Disturbing tv

A lot of what I see on tv disturbs me.

What sort of things am I thinking of?

So many comedians who are not funny.

So called “Celebrities” who vie with each other to wear the least clothing in public and then put the photograph on social media. 

Reality programmes that use nastiness of one kind or another to grab an audience.

The way the media leads the public into thinking what they say is news when it is so often prefaced by the phrase “We understand that….we are told that…we think that…”

The way someone’s views are routinely shouted down, mocked, talked over or cut off in most tv interviews these days. The way interviewers ask questions that politicians can’t answer; politicians who won’t answer even if they can.

The cowardly people who use Twitter to annoy, vilify and abuse others.

Dramas, films and soaps where people are horribly tortured, mutilated, beated and raped.

The obscene amount of money that is bandied around in football and most other sports today.

Advertising on tv – and anywhere, for that matter - that tempts people into gambling.

The focus on food adverts and cookery programmes when a good percentage of the nation is already obese.

The endless cookery competitions where food is wasted and living creatures are killed – there will be a dearth of lobsters soon since so many are used in cookery competitions.

Blogger thinking I have spelling errors when I am using British English!

Action all the way

I’ve been reading blogs instead of writing them today (mainly because Roland Garros is rained off! And on Ginger's blog I found something to make me think.
Ginger says: 'Sometimes you see something on TV that prompts a comparison to writing novels. Authors are always supposed to start off with a hook that reels the reader in, and keep the story interesting, no matter how many twists and turns it takes.'

She goes on to relate the summary of a US medical show which sounds as if it exhausts every emotion in the viewer.
It reminded me of the reason I stopped watching Casualty and Holby City and the like. The story lines seem to me to be as similarly fast-paced as the American show, though I don’t think crocodiles have featured in them yet. My question is this: are these shows a Good Thing if they leave people wanting books that read as fast as the tv shows?

I'm not sure. I gave up watching Casulaty and Holby City when I started predicting the accidents, however unlikely, that were going to end up as the hospital's problem. Someone's cooking? - there'll be a fire. Climbing a ladder - he'll fall, and take three pedestrians with him. Driving - well, it's never a single crash now, but it's always a multiple vehicle pile-up on the motorway and someone always has to have a limb taken off....

Is this entertainment? It seems so.
I imagine, perhaps even hope, that a good many people are turned away by how often reality is sacrificed for a good story on tv. As book writers, rather than tv writers, we are encouraged to make things real for the reader. Agents demand characterisation as well as action, and the books that haunt our best seller lists and take national prizes often fill six hundred pages with episodic and slow-paced happenings that cannot really be called action.

It seems to me that the two mediums are vastly different, but somewhere in the middle there is a blurring. I’m hoping that the blurring stays just that and does not impinge the standards of one medium upon the other.
Any views on this?

The pic is the inside of the central block of Seaton Delaval Hall after the 1822 fire.