Is TV Vulgar ?

Ali

Do you agree with M Grade’s comments on this? I have never watched any of the Saturday night Talent or Dancing shows but I do agree what he says about Dinners Parties as I have heard plenty of people around talk down a lot TV and talk up the posh bits such as Glyndebourne etc. Does TV reflect current society a bit better than say the Archers on the wireless ?

ADGS

He didn't say that TV was perceived as vulgar, he said that variety performers were perceived as vulgar, and there I tend to agree with him. What has Bruce Forsythe ever done except not die or get retired? Should Ant and Dec get knighthoods too, a few years down the line? No. Now, if people were saying that Tom Baker or Nick Courtney (RIP) should have been knighted, they'd be on to something.

WillM

vulgar' is such a culturally loaded term anyway, used primarily by the high-brow to criticise the low brow by calling it popular. i would certainly argue that something can be the most vulgar thing in the world without being undesirable.

kreuzkav

I find radio 4's Today programme in the morning to be vulgar. I gave it another try this morn. Plumey types spewing out news. Give me BBC Breakfast Time anytime.

The Archers is something to be confined to a musem. Give me Eastenders anyday.

Ian

I think it's comment not news on Today and can't bear the presenters' cynical approach. 6music much more cathartic and the news is better - and only lasts for 30 seconds. I get my news from internet.

Rona

Al Jazeera on Freeview is the best impartial news I find...

JBJ

Here's trick. Just watch those things on television that appeal to you. The rest of the time, turn it off. British broadcasters do a good and difficult job, trying to produce programmes for 60 million different individuals, from the the vulgar (which, by the way, literally means "of the people") to the minority. Many people seem to believe that everything on television should be aimed at them. Nothing would induce me to watch Coronation Street, but I don't dispute that it has a place in the schedule.

andy

BBC World Service in the morning for me

kreuzkav

BBC's World Service news in the morning is edgier than Radio 4's Today Programme. Al Jazzerra in the evening on freeview offers an interesting insight.

@JBJ I think a variety of programmes should be on offer on BBC. This is a state channel paid for by the public (well those that have a TV licence). However, it seems to spend an out of proportion amount on variety entertainment. I think a state channel shouldn't just pander to what is popular but offer something more than commercial channels provide. And we all judge, but some of our judgements are better and more balanced.

mikecabic

- Simon Amstell was massively hilarious on one of the morning programmes, I really dislike those presenters he was talking to. - I have to sya Al-Jazeera has had brilliant coverage of the recent revolutions.

ADGS

The BBC has a whole channel of stuff nobody else would do, BBC4. But if they only produced recondite material like that, they'd become increasingly ghettoised. They are meant to serve the whole nation, so while I can't abide much of their output, I agree with JBJ that it has its place, and I don't begrudge it. Rather than thinking, why is my license fee paying for this? about the latest piece of celeb crap, I just find an especially impressive effects shot in each year's <i>Doctor Who</i> and think, the whole of my license fee paid for a fraction of that, and that's cool with me.
(The one show to which I do take genuine exception is <i>Merlin</i>. If you're making an Arthurian show with Anthony Stewart Head in and I don't like it, then you're doing something very wrong)

jamboshoeshine

@ADGS

I love BBC4, but I also feel that its interesting and eccentric documentaries would just have been on BBC2 or Channel 4 fifteen years ago, before they became largely dumping grounds for dross.

A friend of mine used to work on the Dr Who SFXs. It always amazed me how he could work for so long on something that would just be on the screen for a few seconds.

ADGS

A lot of BBC4 stuff does get shown on BBC2 later - it's a sort of feeder channel which enables greater experimentation. And if you compare old TV schedules to modern stuff, it soon becomes apparent that the amount of crap on BBC2 has remained fairly constant - we just don't remember the dross from the olden days, only the classics.
(The same doesn't perhaps apply to Channel 4, granted)

sincers

I was looking for an appropriate thread to share this, but here's a taste of what our friends in Ireland enjoy. Its marvellous: <

WillM

Excellent link there.

Marquis

So where does one get one of these horses?