Move and ELO star Roy Wood : why I hate daytime TV

May 10 2009 by Roy Wood, guest writer for The Sunday Mercury

To add insult to injury, we now have extra shows featuring all of the people who have been kicked off the other shows like The Apprentice and Big Brother because they failed the test. What the hell is that all about ?

The pain doesn’t end there because all of these programmes will be repeated at least once or twice in the same week.

It wouldn’t surprise me to switch on to Celebrities Go To The Bathroom, hosted by Gillian McKeith, where they have a panel of C-list celebrity judges who have just done a poo, and they all have to guess which person it originally belonged to.

They could follow on with another show featuring all the celebs who were disqualified because they were spotted eating curried eggs the night before.

It’s worth bearing in mind, too, we don’t actually learn anything from these moronic programmes.

Shows that were well structured and we all originally enjoyed, have been relegated to constant repeats on the Dave channel. The wildlife documentaries, which do actually impart some useful information, are also repeated continuously and are out on DVD anyway.

In these financially restrictive times people can’t afford to go out much, and you’d think that that the major TV companies would get their heads together.

They could take this opportunity to rekindle the public’s interest in the small screen, and make bigger and better productions which could rival those increasing cinema attendances.

There are people out there who do know the score, such as Greg Dyke and Michael Grade, who would be better employed as part of a broadcasting standards group to stem the bilge these independent production companies are churning out .

Somebody needs to do something if we are to prevent real entertainment from disappearing into the reality abyss.