Why TV must be watched

Jan 24 2003 By Nicholas Craig, The Journal

The instant power of the media was brought home to me when discussing the effects of a BBC programme about Alnwick Garden.

The visitor attraction's website usually gets about three to four thousand hits a week. In one day after the screening of the hour-long programme it recorded 36,000 visits to the site.

This instant reaction sums up the immediacy, impact and influence of television on all of us. Apparently 93pc of us tune into the television every day, which is more than radio, newspapers, magazines and internet news combined.

We face an explosion in available channels, new forms of transmission and a highly touted convergence with the computer.

Yet an increasing number of TV programmes appear to be produced as filler for the space between commercials.

Programming decisions are driven by a shrinking number of corporate executives, far removed from the audiences they supposedly serve.

Television remains the world's most powerful and pervasive communications medium. But what are we doing with the power?

Malcolm Muggeridge once wrote about how what we see via television enters directly into our minds with hardly any chance of being questioned, while what we read has to be analysed (at least to the level of deciphering what the words mean) before we can take it in.

It is the covert, rather than the overt impact that concerns me with TV programmes and decision- making.

The news we never get to see, the assumption in many soaps that violence is an appropriate response to a disagreement, the rare opportunities to genuinely see all sides of an argument and the London-centric approach of presenters and news programmes all colour our viewing and condition our receptive minds.

When the power of TV works in our favour - as it did for the Alnwick Garden - we can applaud its effect.

When it misinforms or bends the truth it is a dangerous medium that requires robust regulation.

I am not convinced current authorities have the clout or speed of reaction to fight the advertisers and station owners in these rapidly changing times.

The next five years are undoubtedly going to be very interesting in the evolution of the media.

Let's hope we're fired up with knowledge rather than dumbed down as a result.

* Nicholas Craig is a partner at Watson Burton law firm