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The worst thing to happen to UK TV?

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    The worst thing to happen to UK TV?

    I'd go with the Broadcasting Act 1990.

    So typically Thatcherite it hurts - the gradual destruction of ITV from a network of beloved regional broadcasters into the bloated mess it is today, the forced reduction of in-house programme-making at the Beeb leading to a drop in quality, the effective creation of Channel 5 and allowing Murdoch a foot back in the door after his forced exit from LWT some two decades before.

    Even some high-profile Tories spoke out against it, most notably Douglas Hurd. I wouldn't be surprised if it was this that tipped the party over the edge and finally got rid of her - so maybe it did have its good points.

    #2
    The worst thing to happen to UK TV?

    The 'management-structure' homogenization of television where trust of and the taking a gamble on individual and distinctive talent has either eroded or disappeared completely. This is more a BBC problem where great talents or ideas were accepted almost immediately and shows commissioned on the toss of a coin simply because the executive to whom an idea was pitched liked what he heard and recognised the potential in it.

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      #3
      The worst thing to happen to UK TV?

      Multichannel technology: it has spread the talent pool too thinly and given ITV the excuse to dumb down in response.

      ITV dumbing down, though, perhaps goes back to when they started putting on "a big movie" that would span both sides of the news.

      I also felt that Channel 4 had unintended consequences, reducing the pressure on ITV to produce documentaries and take risks with drama. I don't think The Sweeney could happen on ITV1 now, or Death On The Rock. Maybe even Rumpole and Brideshead Revisited would be too risky.

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        #4
        The worst thing to happen to UK TV?

        The bastardization of the documentary form as it gave possibly an unintended birth to the reality show and that suspect time-filler, the 'recreated scene' (or getting a few blokes to dress up in medieval clothing, run around with swords and shout a lot in order to recreate a famous battle, simply because an illustration, a painting or old woodcut wouldn't supposedly gain the attention span of old Joe Couch Potato.

        Or the rise of the bloke on the synth in documentaries, because what docs really need is a man banging away on a synth that sounds like a full-blown orchestra in order to tell you that pyramids are really big.

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          #5
          The worst thing to happen to UK TV?

          Colour.

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            #6
            The worst thing to happen to UK TV?

            The merger of SM:TV and CD:UK

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              #7
              The worst thing to happen to UK TV?

              ITV dumbing down, though, perhaps goes back to when they started putting on "a big movie" that would span both sides of the news.
              Oh, God, that drove me nuts. What fucking genius thought that was a good idea?

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                #8
                The worst thing to happen to UK TV?

                24 hour rolling news with its need to big-up every event into a cataclysmic story. "Worst blizzard in history expected", "The Terror Plots that could have destroyed the Country", "Broken Metatarsal; a Nation mourns". And it gave us Kay fucking Burley too.

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