Opinion : How many TV channels do we really need?

We live in an age driven by the internet where the traditional mediums are being swept aside. Paper, books, records and tapes have all been superseded.

Now it seems that even television channels are disappearing, indeed BBC Three finished broadcasting during the early hours of Tuesday 16th February 2016.

Aimed at teenagers the channel burst onto our screens on Sunday 9th February 2003. Just thirteen years later it had gone, replaced by an internet service.

Doesn’t it look a bit silly having BBC1, BBC2 and BBC 4 with the third channel missing?

Regular readers will know that my good self does not have a television set, indeed on the rare occasions there is anything I want to see on TV a visit to my neighbours house is required to avail myself of the use of their TV receiving apparatus.

However your humble servant can still remember the time when we only had three television channels, BBC1, BBC2 and ITV. There was nothing else, no satellite, cable or even Channel 4.

Back in the good old days BBC2 would broadcast a test card for most of the time and shut down during the afternoons re-starting in the evening to provide education broadcasts and the odd cartoon from Poland.

I think our lives were better for a lack of choice on TV and absence of computers and the internet. Without the technology people talked to each other and visited each others homes to play parlour games and the like.

In my opinion television and in particular the internet has undermined the very fabric of our society turning people into hermits living in front of screens rather than being individuals who socialise with the other members of the community.

I fear people are becoming slaves to the internet wherever they are. Children rush home from school to play computer games and men sit at home watching football on TV rather than seeing the game played live in a stadium.

The women folk of the town seem to prefer watching a chef make food on TV rather than actually preparing food in their kitchens.

Just walk around town and see home many people are addicted to their phones, texting and using the internet in the street, shops, restaurants and their cars.

By George! There’s a whole physical world around these people which they are totally unaware of thanks to the blinkers of the mobile phone and the internet.

Sometimes my good self wonders if the internet addicts of today are aware of the beauty of nature or anything from the real physical world? Instead they prefer to inhabit a virtual world which doesn’t really exist and serves only to make money for those who created and programmed the virtual reality.

If BBC 3 makes the transition to the internet will any more channels follow? That’s an interesting question.

As far as I’m concerned I say let’s go back to just three channels like we had in the 1970’s. TV was far better then and the programmes were worth watching.

What do you think?

*My blogs are published every Tuesday and Friday evening around 8.00pm here on the WycombeToday.com website.

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