The early days – TV as education
The availability and affordability of TVs increased after the war, and most families in England were watching TV by the ‘50s. Both radio and television in the early days harboured aspirations of educating the masses. In the UK, think of the early series on BBC2 – “Face to Face”, Bronowski’s “The Ascent of Man”, John Berger’s “Ways of Seeing”, Kenneth Clark’s “Civilisation”, Jonathan Miller’s series about the body, Bryan Magee’s series on the philosophers, the Monitor arts series. The wildlife programmes of Desmond Morris and David Attenborough. The Feynman lectures, and the Christmas lectures every year. Cultural discussion programmes like “The Late Show” (with Michael Ignatieff and others), and Melvyn Bragg’s “The South Bank Show” regularly brought into our homes Britain’s leading cultural commentators – people like John Carey, Christopher Hitchens (always better in person than in print), George Steiner, Roger Scruton and others. These programmes were all addressed to the intelligent and curious layman, and there was no dumbing down.
The TV when I was growing up
I think back with affection of all the programmes I watched when I was young – Dr Who, The Avengers, Huckleberry Finn, Dungeons and Dragons, Little House on the Prairie, Fame, Heidi, Batman, Benny Hill, Yes Minister, Fawlty Towers and so on. It’s clear that television really created a bond of shared experience across that whole generation.
In my own family we never watched too much TV – my father would circle the Radio Times identifying the programmes we would be watching during the coming week. TV adaptations of novels encouraged us to read, science programmes helped with school and TV was generally a very positive influence. Chat shows were informative and intelligent – Parkinson in England, Dick Cavett in the US. Even in Italy, I was surprised to see that the series of face-to-face interviews “Sottovoce” with the irritating but irresistible Gigi Marzullo is still running. Perhaps not the most intellectual of programmes, but I wonder whether it will be replaced by anything of a similar format when the time comes.
The end of the intellectual broadcast
“The Late Show” came to an end in 1995, and “The South Bank Show” in 2010. TV executives don’t seem to be interested any more. We still have some fantastic series on radio – especially Melvyn Bragg’s “In Our Time” on Radio 4 with academic guests each time to talk about science, history, philosophy, music and mathematics. It was getting on towards 1000 episodes the last time I looked. I suspect it’s the same pattern everywhere. Even in intellectual France, I’m not sure if we have cultural discussion programmes today of the calibre of Bernard Pivot’s “Bouillon de Culture” and “Apostrophe”.
Trash TV
There have always been useful cooking and travel programmes from the start. But with the advent and proliferation of commercial channels, it was not long before schedules were dominated by trash TV and their radio equivalents, from breakfast TV shows, soap operas, sitcoms, reality TV. And banal daytime tabloid talk shows (Jeremy Kyle, Trisha, Jerry Springer) watched in the middle of the afternoon by housewives, the aged and those on benefits. But let’s not be too swift to condemn. These shows are just one entertaining way to make sense of life. I loved watching Kilroy and Oprah when I was young and I got a lot out of them.
TV is over
But the age of the TV, in the sense of watching scheduled programmes at home, is over. We get our news, information and entertainment now from the web, and we only use the TV monitor to stream films, series and sports.