Has the "Multichannel Era" killed off quality Television?

Hello there! I am new to this forum and I was just wondering what you guys think about Television today compared to the Late 90's and Early 00's when the majority of us didn't have Freeview.

When Freeview launched I was excited at the time because I thought to myself that there would always be something to watch if you had 50 channels to choose from.

I lived on the border of Northern Ireland in the late 90's early 00's where I had BBC1, BBC2, UTV, Channel 4, RTE1, RTE2, TV3 and TG4

These channels all had something to offer so at the time I thought the multichannel era would multiply the great content of these channels but I'm actually disappointed that hasn't happened. The majority of Multichannel TV seems to be repeats.

Multichannel TV seems to have given us more quantity and less quality and I want to know who agrees, who disagrees and why.

Thanks for reading!

Have you ever watch the telly back then? Its was full of utter crap. ITV was badly downmarket, and even Ch4 started piling out the crap shows.

There is still plenty of quality Television look on More 4, or BBC 4. Also BBC3 and Ch4 have good doc. ITV have a growing number of drama which are outstanding.

Even the repeats are of poor quality when you think about it! I look at the launch of UK Gold and see the variety of programming they had then compared to now, for example 'Alas Smith and Jones' which I don't think has been repeated at all recently apart from one outing when Mel Smith died.

Quality television still exists, it's just very much pigeon holed. Multichannel has allowed broadcasters to shove all their good programmes away in the dark corners of BBC4, Sky Arts, documentary channels etc... and fill their "main channels" with populist crap.

I remember television at the turn of the noughties. It wasn't great, but it wasn't bad. You had the likes of The Royle Family, Dinnerladies, Early Doors and Little Britain flying the flag for comedy, for example, compared with some of the hideous dross that's on nowadays. There was no "constructed reality", there was WWTBAM, The Weakest Link doing good trade on the quiz front, Big Brother was considered "new".... it wasn't bad!

I think the U.S is in the middle of a golden age when it comes to TV drama and comedy. The UK, we still do good drama. Our live entertainment output is a bit bland in that there's been no real new standout hits in a few years, but not terrible. Comedy output however is pathetic. There hasn't been a truly decent new comedy show, whether it be a standup one or a sitcom for years. The stalwarts like Have I Got News for You and Mock the Week still do ok. But there is no new blood doing anything special. Where are the new generations of comedians. The mid 2000s when Mock the Week was introduced, we started getting a lot of decent new comedians hitting the screens. Now who have we got?

I personally try not to be too cynical when it comes to the whole "it was better in my day" argument. I watch what I like, there's more places to watch the things I like, and I can ignore the things I don't like (to a degree!).




Agree, we are very much lacking in comedy at the moment compared to even 5 years ago.

The only thing that hit quality in my opinion was the 1991 franchise auction, not due to the loss of Thames (which is often the reason cited) but the whole process really unsettled the industry and caused budgets to be slashed as companies struggled to make up their annual fees.

That aside, since the introduction of multi-channel TV, of course the big channels' market share has been eaten into but also the cost of making television has substantially reduced, due to improved technology and the breaking up of the unions. This has allowed the big channels to maintain quality (if not improve) - and it's this quality which helps those channels stand out from the rest.

Thames was never that great in the early 90s either.

I think the introduction of Channel 5 didn't help matters much. Certainly dumbed down news overnight.

That's a good point actually. In the early multi channel days, channels like that would show a varied schedule. Now they show their few biggest ones back to back every single day.

This is reducing the chances of success of new shows, as people can just watch Big Bang Theory every night instead of watching a new comedy.

It's quite sad that many new shows don't even get a good rating for their first episode. Plus people make their mind up very quickly, so all those hit shows that were actually poor in the first series, wouldn't have become hits in today's world. Wasn't Only Fools and Horses' first series a bit poor

There are also a lot of genres that are dying out. The sort that will never set the world on fire. Game shows is one.

OFAH along with Are you being service had poor ratings the first series.

Go to about 1hr49 0n this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NU8YMn5wLZc