Roger Waters was prescient when he sang on the song "Nobody Home" from 1979's The Wall:

"I've got 13 channels of $hit on my TV to choose from"

Really disappointing to see the leeching of any decent content from Freeview to Sky. TVNZ is the worst culprit - thanks a lot, National Government (and also thanks to commercial reality unfettered by decent state support for a public broadcaster).

Replaced by infomercials and junk TV aimed at tweens (I'm looking at you TV6) - where is the heartland stuff paid for by previous NZ taxpayers? That's right, sold of to igloo to further fund Rupert Murdoch's young wife and his family's global media empire. For shame. I remember better quality and more choice in programming back when we only had two channels. OK - this is possibly a little rose-tinted, but at least it wasn't lost amongst vast acres of dross running 24/7 on what was promised as the best thing since televised sliced bread.

It's not even like the cheap niche channels take advantage of the format. Most of it is cruddy low-def stuff filmed on video. Heaven forbid our Freeview|HD should actually live up to its name.

Oh well - thank goodness for the interwebs. Yes, I do realise that this is another reason for the decline of broadcasting.

And thank goodness for the great outdoors, which I now have more time to enjoy thanks to the fluff on free TV  (they're not planning on selling that too, are they?).


/rant over