I always wonder about this too, Not TV but the film Titanic, Was tempted to see it until i was told the love story is a major part and then that song. They just throw it in because they think it appeals....Probably drives many away in fact

The fact that they not catering to most people on the main channels.

I agree. Even worse are the magpies to be heard when something which could possibly be upsetting of traumatic is about to happen. Eastenders, Emmerdale and Midsommer Murders are all very guilty of that. Trouble is, the chap in charge of the sound effects (or whoever decides that we should hear the magpie's cackle) doesn't understand that they don't 'cackle' in the dead of night just when a body is being discovered.

Oh, yes, and ..... am I the only one who finds that awful two note sound on Law & Order UK really eerie? I hate it!!

Gyles Brandreth on The One Show.

When I was a child watching stuff like The Flintstones I could never work out where the laughter was coming from. I believed they screened the cartoon to a live audience but could not understand who on earth would go to watch a cartoon and laugh at everything, funny or not. Took me years to realise it was all canned.

I can't stand the way that z list celebs are wheeled out to make inane comments all the way through what could be really interesting nostalgia shows about certain decades. Whether it be about the toys, the music, the gadgets or what have you, I don't want to see the likes of Dom Joly or Lauren Laverne sitting on chairs telling us how their brentford nylon sheets used to spark at night, or how their nan bought them a slinky but they live in a bungalow - then throwing their heads back laughing. Just a witty voice over would suffice!

The ridiculously long pauses when announcing the winners of anything...just get on with it!

Consumer shows that could be quite interesting and useful made unwatchable by the use of puerile sketches to put the point across. Cue presenter dressed up as a cowboy and the good, bad and the ugly theme playing in the background...cue the off switch!

John Finnemore sketch on one of my pet peeves:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06z5240#play

+4.00 minutes in - so true!

That's probably why the movie was such a flop.

Good points, sorrell, with which I agree. I would add dark, poorly-lit scenes, strange camera angles, mumbled dialogue, over-loud and inappropriate background music, gruesome close-ups of death in animal programmes, endless windbaggery from sports presenters, pointless speculation padding out news reports, rudery and bad language in place of talent, the repetition of programmes, and above all, the endless pandering to the egos of so-called tv celebrities!

The gradually increasing amount of people on TV who don't say there Ts in certain words and just sound common

Example - ''communi'y'', ''par'y'', ''socie'y''

Haha very true, why have a character clearly using a Mac and then show the screen using some clearly fake search engine.

Or its success could have been based on the fact that the Titanic is one of the most iconic ships ever and what happened to it is one of the most well known disasters.

Are they from the Newcastle area because they tend to do that, just their accent?

The one that always annoyed me was Carla' s"Pe'er" in corrie but she's not from Newcastle

The fact that quiz shows exist.

Not one from the North East, all certainly sound to be from around London way or the South, it's mainly younger folks voicing over ads and programme trailers.

Everything is so bland and safe and beige. UK TV is very beige.

There's a film, I think called Unthinkable, and in a scene the bomb squad is defusing a bomb using a laptop.


You can clearly see that the bomb defusing program on the laptop is a speadsheet

War & Peace got coined Phwoar & Peace because there was a flash of side boob.

Some of the recent US dramas are almost softcore porn!

This is more a media issue than a TV one but the minute a semi-good-looking guy takes his shirt off the media (Daily Mail) loses its mind and promotes him as some new sex symbol who their bored housewife demographic fawn over. Poldark, and War and Peace being prime examples.

I feel however that TV will now play into this as it gets them so much publicity.

Just watched a recording of Burt Reynolds with Piers someone. When going to old photos they shake the camera, then give it a second and go onto another. WHY?
I think I've seen it on several other programmes but don't producers see this and think like a normal person would that this is stupid and irritating?

More4 (and E4?) having an American continuity announcer.

The fashion for having every programme begin with 5 minutes of 'catchup'.

The Great Interior Design Show has taken this to new levels of idiocy by having first the catchup, THEN a preview of the programme you're about to watch! So you know that someone's going to paint a room dark blue before the thing's even started

Anything with 'Celebrity' in the title. And those godawful dramas that seem to be filmed in the half light, and everything is spoken in a whisper. Grrrr!

Cameramen who focus on the presenter rather than the thing being presented. So you get to hear fascinating stuff about an antique or engine part or whatever, while staring at a face trying to register interest.