To think prime time TV is now worse than 1982?

[AirOff]

I was thinking in general about TV programmes earlier and how they’ve changed over the years and then I’ve just decided to directly compare the same week -

Monday - Friday only

for BBC1 TV programming

for EXACTLY the same week - (in this case it was week commencing the first Monday in September) - for both

2025 and 1982 between the whole 3 hours from 7pm - 10pm

in 2025 what I found was - the first hour until 8pm is taken up every day by One Show and Eastenders (apart from no EE on Friday),
then for the whole 5 days there was only 1 drama in that 3 hour period and one sitcom. Just FYI, both the drama and sitcom in this case were British. Apart from that, there was reality stuff of a domestic practical nature on EVERY night - Sewing Bee and Masterchef - BORING!!!!!!!!!!!!
There was also Scam Interceptors and one reality dating type show.

Anyway, in 1982 - the picture was very different - far more sitcoms (British, overwhelmingly), British made dramas and entertainment programmes - Top of the Pops, It’s a Knockout, a Wildlife on One programme, and there was one American sitcom shown - Taxi. That’s the thing - we never have American sitcoms or dramas on prime time BBC1/ITV like we used to, do we? Also in 1982 was Points of View which I loved. Also ‘World’s Strongest Man’ - you’d never get that now, would you ?

The one constant in 1982 and 2025 is Panorama - 8pm - Mondays.

AIBU to think that in 2025 BBC1 has gone much more boring, and bland in the prime time slot? As if schedulers/TV execs can’t be arsed to bring more variety?

it seems that churning out One Show, Eastenders and these reality shows based on practical everyday stuff - cooking and sewing has taken the place of a much more varied, entertainment type program that may have required more effort to make

Anyone agree?

I want to go back to 1982 !

To be honest, I’ve always preferred American tv shows on the whole. Don’t get me wrong, there’s a few exceptions (eg I love Red Dwarf & on the whole British comedy is more my sense of humour), but you can just tell they have more money to spend to get the quality. Pretty much since I became an adult, I would only watch things on Sky 1 or SyFy - obviously the Sky channels have changed over the years, but most things we watch are through Sky or streaming services. I never really rated British Prime Time offerings (with the exception of Gladiators in the 90’s) so to me it’s no better or worse than it ever was!

I’ve been watching Spooks again on Drama. It’s got some great plots. Each episode could easily be expanded.
may e I just like 90s/ 2000s tv.

Cold Feet
This life
friehds

I dont watch much terrestrial TV but did love tonight's Traitors. The pace was great.

Also enjoy race around the world and occasionally Pointless. Some if the drama's like Happy Valley have been amazing over recent years.

See I loved 80s sitcoms

Terry and June etc
A Fine Romance etc etc

Also I think there is a difference between World’s Strongest Man and the ‘reality’ TV styles now.

iI mean Sewing Bee, Masterchef and Repair Shop they’ve made every day activities into a show! What’s next ? A show on who takes their bins out most efficiently or stylishly??! At least there’s some entertainment value in ‘Strongest Man’ it’s not just every day tasks!

Must say though I really enjoyed Masked Singer, Apprentice and Dragon’s Den last year

Ah the only thing I’ve watched abd quite enjoyed from your list is Pointless

Ah I’m not bothered about the programs you listed I much prefer early to mid 80s

Ah I’ve always MUCH preferred British shows

Well the big American channels are for a big American population and are allowed to dominate. BBC etc can’t afford to compete.
V sad. Once the licence goes it will be American tv mostly.

There are some great series on Netflix etcbut I like something less dramatic before I go to bed - the hotel inspector, only connect, dragons den, digging for Britain - never watch soaps, quizzes apart from OC, cookery or hospital stuff -( had enough in real life).

There are a crazy number of real life murder progs these days.

It's a magnitude better as you don't have to watch scheduled TV..

A lot of the stuff I watch is bought by or originates from the BBC or ITV. I watch Netflix and Apple TV as well as ITVX and iPlayer and they absolutely can and do compete. Aussies as well, The Newsreader is one of my favourites (on iPlayer). I've also watched stuff from all over the world.

As with film where Hollywood dominates it doesn't mean it's the be and end all of TV. It's not about vast budgets, it's about good storytelling and performances. If TV is only ever commercial you only get what the mainstream want, which appeals to advertisers, which is very reductive. Only a fraction of what I watch is big budget US drama.

A lot of it is still scheduled, though to the day rather than time on Disney and Apple TV, most of the series I watch on there are weekly so still have to wait a week for new episodes, like in the old days, it's only the older series I can watch all of. Most of the series on traditional TV that are shown all at once are the more rubbish ones, some of the good ones are still shown as linear TV, I wonder if Trigger Point will all be on iPlayer or weekly.

I will add in Paramount+ to the weekly TV watching, I had to watch Yellowstone and Landman each week, waiting for episodes, I bet a lot of the other series on there are weekly too

I particularly blame the BBC. They have a remit to produce quality programmes but the dumbing down just goes on and on. Serious documentaries are very rare now and most are more like schools broadcasting.

They churn out endless crap entertainment shows to compete with the commercial channels. That’s not what they’re supposed to be doing!

Last Monday there was a Panorama on the Met Police. On Tuesday they decided to cancel the only decent programme that week (a history documentary) in order to schedule yet another programme on the Met Police. If they thought it was that important why didn’t they cancel the Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne rubbish on BBC1?

