Tuesday, November 08, 2005

Beeb Watch

With a continuing sense of grievance that my license fee will have gone towards the £58 million cost of making the unwatchable series Rome, I feel inclined to mention my on-going annoyance at the pious way in which Cbeebies shuts down at 19.00 hours, well before the time when exhausted parents tire of bed-time reading and could really do with some toe-curlingly patronizing, unimaginative and sleep-inducing children's TV: Balamory, Tikkabilla et al.

My feelings about Cbeebies could be best summed up by the way in which Woody Allen's two women describe the food at the Catskill Mountain Resort "Terrible and such small portions."

Wake up Beeb! The fact that your programme schedulers think that all children who'd watch that channel should be in bed by your prescribed hour, doesn't make it so. Not all of them are packed off to day care first thing in the morning.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Why don't you just tape some shows?

Anonymous said...

I think I would agree with you if we had the fortune of having digital tv. As it is, we have to contend with only ever having the chance to see CBeebies in the morning, and even then it's usually stuff we don't like! I've realised that, despite preferring BBC to other channels because of the lack of advertising, CBeebies on BBC2 is actually one huge advert for the CBeebies channel and I hate that. Rosie *loved* Boobie Beebies when it was on for two short weeks, and got really excited every time it was advertised as being on the CBeebies channel for two weeks after it had been showing. I really felt for her when I had to tell her it wasn't going to be on...not looking forward to when she's old enough to understand that there is actually something we could do to ensure she'd be able to watch it all the time!

Cx

Andrea R said...

I'd forgotten how limited the choices were on English tv.
Got a VCR? :D

I kinda have the opposite problem. We have a satellitel channel that is all kid shows, all day and night. I've occasionally had a hard time explaining to Emma that at some point, they all go to bed too. :)

Carlotta said...

re taping...yep, I guess so. I realise my post was almost entirely irrational...but it grates putting such trash on tape. I don't want the Beeb thinking we actually seriously LIKE it!

I have to admit that we even have Sky, but we cannot wind down to this due to the adverts, which instantly cause all of us to jump up looking for something else to do. There is clearly a Pavlovian association between adverts and total boredom here.

Then there is the problem of watching films since we get too emotionally involved to consider sleep.

OK so am realising that am being a totally obnoxious, hard to please customer who needs to be ignored!

Anonymous said...

I couldn't possibly ignore you Carlotta ;-)

You could always try noggin after Nickjr, great for adults and sleepless children alike :-)))
JFT

Anonymous said...

But... but... I like Balamory... Houses in pretty colours, a gay scotsman that speaks posh and a soap operish cop song, what else could you want?

Carlotta said...

re: Balamory: Lol...yes, if I could consistently view it on the level of self-satire, I wouldn't complain, but I just can't do this consistently and lose it when they yet hit you with the fact that the casting is intended as a celebration of diversity in its very worst form, ie: as a form of suspension of judgement, or indiscriminate acceptance, ie: most particularly aesthetic relativity.

But actually I do entirely agree with you about the house colours!