I quite enjoy watching television. Suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome, by night time you can imagine I’m pretty tired, and apart from the odd comment on various blogs, I only have the energy to sit back, watch TV and enjoy a couple of beers.
Due to this, I must confess to being a bit of Soap watcher. I hardly ever miss Coronation Street or Eastenders, and I’m forever ruining it for the rest of my family when my storyteller’s nose twitches and I guess what’s going to happen.
However, it is becoming more and more difficult to do this.
This is because the media has a nasty habit of letting future storylines out before they’re transmitted. I used to think this was just the TV magazines doing a bit of spying so as to capture a bigger audience. But this is no so.
The television companies themselves have been known to advertise just exactly what is going to happen. And the reason why is obvious. Today, especially in the UK, ratings are everything, and are the only measure of a programme’s success.
This is leading to the death of storytelling.
This annoys me. The beauty of the story is in the unexpected – the ability to shock the reader/viewer. This is the part of storytelling that, for millennia, has placed the story at the centre of human experience.
Now, this ability is in decline, thrown away in the pursuit of ratings, leading to a banal media, and almost comatose viewer. Oh, I wish for the day that producers realize what a fantastic cultural gift they are throwing away.
© Anthony North, September 2007
Have you clicked Diary of a Writer on Blogroll? Meet me, up close and personal.
Click Tony On, on Blogroll, for my current affairs blog.
If you like fiction, click Fiction Page on Blogroll for my short stories.
Check out the pages. Find my Links on Eye On the World.
BEYOND THE BLOG 