STRANGE DAYS IN FRONT OF THE TV
NOBODY watches television any more. Like, no one. Get over it.
Not my words but those of Siobhan Sharpe in the BBC’s glorious self-satire sitcom W1A.
And, if you are on the team of STV2’s flagship news bulletin STV News Tonight, the character’s claim surely resonates.
Viewing figures confirm that, on several nights, no one was watching. Like, no one.
Elsewhere, The Alex Salmond Show broadcasts on RT to the kinds of audiences market traders typically attract when they have got some nice beach towels in.
The BBC, wise to the fact that TV is basically, like, over, schedules the usual slew of festive Dad’s Army and Morecambe and Wise repeats for the elderly and technologically challenged who have yet to board the clue train.
While the rest of us binge. Television isn’t over at all, of course. Only the days when we let television schedulers decide what we watch are.
I’ll be feasting on the Stranger Things box set this Christmas. What’s on which channel and when is an irrelevance. I’D HAVE put money on Nicola Sturgeon’s 2017 Christmas card being a festive view of The World’s Best Bridge with Santa’s sleigh whooshing above all the stuck traffic. But no, she asked Scottish artist John Byrne to design one. And lo, his nostalgic image of a 1950s couple jiving under the mistletoe charmed my socks off. Kinda makes me hanker to be on her Christmas card list, but I guess I’ve burned my bridges.