They’ve lost their way and I’ve lost faith in them.

Scheduled tv is on its way out. People (especially younger generations) don’t watch tv in that way.
we (couple in our forties) watch pointless/news early evening. Ocaisionally we will watch goggle box or master chef or last leg as it’s shown but most of give time we watch Netflix or prime.

Netflix and Prime don't do a lot of quality drama, Netflix is mainly those true life crime things and the limited series are usually quite bad. The most popular things on Netflix are what has been shown before on other streaming channels or BBC/ITV. Prime, people mainly have that for the delivery with the TV thrown in.

A show on who takes their bins out most efficiently or stylishly??!

Coming to your screens soon ... the Great British Bin Off 😆

Yes - i agree.

But it’s making people dumber and far less well- informed and this is showing up in the political landscape now.

In my youth, with just a few TV channels, pretty much everyone would watch some kind of news. At my school lots of us discussed things like Panorama or other factual programmes the next day. And we were working class girls.

Now it’s possible to avoid anything like that. You can follow your own interests, or the algorithm will keep sending you more of the same so that (as with a nearly 30 year old woman from Love Island in a post-referendum interview in 2016 ) “Er - what exactly IS Brexit?”

And here we are!

Actually there’s something in that. It’s partly because the TV is flat. Sound technology is actually pretty basic, and you can’t beat a speaker that has some depth to it. Investing in a good sound system that connects to your TV will really help with that.

But also - the people editing together your TV programmes are in their 20s and 30s and the people watching eg Happy Valley (which had to have a rethink after things became very bad) are in their 40s-60s. Their hearing range is totally different. And actually this should be taken into account. What the industry needs is older sound technicians.

I love your dedication to underpinning your theory op! I agree, but the whole concept of TV has charged and that's the bit that doesn't compare.

Oh and - free to air TV is on a shoestring theses days on comparison with the 80s. Watch “Rivals” on Disney Plus for a plot with hinges around the money-making scheme which is having a local ITV franchise. Not a novel which would be written today. Over on the BBC, EastEnders used to attract audiences of 20-30 million. These days it’s about 3 million. The One Show is cheap to make - and repeats are incredibly cheap to show. That sounds like laziness but there is actually a balance struck - if I have £x/ viewing hour in my budget, if I run a repeat here and here, that frees up a higher amount for eg a nature documentary or big drama.

Yes - I think this is the point - the main broadcasters aren't chasing young people - young people are not watching Sewing Bee, Eastenders, Scam Interceptors, Repair Shop or Masterchef in the main - they are watching YouTube, Stranger Things, The Witcher, Squid Games or comedy stand-up - either on YouTube or Netflix.

For the BBC in particular, I think the biggest issue is having to make their budget stretch over more platforms and ensure things like iPlayer works well to be able to compete with the streaming services with a much reduced real terms budget.

Reality shows and soaps are relatively cheap to produce or commission compared to good quality drama or other flagship programmes like Match of the Day. Any drama has to compete with the streaming networks for writing and acting talent and quality. This means they end up focussing on a small number of really excellent dramas (Peaky Blinders, Rogue Heroes, Killing Eve etc) and have to fill the rest of the schedule up with cheaper programming.

They sometimes collaborate with other producers like Disney, or the BBC America commercial arm to split costs and keep some well loved shows going, but that doesn't always work well at all and risks what should be flagship programming losing its appeal. Dr. Who being a prime example - not only did it become more 'American', the BBC had to agree to make it available on streaming in the UK and the US at the same time, which prevented them gaining the audience from showing it live. When it used to air before being made available on iPlayer, they would automatically pick up audience numbers for other shows that were on before and after.

They also have to strike the balance between airing live and iPlayer - most people prefer to binge watch - the drop off rates for shows which air weekly - whether on live or streaming - is immense, unless the show already has a good following.

Netflix and Prime understand this - if you look at the shows that they air weekly or release in batches, as opposed to dropping all of the episodes in one go, it tends to be things which already have a solid fan base - and even then a lot of people will wait until the whole series is available to watch.

The streaming services don't have to strike that balance between making things available via streaming AND airing on live TV. It's catch 22 - if the BBC dropped everything in one go, no-one will bother to watch the weekly airings, but if they don't then they know they will lose a lot of people over the broadcast period. That's why they are trying to strike a bit more of a balance by releasing the first two or three episodes in one go, before moving to weekly drops - because it will hook people in.

There was a programme following Wigan council workers doing repairs..will Doris get her repair done?
Then there was flitting day, people moving house.
Monkey tennis is not far away 😁👍

Is 'prime time' even a thing? I've not watched scheduled broadcast telly for a more than a decade. Surely evrryone just picks what they want and watches it when they want on iplayer?

For me, it's American (or American made - e.g. Bridgerton, Outlander) for drama but British for comedy.

The kids love comedy and will watch American stuff like Schitt's Creek, Big Bang Theory, Young Sheldon, Family Guy etc as well as British stuff, but I'm not keen - much prefer things like Not Going Out, the Detectorists, the Cleaner, Red Dwarf, Gavin and Stacey etc

Bin wars, what a great idea for a show, closely followed by wall painting and whose dries fastest, the ideas are actually endless, carpet laying, kitchen fitting,fastest gas boiler service, a whole new genre awaits, provided the thick tok generation get onboard