to stop my children watching talent shows?

[3fornow]

they seem to dominate the channels and give kids the wrong things to want to aspire to. also some of the music is just awful!

"Of course, a >50% BME school tends to have that effect.. why would that make a difference?"

Unsurprisingly, cultural background reflects in TV consumption. See, for example, here. I seem to recall that in the US, the top ten programmes amongst white audiences and the top ten programmes amongst black audiences only share one programme in common, but I can't find a reference.

TOTP was 50/50.

That's a much better strike rate than Idol/Factor/Talent

Its just that my ds went to a school with over 50% BME ...I would say 75% of his friends are BME ..they all watch the same programmes

I agree that TV watching is not the same as it used to be - when there were only 3 channels chances are most people had seen the same programmes.

My husband is still amazed when he remembers some apparently classic programme of his youth that I have never heard of.

We did have a TV, but only watched wholesome stuff like Blue Peter.

What's BME?

Snobear, you must be older that me as I remember all the Stock/Aitken/Waterman manufactured groups, Kylie and Jason and the like, and I went to see Bros when I was 10!

Or perhaps I am younger? Or could it be that I kept enjoying new music and continued to watch it beyond my yoof?

Who knows?

Possibly, but I still don't know what BME is, and remember manufactured music in my childhood!

I have no idea what the old grey whistle test is.

I had to Google BME, I didn't know what it was either.

DH and I are soon going to be ditching the TV licence as we barely watch any telly at all. It's only going to be a trial for a year or so because our kids are only 1 and 3. We'll still have DVDs/wii/iplayer etc so it's not much of a sacrifice at all.

In the future though, whether we have normal TV or not, I really hope my kids have the self confidence to just be honest if they don't watch something (through their choice rather than us banning it) - I hope they can happily just admit it to their friends if they find something boring!

I don't ban it-would just simply never occur to me to have drivel like that playing in my eye.
i read about it and hear about it though and it sounds like such a depressing waste of valuable time.

What about the entirely non-constructive criticism of these shows? Judgment becomes a matter of dogma, explicitly about the judge's respective biases, showing no interest in empirical judgement (how else could judges come to such different conclusions?). Such gratuitous rudeness by people who have been given some sort of "authority", too much interest in superficial details (e.g. looks) instead of concentrating on the fact that some of the singing, etc. is just dodgy, which ought to be the only thing that matters!

Sorry for the rant, but wanted to throw this in.

V good point Plu.