The rather good Andrew Collins wrote recently about the shockingly low viewing figures of the first episode of the new series of Curb Your Enthusiasm.
One of the things that came out of the post was the generally-accepted view that it was impossible to keep up with all the TV shows that are shown, simply because of the number of channels that now exist.
Ignoring the five terrestrial channels, there’s a case for keeping up with ITV2, BBC3, BBC4 and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
I had a bit of a UKTV Food addiction for a while, before I realised that once you’ve watched all the episodes of old series of Rick Stein, Nigella and Jamie, it starts to get a bit thin on the ground.
US imports, though, are even more difficult to keep up with, though. Last year alone we had Dexter and The Wire on FX, Heroes and Medium on Sci-Fi, Prison Break now on Sky One, the thoroughly underrated Dirt on Five US, along with Numb3rs, not forgetting the likes of The Sopranos, Studio 60 and Curb on E4 and Greys Anatomy on Living TV.
That’s 6 channels before we take into account the ones I mentioned earlier. Then, just occasionally, another minor channel will nab a programme before anyone else. Hallmark, for example, broadcast the first series of House, before Five took it off their hands.
Given that most people only watch 10 channels at the most, this makes it pretty tough to be a serious TV watcher.
When I was a kid, we used to laugh at the proliferation (although we probably never used that word) of TV channels that existed in America and couldn’t understand how anyone could need that many stations.
I’m still not advocating we need that many, but you soon realise how we got there!
