Television in Britain. Independent Study. Term I

Year 3

Independent Study. Term I

Module 1. Cinema and Television

I. Reading

Read the following text and decide if the statements below are true or false.

TELEVISION IN BRITAIN

The number of people in Britain who choose to ignore television is so small they never count in statistical studies. Given the influence of this most invasive of mass media, survey concern themselves with how many sets each household has and how many hours people spend watching.

The accusatory fingers are out every so often that children are hopelessly addicted to TV. The latest survey shows that one in every four British children has his own TV set and is glued to it for 13 hours a week, which works out to a solid two hours every evening. A cause for parental worry with many wringing their hands in despair that there is little control over what the kids watch, ruining their imagination in the process, never mind that homework takes a poor second place.

This is especially so when they go beyond the 9 p.m. watershed for about programmes that show explicit sex, violence and other undesirable facets of low life. Others worry that television is a harbinger of family life breakdown. Socialists and mass media analysts’ efforts to alert the public to television’s pervasive dangers seem so much waffling. Now satellite TV has enjoined the circuit and homes all over Britain are sprouting dish antennae to add even more channels to the existing four.

The two channels Sky and BSB (British Satellite Broadcasting), which recently merged, have spent millions enticing the public to bring even more package news, entertainment and sport into their living rooms. The public outery is that the line between education/information and negative influence is thin enough as it is without the world becoming the viewer’s oyster. Watchdogs, watersheds and censorship aside, British television does indeed pervade, distract, entertain and alarm, depending on your moral views, self-discipline and, in the case of parents, vetting powers.

BBCI and BBC2 are non-commercial stations depending on annual licence fees and government subsidy. ITV and Channel 4 have yet to bombard viewers with commercials between heartbeats as is the case with American television but do have enough ‘breaks’ to make watching irksome. Of the four channels ITV is the only 24-hour channel though no survey has yet been done about what the viewership figure are during the wee small hours. Security guards on night duty must find this a comforting distraction.

Except for BBC 2, the other channels vie ceaselessly for viewership from six in the morning, with snap, crackle and pop ‘breakfast television’ that can range from the inane to the arty. Contents are a hodgepodge of current affairs, world news and pop gossip that aim to capture the attention of millions of people rushing off to work before 9 a.m. The ratings war becomes the yardstick for the rise or fall of such programming and the efforts to sustain viewers often reach ridiculous heights. One breakfast session was suffering so badly that the producers decided to bring in a character called Ronald Rat – a glove puppet. It didn’t say much for viewers’ cranial matter when the toothy rodent pulled the programme from the brink of cancellation to an all-time popularity!

Provincial station like Central, TVS, Channel, Anglia and Yorkshire have somewhat different schedule but pool their news coverage on the independent ITV and Channel 4 channels. All papers print daily viewing schedules for every station. It is as impossible to use a blanket description for British television as it is to pigeonhole public tastes. You could use every adjective in the book and still not encompass what appears on the little box. At best, accolades and brickbats are only a reflection of individual taste.

1. A great number of people in Britain usually ignore television.

2. British children watch TV 2 hours a week.

3. Television causes family problems.

4. Ronald Rat appeared in one of the programmes on TV to entertain children in a puppet show.

5. British channels constantly compete with each other.

6. There is not so much variety of programmes on British television.

II. Reading

You are going to read an article containing film reviews. For Questions 1-8 choose from the films A-F. Some of the films may be chosen more than once. When more than one answer is required, these may be given in any order. There is an example at the beginning (0).

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