By Scott Fitzgerald I love TV. I also love to read, swim, play basketball, surf, golf, get outdoors - just to show you I'm not some vaguely-agoraphobic-stay-inside-catching-only-cathode-rays kind of guy. But I do love TV. I like capital T flavour TV, shows that are writer-smart and actor-strong - like The West Wing, The Sopranos. Just for example. Some might say that's all a touch on the high-brow side, so let me declare the other side of my TV love, train-wreck TV, shows so bad they're great. I won't name names, let's just say there's a reality show or five in there, and many a cheesy sitcom.
Then there's the flipside of my TV love - TV hate. Not the medium, the delivery. I hate that for weeks on end TV essentially shuts down in non-ratings periods. As far as I'm concerned, don't just put on shows that you had to buy as some sort of package in order to get yourselves Desperate Housewives, or really retro TV, go retro all the way, and just show a test pattern for the duration of the non-ratings. Interrupted of course by live TV, like sports, news and what passes for current affairs these days.
We who love TV have been shat on for a long time now. There's pay TV of course, but that also can be a little 'meh'. That old Bruce Sprinsteen lyric about 57 channels and nothin' on is pretty on the mark at times. On commercial TV shows are strung out or forgotten about, flung from timeslot to timeslot, day to day, even channel to channel, and are available on DVD well before they finish on broadcast TV
But in this modern day, there are saviours. As I just mentioned, DVD. You can occasionally buy shows before they're shown on commercial TV, you can buy shows that were too edgy, odd or over the head of the network buyers and programmers, you watch them when and how you want, and on occasion you can get some pretty cool extras on the discs.
That's the legal route you can follow to set your own TV content agenda. Then there's the dark side, Bit Torrent and the other peer-to-peer set-ups, where you can download almost anything. I'm not saying I condone this method of content acquisition, nor will I pass my judgement on it here and now, I'm just saying that it's out there, and it's huge.
This rant is brought about by a show I became addicted to recently, called The Wire. I read a review, loved the sound of it, and hired series 1 and 2. it's from the HBO stable in the USA, who also gave us The Sopranos, Sex and the City, and Six Feet Under. Say what you want about these shows, love them or hate them - and I for one dislike Sex and the City with the heat of a thousand suns - they are not badly made, or dull.
Anyway, back to The Wire. Cops, criminals, gangs, drugs, prostitution, political intrigue and more, all taking place in the US city of Baltimore. Almost no actor in it you've ever heard of, but acting of the first order, brilliant writing, and a gritty realism that's very rare in TV. So, I watch series 1 and 2, love it, am hooked. I ask around about series 3, which, of course, isn't available until August this year. A big boo to Warner Home Video dragging their feet!
So, here I am, deep in The Wire cold turkey. Now Channel 9 has apparently been putting on the wire since 2003, sporadically and deep in the late of night. The good news is that someone in programming must have caught a bit of the buzz about this show, and series 4 is being shown midnight on Tuesdays. For how long, who knows. In the meantime it's off to eBay for me to find series 3.
I said my rant was sparked by The Wire, but it's more than that show, this poor treatment of the audience has been going on forever, as has the criticism of the treatment by those that make their living writing about the media. Yet nothing changes.
And yet it is a real watershed time for broadcast TV. According to research released by Neilsen Online last week, Australians are for the first time spending more time online than in front of the TV - 13.7 hours against 13.3 hours. These figures are a little light on background, but what is definite is that there is a movement away from TV, and also print media, toward online.
How will we viewers be treated in the brave new(ish) world of online entertainment content?
