Coming up . . .

It's been a week since I last blogged but it's been hectic catching up on everything. That said I'm not doing a good job of that. Just had one of those days where I had more than enough to be getting on with, but did none of it. The longer the day went on the less I did. Bizarre. I think we all have those days when trivial things get done rather than the important things. There's a saying that writers have the best decorated homes because they'd rather do that than write.

I concur.

Anyway, enough of the preamble, I'm here to have a rant today!

Is it just me or have broadcasters discovered that we have all lost our ability to remember anything? I am aware that dementia is a growing issue, but I'm convinced that it does not affect all the television watching population!

What am I going on about, I can hear you shouting? OK, well, I'll tell you.

Almost every programme now, before a commercial break, will tell us what is coming up next, then when we return a few minutes later, because we all have the memory capability of a goldfish, we're told about what happened before we went to the commercial break!

But to make matters worse, the BBC are now doing it! And they don't have commercial breaks! During breakfast today I had Heir Hunters playing in the background on BBC1. If I'd have timed it right I could have watched just 4 minutes of it and known the whole programme! These were the four slots that told us what had gone before and what was about to happen. Why then should we bother watching?!

There was a great series on recently with Ben Fogle and James Cracknel called Race To The Pole. Great series, except they adopted annoying thing number 2; the first 5 minutes was all about what the programme was all about! And they did it every feckin week!!

WE KNOW!! WE'VE BEEN WATCHING!!

I also wonder if I'm not the only person at the end of The Apprentice to keep my finger hovering above the off button at the point when the narrator says; "Sir Allan's search for his apprentice, continues". You just know that after that they're going to spoil the whole of next week's programme by telling you all about it! Annoying thing number 3!

Aaaaargh!

However, as I work on the fringes of the industry I can enlighten you for one reason why this is happening; it's all to do with available budgets. The more they repeat and put fillers into the programmes, the less content they need to fill, and thus less budget.

Well, in a break with this annoying habit and dumbing down, I'm not going to tell you what's going to be in my next blog, or for that matter what's going to be in it.

Sorry, did I just repeat myself there!?

And if you can't remember that then watch TV; it's designed for you!