Are reality TV programmes out of control?
Britain's Got Talent has just finished, its star Susan Boyle ending up in a private clinic. Big Brother is just about to start, another batch of wannabe celebrities looking for instant fame.
Is this obsession with celebrity unhealthy? And who's to blame, the programme makers for exploiting the dreams of vulnerable people, the media for the unrelenting scrutiny of contestants lives, or us for watching?
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Reality TV is dumbed down rubbish for the masses. It's end of the pier entertainment. The obsession is most definitely unhealthy when many young peoples only aim in life is to be rich and famous and emualte those they see on television or on the front of magazines.
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Oh and you in the media are all to blame, everyone of you be it TV radio or print media.
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"Is this obsession with celebrity unhealthy? And who's to blame....."
Fourth day running, many programmes on Radio Five every one of those days.
I am sick of it. I am not to blame for the obssession, the BBC and in particular your station is just not letting it go. Nearly at the end of the Apprentice, nicely overlapping with Big Brother, so Vicky can still interview people every week about being kicked off or what you thought about something that happened, Breakfast can do the usual, Simon can "review" it, and Bacon can go on about it too.
If you don't give it oxygen, it won't carry on breathing, so just give it up.
Please, I beg you, stop.
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Yes, they are, Harriet Oliver.
The excuses trotted out yesterday.... well - like with your lovely colleague Edward Mair - I do NOT know.
Well I did not know - until an item on your sister programme Today on Radio Four this a.m.
They scientists via satellites - can see now see how many penguin colonies there are. From Space of course.
Putting it finely - the penguins stain the sea ice with their waste where they stand about in large numbers.
It is such a large discoloured patch on pristine sea ice - it can be seen via wonderful technology - up there.
38 colonies was it? Well more than expected.
And one discolouration was perhaps seen in a part Great Britain too - allegedly - just yesterday.
They are tracking downs its source.
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Oh for heaven's sake! I don't consider myself particularly high-brow but listening to Nicky on the phone-in this morning I feel I must be living in a totally different universe!
I thought that Victoria was bad enough with her obsession with all things puerile but Nicky isn't much better!
They both seem to garner so much enjoyment out of every single reality programme; they're fascinated by the minutiae of every aspect. I honestly feel that I don't understand them; cannot comprehend what relatively intelligent people find so compelling about this sort of thing.
I despair, I really do.
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Nicky Campbell has already been "yellow carded" for his over enthusiastic worshipping of reality TV, so he is hardly the person to present a phone in on the subject. But then the BBC does tend to go on the defensive when dealing with public distaste over its output.
As for "reality" on TV I find it obsessive and obscene. It is not there to worship "success" it is there to hack "failure" to pieces. It is "in your face" mockery of the people who stupidly pit their "talent" on big money prizes. Whoever "wins" these "contests" are not the reason for them. It is the gross manipulation of people into believing that the contests are a worthwhile way of spending a huge hunk of their Saturday nights.
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There are too many of them and too many highly paid presenters. I wonder which presenter or news presenter is it to go out in the wild, BBC you even more so of late, and all broadcasters are losing the plot.
I would say this, if you really want good television then bring back common sense and not jobs for the girls and boys, all of whom seem to be laughing as they do not have job cuts etc. etc.
Remember, we gave up holding public hangings. So some bright young thing says: oh yes let us have all and sundry on television and get stuck into them.
Having carried out research into the use of children in television, it became clear to the families that we interviewed, that all this reality stuff was about undermining the individual: Psychological warfare, public humiliation, etc etc.
The more the the merrier, anything to please the mob! Or is it really to please some under developed and psychologically flawed mind in the people who came up with the idea? I know it is about MONEY
Yes, you can switch off (and I certainly do), but when the stuff is on the BBC, our money is financing it!
Do you really trust these people after all the telephone scams that go on, that has never been take through any court; it should have been!
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