Turn off the TV

It's not surprising Australian TV viewers are turning off the commercial TV stations. The Daily Telegraph reports viewers are down 7% this year.

Given the arrogance of the Australian commercial TV networks, this isn't surprising. They have kicked around their viewers for too long and people are getting the message.

Here's a few examples of how they treat viewers badly.

1. Slow bringing good product to market. The top US TV shows arrive on Australian screens at least one season late. This might have been alright in 1973, but viewers know better today.

2. Crap Australian product. Too little homegrown product and what does get to air is often rubbish. Licensed version of Big Brother and other pointless tripe just turns viewers off, even the dimwits who watch this garbage eventually get bored with the same thing.

3. Too many repeats. Now, I enjoy The Simpsons, but honestly Channel Ten just how many times can you flog repeats of poor Bart?

4. Bizarre programming decisions. When the good stuff finally arrives from the US it gets scheduled late at night. This wouldn't be so bad if you could record it, but the networks make that hard by showing the episodes out of order and a different times each week.

5. Inconsistent program times. You can't record these programs because no-one has any idea when the show will go to air next week. It might be 1.00am this Tuesday and 11.45pm the following Monday.

6. Late running programs. Even if you do figure out when the program is scheduled to be on, you may well find it's not anyway. Peak time shows commonly run late, by midnight shows can be up to an hour out.

7. Out of order shows. This has to be the ultimate insult. You get a TV series like the Sopranos and show it out of order. What's worse, you sometimes drop in episodes from a previous series just to make sure everyone is confused.

8. The death of late night TV. No-one expects good television at 3am. But the "interactive quiz shows" that encourage morons to waste their pensions on texting premium call lines are beyond an insult.

9. The death of the ad break. The crucial moment in CSI arrives where you find whodunnit. As the music rises to a climax and the DA prepares to give their denouement, Rove McManus's head bounces across the bottom the screen to announce his interview with Paris Hilton tomorrow night.

10. Sheer incompetence. Channel Seven paid over $300 million Australian dollars for the rights to show half the Australian Football League games. They promptly gave the good ones to the Pay-TV networks and scheduled the remaining ones in a way that managed to irritate every Aussie Rules fan in the country and cause a major clash with their coverage of the V8 Supercars.

The latter point probably explains why Pay-TV subscriptions are up. Half the country's Aussie Rules fans are either signing up or about to. With this Channel Seven also managed to singlehandedly sink the Save My Sport campaign. Most Aussie sports fans now know free to air sport means "near live" or "we might show it next Wednesday at 3.00am after Hot Dogs super text quiz."

There's a simple answer to criticism of TV: Turn the thing off.

I have for the above reasons: The only commercial TV I now watch is the 5pm news (it suits our family routine) and the odd bit of sport. It seems I'm not the only one.