Seriously though, I think you ARE fringe in a lot of ways. As are most of your friends. Your upbringing was a fortunate accident.

It’s always interesting when you come across these people who take on the values of their employer as personal values an can’t separate between what’s rationally correct and what’s best for their companies.

I’ve never had it myself, but I’ve known intelligent friends, who fully understood the evil that all banks are, get a job at a bank, and then within a year it’s all “you deserve to pay that extra charge because you didn’t read the 1200 page product disclosure. Buyer beware jackass”

I watch TV. (Zuzannah does too). In a lot of ways it meets a lot my entertainment needs. If you combine it with DVDs and the internet/gaming you can get perfectly good blob-time from it. There’s a lot to like on TV (also a lot to dislike), and don’t assume that just because something is popular that it’s necessarily shit. I do actually like watching Biggest Loser. You might not. I do. (I am however hanging out for a PVR, so I can pick and choose a bit better…)

I think you were lucky to have active parents – and lucky to live in a place surrounded by other active parents (ie the tennis club actually had members) – and lucky to live in places where activity is simple. For the increasing number of people living in apartments and houses without backyards it can be incredibly hard to provide ANYTHING for kids to do.

Personally I would love to disconnect our telly, because I know that we would survive just fine without it. As a parent I can tell you the TV is sometimes a life-saver. The phrase “Just… FUCK off, Daddy’s hungover.” isn’t terribly PC, so much as “Why don’t you see if there’s a cartoon on?”

As far as the internet taking over the telly I think that won’t happen. You’re mistaking the populace we have for one that wants to have an input into their own entertainment. They don’t want to take responsibility (certainly this happens to me. Sometimes I just want to zone out). The only way that the internet could seriously start to impact on TV is if there came along a massive everywhere-everything-always-already type of thing (eg YouTube but not shit) that ticked all the right boxes for ease-of-entry and just-enough-reward.

TV is perfect for that. All you gotta do is push the button. Maybe push the button another couple times to find a better show. Then sit. After 10 minutes of a 30 minute show you’ll be engaged at least enough that you won’t feel the urge to look away. That’s what TV does so well – and the internet barely does that. Or rather, there’s a couple of sites: fmylife.com, failblog.com, facebook.com, the newspaper… maybe youtube for a while… then that’s it. After that you have to use your imagination. And imagination is expensive compared to Push The Button.

It occurs to me that DVDs are very close to being that easy-entry medium that replaces telly for a lot of people. Instead of waiting months for your five shows to have their season finished, you just watch all of Dexter, then all of House, then all of Lost In Austen. Currently me and Beth have restarted Buffy (and, yes, it is still awesome). All you have to do with a DVD is put it in the machine and hit ‘go’. There’s a cost to DVDs, but for a lot of people it’s worth it.

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I think the big mistake these TV guys were making was believing, just like a unionist, that they have a Right to a revenue stream just because they HAVE a revenue stream. Sure, they have a Right to be treated properly… but… buggy whips. The plain fact of the matter is that there is another medium coming along which consumes some of their demand. Adapt. Or get fucked. But choose.