Phone-ins and Constant Ad-Breaks. The Price of Modern TV.

It wasn't that long ago that if you watched an hour long programme on ITV, that you'd expect to see about three advert breaks of around three minutes long. Now though, watch an hour and a half of The X-Factor or I'm a Celebrity on a Saturday night and you can expect to sit through six advert breaks with around twenty five minutes worth of ads in total. That's to say out of ninety minutes show time, twenty five minutes or nearly a third is adverts. But it's not only far longer and far more frequent ad-breaks you have to sit through whilst watching your favourite programme nowadays. Add in recaps, previews, phone-in competitions and all the rest, the amount of actual programme you get for your well-earned time is even less.

Almost every live programme on ITV for instance has a phone-in competition which the presenters will relentelessly plug at every ad-break. If gambling was supposed to be something discouraged then no-one's told ITV. These simple phone calls will cost at least a pound a time. And the odds of winning the prize are very, very slim indeed. A pound may not seem a lot but when you have people phoning up more than once to these competitions or entering two or three a week then it all adds up. Not to metion the profit the TV channel is making from these phone calls.

Because you have hundreds of thousands trying to win that one prize. That one prize. Yes, it may be a good prize, a holiday or car or whatever. But if you have one hundred thousand people phoning up, then your odds of winning are one hundred thousand to one. You may as well go down the bookies with your pound and stick it on a reasonably priced horse. At least you have a fair chance of winning some money back.

And the reason you have around one hundred thousand people entering is because these ABC phone-in quizzes they set are ridiculously easy by anyone's standards. It's usually along the lines of 'What's the capital of England?' Is it A- Norwich. B- London or C- Britney Spiers. Or it could be asking what's the name of the planet we live on? A -Earth. B – Jupiter or C – Britney Spiers. The question is deliberatly as easy as possible because the object is to get as many people phoning up as possible. Another unfortunate consequence of this is you'll have people who are not the brightest getting excited, phoning up immediately because they know the capital of England isn't Britney Spiers and they're fairly sure, not certain, but fairly sure they aren't living on Jupiter.

When I say 'not the brightest' people by the way I don't mean that in a disparaging way. I could say the most vulnerable. But it's no doubt, those in these hard times who can't afford to lose their money gambling who will do so. The most desperate. And the actual cost of the call is easily lost in the excited spiel of the voiceover. True, the price of the phone call is shown on screen as well. As well as the fact you can enter online for free a lot of the time. But of course the miniscule print at the bottom of the screen is almost impossible to read.
Daybreak, This Morming or Loose Women are but three daytime programmes which not only have phone-in competitions but at least a two or three minute segment shown every fifteen minutes to get you to gamble your money away by making a simple phone call. Only then can you watch the adverts and see what you can buy with any money you have left.

It's certainly not just ITV who does this. Cable TV channels are even worse for adverts. It seems that whatever commercial channel you're on, the adverts aren't built around the TV programmme anymore but the other way around.

Of course, adverts bring in revenue for the TV channel and are a necessary evil. And understandably perhaps, with ITV's recent record debts they have obviously decided to squeeze out every last commercial drop of value in each programme they show. And to be fair ITV's debts are now coming down, slowly but surely. In fact, the way things are going it's only a matter of time before they turn things completely around. They are a commercial organisation and are there to make money.

It seems however one of the main aims of any commercial TV programme nowadays is to get you not only to spend your time in front of the TV but to get you to spend your money as well. Yet the morals of the phone-in competitions alongside the ever expanding ad breaks mean that making money seems to be the overwhelming priority over making entertaining programmes. The balance between ads, phon-in and actual programme content is just about tolerable at this time. But any more swing towards making profit instead of just making programmes may mean that could change sooner rather than later.

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The X Factor and the Nice Factor.

It was good to see Little Mix win the X-Factor. They emerged I feel as the best vocalists which is always a good sign to see in the winners of a singing contest. But they also seemed to be genuinely nice girls too. And during the course of the series being a nice person also seemed to be an important part of having the X-Factor.

I mean it could be said that Misha B was one of the best vocalists in the contest as well. But even before the bullying allegations came along, Misha B didn't come across as likeable. Misha B may be a nice person in real life but she appeared otherwise under the media spotlight. And certainly one reason people didn't vote for her was that, rightly or wrongly, she didn't appear to have a likeable personality.

On the other hand, although it's good for getting votes, some people may say too many nice people on one show is not necessarily good for viewing figures. And sure enough, viewing figures for the final between the nice Marcus Collins and the even nicer Little Mix and was down by about four million viewers on last year. It seems in the same way the public like to cheer or indeed vote for the good, they like a baddie to boo just as much.

Nevertheless, that's what I liked about this years X-Factor overall this year. Being a good person did seem to be a factor in whether an act was popular or not with the public. You may think this is obvious. But in many other reality TV shows nowadays, being a good person can be something which appears to be frowned upon, mocked even. Being a nice person is for losers. Many could learn however that apart from having talent, you don't have to be ruthless, self-centred and arrogant to be a success. That like Little Mix, having talent and being nice with it, in other words having a likeable personality, can be an essential part of having the X-Factor.

Life in Modern Britain. Playing By the Rules.

You do your best. You go to work. Pay your taxes. Play by the rules because you believe it's the right thing to do. You believe it's the right thing to do because you're a good,honest,hard-working person. You know the difference between right and wrong. And yet, every day it seems there's more and more obstacles put in your way. Taxes go up. Food prices go up. Electricity goes up. Gas goes up. Fuel goes up. The only thing which doesn't go up is your bleedin' wages. 

And as time goes on, more and more you begin to ask yourself just who the hell are you really working for? Yourself? Your family? Or in reality is it more the government you're working for? Or the banks? Or the company shareholders who live the life of Riley on the back of the hard slog you put in every day? 

And then you read the papers or watch the news and it's the murderers, rapists and everyday thugs of this world who appear to be the only ones who are being looked after. Whilst those in power abuse the system for their own benefit. Politicians and their expenses. Bankers and their bonuses. Company directors and their million pound pay-offs. And all the time you're just struggling to survive. Trying to live an honest, decent life.

But the fact is you haven't time to think about the unfairness of the world because you have to get up tomorrow at 6:30 am to go to work. To go on a daily commute on an overpriced, over-crowded bus or train or travel on a jam packed road in a car that you know, if things continue as they are at least, you won't be able to afford much longer.

Nevertheless you do your best. Because it's all you can do. Because you have a family to feed. A mortgage to pay. But more and more through no fault of your own your life is like a silent scream. Because no-one's listening to the honest, genuine people like yourself. So you go to work. Pay your taxes. Play by the rules. Because you believe it's the right thing to do. And that's what I thought. Once. But not any more. Not any more.