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Is Channel 4 just a clickbait channel now?
mike65
Posts: 11,386 Forum Member
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Benefits Street
Mega-Brothel
High Class Call Girls
Dogging Tales
Embarrassing Bodies (and variations)
Bodyshockers strand - this week "My Big Boob Hell"
Sex Party Secrets
Penis Envy
Welcome to The World's Biggest Penis
I've obviously left out loads going back over recent years.
Is this what we want from the 4th channel one which was begun with such high-minded ideals underpinning it?
And yes before anyone jumps in we all remember Michael Grade being declared the Pornographer in Chief by cranky Paul Johnson in The Mail but really that was a reaction to damn all in retrospect (a few late night explorations like Eurotrash). Now the channel seems to have filled the 10PM slot with little else Monday to Thursday, Material which is by turns cheaply titillating, OMG WTF inducing or rabble rousing/bear baiting tabloid telly.
Surely they can do better?
Mega-Brothel
High Class Call Girls
Dogging Tales
Embarrassing Bodies (and variations)
Bodyshockers strand - this week "My Big Boob Hell"
Sex Party Secrets
Penis Envy
Welcome to The World's Biggest Penis
I've obviously left out loads going back over recent years.
Is this what we want from the 4th channel one which was begun with such high-minded ideals underpinning it?
And yes before anyone jumps in we all remember Michael Grade being declared the Pornographer in Chief by cranky Paul Johnson in The Mail but really that was a reaction to damn all in retrospect (a few late night explorations like Eurotrash). Now the channel seems to have filled the 10PM slot with little else Monday to Thursday, Material which is by turns cheaply titillating, OMG WTF inducing or rabble rousing/bear baiting tabloid telly.
Surely they can do better?
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Comments
Endless so-called factual programming. Cheap, and easy to manufacture a narrative.
Channel 4 News is about the only regular programme, that can be considered
as part of their original remit ?
I enjoy For The Love of Cars, but quite honestly that could fit on any channel.
Agree, everything has gotten uptight and prudish on the main channels even Channel 4 which used to seen as more liberal in that regard.
Looking back I think that Shilpa Shetty race row made some in TV way more cautious, even when you compare Big Brother before and after the stuff that went out on the pre-Shilpa series would get complaints/have housemates issued with warnings these days.
On the plus side, we won't miss BBC Three's sensationalist documentaries - Channel 4 seems to have it covered!
I quite regularly go a whole week without watching anything on Channel 4, I can't think of anything that I have watched on there for several weeks now.
I'm not. People on benefits are such an easy target to engineer hate towards and C4 and C5 are loving adding fuel to the fire.
You can't be serious when they show programmes like Jeremy Kyle, Embarrassing Bodies, Dogging Tales, C5's "and proud" series and other shows of such ilk. TV is more grubby than I can ever remember it being. I feel like Mary bloody Whitehouse because there's so much I won't watch as it's so cheap and nasty.
Hmm, what did Henry Louis Mencken say? "Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the British er American public" I have a rather quaint belief that the established media should raise their game not pander to base instincts.
This is true and incredibly depressing.
As far as C4 specifically goes it took a nosedive the minute that awful woman Jay Hunt was placed in charge. She almost ruined the BBC and now she's at it with C4, having just about destroyed their legacy as an innovative, alternative broadcaster.
She's a nightmare who only seems to want to cater to the lowest of the low, and I can't begin to understand how she continues getting these high profile jobs.
Agree completely. Jay Hunt dumbed down BBC1 and has overseen a massive shift in C4 all in the name of barrel scraping.
The woman should not be let anywhere near TV IMHO
Yes. You can forgive Sky or UKTV as they're purely commercial (although Sky has been raising its game). However Channel 4 is a not for profit with a public service remit. It's always had audience pullers in its schedule but seems to have headed in entirely the wrong, rather unimaginative direction. The case for selling it off is pretty much sealed.
I think Dogging Tales is her lowest point so far but I've no doubt she'll go lower. The woman is basically an almighty troll, seeing what she can get away with like a little kid would. I read an interview where she boasted about how she loves to "punch authority on the nose"...pathetic.
Most TV channels have become so nasty. The only time I like Channel 4, well, I'm mainly recording everything now anyway and watching TV late at night.
I'm stuck to watching old repeats such as Everybody Loves Raymond, Frasier, 3rd Rock from the Sun, Will & Grace, King of Queens, early runs of Two and a Half Men, Friends, Taxi, Cheers, My Family and Only Fools and Horses. Sometimes a bit of, According to Jim. Everything that has mostly been from the 80s, mainly 90s and mid 00s.
The only somewhat modern TV series I managed to get into that has stopped airing, Last Man Standing. Tim Allen. Very similar to Home Improvement.
Todays TV is complete and utter gutter trash aimed at people that seem to love trash. I'd love to watch modern TV but I cannot stoop to what todays TV has become. So I'm stuck in the last 10 to 20 years.
One thing I am thankful for is I never have access to a TV during the day from what so many people discuss. Even at night now I don't get to view TV until 9 - 10pm and what I do it is mainly recordings.
TV has gotten so bad now I barely see BBC1/2 unless it is Wimbledon. Apart from that, BBC years and years ago has become so trashy like ITV, CH4, CH5 you cannot tell the difference.
Remember when BBC/ITV used to be fantastic on Saturday evening/nights. Noel's House Party, Big Break. ITV, An Audience with… Gladiators, The Brian Connelly Show…
Everything is full of crap talent shows, shows that people seem to enjoy seeing other people fail in life. So they can get riled up and take to social media for reporters to make stories out of it.
When I was 17/18 they were showing the likes of The Word, Eurotrash, and Beavis and Butthead. This is pre-internet, obviously.
If they showed those now they would be getting the same response as Benefit St etc .
TV has always been "shit" if that's what you want to think of it, its only now that there is a forum to go crying to other people about it...
Those were the real deal though, bottom up and with a point of view behind the "shocking" content.
What Jay 'creative renaissance' Hunt has done is fake, shallow and contrived. Top down executive invention.
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From that Guardian article:
Jay Hunt has overseen a creative renaissance at Channel 4...
Now like most other channel's it contains almost wall to wall reality pap.
Channel 4 news is just about the only thing left any good.
Its made me make a conscious decision if my TV goes wrong it will not get replaced,i am going to go TV less you just look at the listings on most/all channels it makes you want to weep.
Little did we know that not only would these people become oracles of the television industry and the work they produced have become prophecies for the future state of television, but these fictional works have also been adopted by the television industry as defacto manuals on how to produce television for this decade and possibly beyond.
There was a difference back then. There was a lot of choice. Now everyone is obsessed with cheap to produce reality garbage. There is no quality anymore. Even News programmes have been dumbed down compared to 10 - 15 years ago.
It is one of the reasons I rarely see the main channels. Even other platforms have went the same way. It has become trash, or do without.
^^