive of everything you could ever imagine watching of which you have ultimate dictatorial control. Sounds fun doesn't it?

What do you think? Is TV dead? Are you guilty of watching too much stuff 'on demand'?