“57 Channels (And Nothin’ On)”
By Steve Hill
The title is from Bruce Springsteen song from the 1992 album Human Touch. The song was about the availability of channels on cable/satellite television, 57, yet despite this range of choice the song bemoans the lack of quality available, hence the title.
Now at Enigin we all enjoy our share of television – and often discuss it amongst the Enigin colleagues; who likes what; did you see that last night?; do you see what is on next week?; and so on.
Now almost 20 years since Bruce’s song have things improved?
A Google search tells me their are 480 TV channels in the UK, top of the list of European Countries making up 6500 TV channels, and there are1800 TV channels in the US.
All that choice – but is there much to choose from?
There will be the specialised channels and programmes that will appeal to a small audience, but generally nothing has changed since the release of Springsteen’s song – all those channels and most of it is not what we would choose to watch.
It underlines the truth of Cathy Ilani’s quote: “But it’s about quality, not quantity.” Well, at least it should be.
When I flick through all the listings on our telly I am amazed at the number of channels I have never watched, mainly because I do not want to. There is quality but not all the time, often the choice is between poor quality tekevision, or high quality re-runs which we have probably watched 10 times or more already.
Now, there is plenty of high quality TV shows out there, much very current or recent. In fact I would say there is far more quality television now than previously, it is often lost in the morass of listings and also tends to be show at the same time as other quality programmes – often meaning a choice and deciding to watch the re-run, some times just a day or a few days later.
I guess choice is the key – but I must admit I think it has got a bit daft – “1000s of Channels (And Nothin’ On)”
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