I never watch TV – in the traditional sense – any more.
Well, almost never.
We don’t subscribe to Sky. I’m sure there’s many dramatic and inspiring viewing options there if you’re prepared to pay for them, but we aren’t.
I would have considered subscribing once – but when TVNZ 6 and 7 were decimated and the choicest plums handed to Sky it outraged me to the point where I don’t think I could bring myself to subscribe now.
(High-quality TV developed with taxpayer funding – and it ends up behind a paywall? Something not-quite-right there.)
Amusingly, our household aversion to pay TV doesn’t stop the tele-marketers. At 6.30pm-ish at least once a month we’ll get a call from someone trying to entice us into a Sky package. Turning them down is such a well-worn ritual that even my six-year-old says unprompted now, ‘if you’re calling from Sky Mum and Dad don’t want it.’
There is the odd time when I feel the magnetic pull of the couch and switch on the set, but I find it so hard to tolerate the incessant ads.
The other night I had an optimistic channel-surf – and it was all s**t, as usual. But then I chanced upon a show on Maori TV that was, simply, a lovely old kuia reminiscing about her early years. That was it – honest, nothing flashy. And utterly compelling – I couldn’t tear myself away. You couldn’t put a Harvey Normans’ ad in the middle of that.
When I was a kid in the 1970s, certain programmes were a family ritual. Sunday night we’d gather and watch the Muppets, or Life on Earth. I know that’s nostalgic. I know there were ads then (albeit fewer). But I’d love there to be some high-quality family TV that I could sit and watch together with my kids of an evening. Not DIY-product-placement-masquerading-as-content. Not hyped-up, breathless talent quests.
Just genuinely great, informative, entertaining, family telly.
Good on you Maori TV, for making programmes with real soul.
I’d love to see that on a channel for the rest of us.
Miranda James is a member of the Coalition for Better Broadcasting.
Me also no TV or Sky. It has been liberating to end the stream of garbage. It feels like growing up, like getting out of short pants! I wish the whole country would switch off and grow up.
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