Channel surfing

THe day Channel 4 started broadcasting was a big event. The build-up had gone on for weeks and we had to have our TVs re-tuned to receive the new channel.

I dashed home from school for the big opening but the first show, Countdown, deflated my balloon!

Yet though it took a while to get going, Channel 4 proved to be innovative. It seems unlikely that the unveiling of a new TV channel would cause such excitement today. There isn’t that sense of a shared experience, with families all over the country sitting down to enjoy the same show.

my TV viewing tends to be on catch-up. I enjoy ant & Dec’s saturday Night Takeaway, Dancing on Ice, Question of sport and The Chase, old series of Gordon ramsay’s Hell’s Kitchen, sport and the news, which adds up to a lot of weekly TV.

I also stream three or four movies each week.

This must make me sound like a lard-bucket couch potato, but I enjoy TV as entertainment. You won’t see me channel-surfing just for the sake of finding something to watch. DAVID PATRICK MOORE, Beckenham, Gtr London.

WATCH this, tune in to that, switch on, subscribe, stream. We’re all being coaxed and cajoled to keep us glued to our TV sets.

Telly has not only hit overload, it is attempting to turn us into sofa squatters. I don’t have subscriptions and never watch daytime TV, soaps, raucous quiz and game shows, the plethora of dramas or the countless celebrity jollies to foreign lands.

my viewing is selective and restricted to those programmes that inform and enrich our lives.

For the rest of the time, give me a good book. G. ANDREWS, Bideford, Devon.