Why is ITV so chavy and dumbed down?
The Wizard
Posts: 11,071 Forum Member
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It's not a recent thing either. It's been like this for years but it seems we've hit an all time low in programming.
From the minute you get up it's trashy soap and zelebrity and hollywood gossip and programming aimed at bored housewives. Dumbed down breakfast TVs followed by This Morning which is obsessed with soap and reality tv chit-chat and z list guests, sex change couples and fashion tips like what's the latest handbag or which nail file should I buy and general couch potato crap aimed at people who read National Enquirer and Heat magazine. Nothing of any actual intellect at all.
Then it's Jeremy Kyle interspersed with ads for online bingo and debt management and quick cash adverts. Afternoons are dominated by more gobshatting by Loose Women or other such drivel. Dumbed down quiz shows for thickies, dumbed down news for the less intelligent, and soaps with the occasional good drama. The only thing that ITV are capable of making of any credibility.
Weekends are utter car crash tv rubbish for people who are easily entertained by watching home videos of pillocks falling off ladders, trashy dating shows, z list celebrity game shows or more reality tv rubbish. It really is turn your brain off tv.
As for ITV2 it's all constant repeats of Back to the Future or other films which they show 3 or 4 times a week and programmes featuring orange faced Essex chavs, American trash, back to back soaps and more reality tv, ex reality tv nobodies and generally car crash tv for people with no brains or an appetite for anything remotely intelligent.
What is it with ITV showing such dumbed down brainless garbage all the time? Even back in my youth when the BBC were showing Swap Shop and educational programmes for children with half a brain, ITV were entertaining the easily pleased with idiots throwing custard pies at one another. ITV has always been low brow but it's now morphed into what I can only call, 'chav tv'.
From the minute you get up it's trashy soap and zelebrity and hollywood gossip and programming aimed at bored housewives. Dumbed down breakfast TVs followed by This Morning which is obsessed with soap and reality tv chit-chat and z list guests, sex change couples and fashion tips like what's the latest handbag or which nail file should I buy and general couch potato crap aimed at people who read National Enquirer and Heat magazine. Nothing of any actual intellect at all.
Then it's Jeremy Kyle interspersed with ads for online bingo and debt management and quick cash adverts. Afternoons are dominated by more gobshatting by Loose Women or other such drivel. Dumbed down quiz shows for thickies, dumbed down news for the less intelligent, and soaps with the occasional good drama. The only thing that ITV are capable of making of any credibility.
Weekends are utter car crash tv rubbish for people who are easily entertained by watching home videos of pillocks falling off ladders, trashy dating shows, z list celebrity game shows or more reality tv rubbish. It really is turn your brain off tv.
As for ITV2 it's all constant repeats of Back to the Future or other films which they show 3 or 4 times a week and programmes featuring orange faced Essex chavs, American trash, back to back soaps and more reality tv, ex reality tv nobodies and generally car crash tv for people with no brains or an appetite for anything remotely intelligent.
What is it with ITV showing such dumbed down brainless garbage all the time? Even back in my youth when the BBC were showing Swap Shop and educational programmes for children with half a brain, ITV were entertaining the easily pleased with idiots throwing custard pies at one another. ITV has always been low brow but it's now morphed into what I can only call, 'chav tv'.
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Comments
Absolutely agree.
Cheap programmes for a cheap channel. I think half the problem is they only cater for "yoof" (with their "obsession" with Z listers) or housewives nowadays. If you're of a certain age, there is precious little to watch.
I feel old now....
The BBC isn't much better: Sherlock, Dr Who Top Gear, Only Connect, HIGNFY and Mock The Week and that's it all year.
Now Time Team is off Channel 4 I never watch it apart from Utopia.
Just glad I've got Lovefilm Instant and can watch American Drama/Comedy or old BBC drama and comedy.
If it wasn't for American stuff like Game of Thrones and Fringe I wouldn't watch TV at all, which is a shame as I'd love to watch UK TV if they could be bothered to make anything that isn't aimed at 14 year old schoolgirls.
I'm not really sure when ITV started going down this route, but it was probably around the turn of the century.
Presumably there was a high-level executive decision made to go in this direction.
Lets face it, ITV is soulless, these days.
The sooner it disappears, COMPLETELY, the better.
ITV is sh*t!
I must admit I did use to watch "The Chase",which stood out like a shining beacon compared to most other quiz programs.Even that has now stopped,so I've no reason to tune into this channel anymore.Shame really,it used to be so much better.
If you look at any other commercial channel throughout the world you will see ITV is a beacon of quality compared to any ive seen.
Obviously ITV need to make money by getting people to watch the programmes,they spend a billion pounds in production around the UK and employ 1000s of people.
Some of the above comments are unfair.
However, ITV4 is great for all those who want to watch sports which aren't covered elsewhere. The last 3 weeks have been a real highlight with the fantastic coverage of the Tour de France.
This is true, but the key phrase is 'pulls in viewers'. Truth is, we can moan all we like, but I fear we get the tv that we deserve. Whenever there is serious drama on the tv, or fascinating documentaries, by and large they struggle in the ratings.
Commercial channels, by definition, must get the ratings and the way to do that is to produce material appealing to the lowest common denominator. Works very well for them.
Apart from the Champions League football, I can't remember the last thing I watched on ITV.
All of those are far better than anything on any of the ITV channels.
Broadcasters will always go for what gets a lot of people tuning in. They don't care whether or not it's respectable TV, just so long as what they show brings in the viewers. These shows that you've mentioned in your post, they must attract a lot of daytime viewers otherwise they'd be taken off air. The more viewers they get for things, the more adverts are shown during the advert breaks. This 'dumbed down TV' must be what appeals to a lot of the viewers out there. There can't be serious stuff on all the time, people have different likes and dislikes. What you think is crap, others might think is good. It's all about variety.
I think it's just a case of some think it's terrible because TV broadcasters don't stick to showing serious stuff on TV. Kids and young people don't want to see serious stuff, they want entertaining things. I'm in my late thirties and I don't always want to watch serious things. The balance at the minute is good. If the above posters don't like what's on these channels at certain times, they can easily switch to another channel outside of the 1-6 ones.
Fortunately, I never had any deep love for ITV, even at its best, as the BBC was always where the better stuff could be found, especially BBC2. I'm more disappointed in Channel 4 which was once guaranteed to provide most of my evening's viewing, but then brought Big Brother to us and everything went downhill from that point.
Bloody brilliant post. Every word is so true. If I am off and have the telly on I put on the ITV3 dramas. So sick of all this chav bollox. All the adverts for Foxy Bingo and the like make me want to poke my own eyes out. Though I don't mind repeats of Back to the Future!
I don't entirely disagree with your assertion. ITV really does pander to the masses a lot of the time, going for the lowest common denominator.
However, I can't help noticing that it has really upped its game lately, with quite a sprinking of entertaining, decent enough dramas. As for the soaps (granted some people may not think much of that type of programming in general), ITV has been beating the Beeb's ar*e in that department. Corrie is far better than EE at the moment (many viewers would share that opinion).
As for chasing the ratings by dumbing down, the Beeb does this to quite an extent (even though it has less commercial pressure to do so). Channel 4 does for sure. It used to be a daring channel (in an intelligent way), now it comes across like an immature teenager who thinks he's being really cool and liberal (when really he's merely being puerile and smutty).
Having said that, I still think the Beeb produces plenty of excellent TV, the docs on BBC Two and Four being obvious examples. And Channel 4 still has quality output, here and there.