The dumbing down of television

30. January 2007

The press in England these last two weeks has been obsessed with the reality television show Big Brother in which a number of celebrities have been appearing. I imagine most of you will be familiar with the format of placing human beings in a house and having television cameras follow everything they do because a similar version of this show has been aired in Germany. There really is no place to hide from the glare of the cameras.

There was huge controversy though because one of the contestants, Jade Goody, was accused of making some comments towards a fellow contestant, the Indian actress Shilpa Shetty, that were construed to be racist by some observers. More than 40,000 people complained to the UK broadcasting regulator Ofcom. There were also allegations of bullying within the house. The whole saga threatened to develop into a full-scale diplomatic incident with newspapers and television stations in India reporting the incident widely and the Indian government even expressing concern to the British government. Thankfully the current edition of the programme has now ended and the story is beginning to lose momentum.

The interesting question for me here though is whether standards in television and broadcasting in general are now declining. I think there is now a lot of rubbish shown on television, with far too many so-called reality television programmes. Do you agree with me on this? It seems that broadcasters are concerned only with viewing figures and less interested in producing quality programmes for viewers. Regular readers of this blog will have read my article about the BBC’s Planet Earth series, which was superbly produced, but I think that in general there has been a dumbing down of television programmes. Too many repeats are shown and not enough new, original ideas seem to be floating around.

Do you feel that television in Germany is also not as good as it used to be, or do you think that programmes are in fact improving? I’d be interested to know what your favourite types of programme are. I enjoy watching all types of sport, comedies, films and current affairs programmes. I also try to catch the news once a day, but I tend to get a lot of my news through the Internet nowadays. Do you increasingly use the Internet for entertainment rather than watching television? I wonder whether fifty years from now television will be almost completely superseded by Internet-based services.

One thing that interests me is which English-language programmes Germans particularly enjoy watching. I recall Mr Bean being quite popular among my German friends when I lived in Germany! Do you like watching English-language films in their original English version or do you tend to watch the dubbed version of films? I get the impression that the German dubbing on many foreign-language programmes is excellent and does not detract from the enjoyment of watching the programmes in any way. Do you agree? I look forward to hearing what you think about television in the 21st century and your views on whether you think there has been a drop in the standard of programmes shown in recent years.

Read about Big Brother in the UK and the work of the UK television regulator:

Celebrity Big Brother
The Television Regulator Ofcom

Eintrag unter: culture