Grand Theft Telly

The big American television networks announced their lines-up for next season this week, and the news has been pretty interesting. Dead wood like Brothers & Sisters, V and The Event has been axed, seemingly struck by the Curse of Channel 4 - if they buy it in and heavily publicise it, it'll fail. See also Dirty Sexy Money. Meanwhile, remakes of Charlie's Angels and Prime Suspect have been commissioned, as has a remake of Free Agents, a much-ignored and sharply written series from... oh, Channel 4. That explains it.

A larger question is being asked, however. Not the one about how the new version of Wonder Woman from the same creative team as the infamous US version of Life on Mars even got as far as a pilot, but how many of these programmes are actually going to be available to British viewers who don't have electronic equipment bolted to the sides of their houses by multinational corporations.

Lost used to be the one programme that my entire household sat down together to watch. For the first two series, anyway. Then the import rates went up, Channel 4 opted to hang on to Desperate Housewives instead, and Sky bought Lost. You want to watch it. Then subscribe, consumer. And don't imagine that we're putting it on our Freeview channel. We only run that because of obligations to Ofcom, which is why it's filled with cheap documentaries and repeats of Cold Case.

It was at this point that I started investigating what this "torrenting" business was all about. It turns out, it's rather handy.

The same fate had previously befallen protracted right-wing fantasy 24. Two seasons on BBC Two, then WOOSH. Gone. The next two seasons eventually turned up on the aforementioned Sky 3 at about two in the morning. I acquired season five from elsewhere and the remainder is still a mystery. I was hoping that by the final season Jack Bauer was fighting off an alien invasion, since he's already killed every Muslim in the world.
Torrenting was a solution to the Lost conundrum. Seasons three, four and five were delivered to my desktop thanks to some nifty freeware, and the only reason I didn't continue with the final season was the loss of my home broadband connection. So my parents taped it for me. My mum even got up at the crack of dawn to record the final episode on its global simulcast, and watched the whole thing to make sure it recorded without a problem. I wonder what she thought was going on. In any case, she earned a big bunch of flowers for that.

So many other excellent programmes are locked away by Sky, it seems strange that no-one seems to make a fuss. House, Battlestar Galactica, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, Chuck, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Weeds, Futurama. Many of them are produced for the Fox network in the US, which like Sky is a subsidiary of News Corporation, making these deals look the tiniest bit suspicious. You can always buy the box sets, of course, but this is a matter of principle. I expect to see these programmes continue to be shown on free-to-air television, paid for either by the licence fee or advertising, not on a channel for which I need a licence, and a contract with another company, and a man to come to plug in some wires, and EVEN THEN still have to sit through commercial breaks. It's pure greed. Nothing more.

So why do I object? What wrong with Sky? Their business practices leave quite a lot to be desired, for the main thing. As a subsidiary of a multinational media company, it has financial resources to draw upon that cannot be matched by other broadcasters, so it is able to outbid the likes of the BBC and Channel 4 - ITV makes no effort, Channel 5 will shortly stop bothering and few other networks even try. The same company then uses its mouthpieces in the press to attack the competition and try to claim the moral high ground, despite its broadcast news services in both the UK and the United States being at best partisan and at worst guilty of fraud and libel on an unprecedented scale. Even the influence it has over politics is used to expand its domination of the British media - witness the way Rupert Murdoch has been cosying up to the Prime Minster, and how the consultation regarding the complete take-over of Sky has been assigned not to the Business Secretary Vince Cable, an admitted opponent of Murdoch, albeit a professionally-minded one, but to Jeremy Hunt, the troglodyte yes-man squatting in the post of Culture Secretary. And because people keep buying the Sun, keep watching Sky News and keep failing to ask questions, it's only going to get worse until there won't be a medium for you to ask questions  in.

In short, the main reason I haven't been watching Battlestar Galactica is because of David Cameron.

As a quick postscript, there are two other US programmes that are shown on terrestrial, if you can find them. ITV has the rights to the US version of The Office, but the series is so poorly scheduled and promoted it's a miracle I even caught the last series. The other is Community, shown on MTV spinoff VIVA, which I fully expect to lose the rights to the second season, especially since the lack of listings in the Radio Times can't be helping its viewing figures, and by extension its ad revenue.

Blimey, I'm in a right mood today. It must be the comedown after the weekend and yesterday's Doctor Who. Wasn't it brilliant? Didn't you just fall in love with Idris? I certainly welled up quite a bi at the end, but in a very manly, repressed way.

Oh, and the fitness is going well. I've put on weight again, but my appetite is coming under control and I've lost fat and gained muscle. So that's nice. I'm going to try to think of something nice to write about, like why I'd want to live in Brighton, or my favourite shade of green, or which brand of instant coffee is best.

Sorry for the lack of amusing pictures, but the crappy software keeps putting huge gaps in the text when I try to align it to one side. Someone will suffer.