Nothing gets me more depressed than watching an excessive amount of television.  There is something undeniably soporific about the process but it can easily lead to you watching things that you’ve seen before or things you have absolutely no interest in just for the sake of slumping in front of it for a little longer.

I very rarely come away from a television show, no matter how good it is, with a fired up sense of enthusiasm.  Even a short five minute webisode can instead just leave me wanting to watch more moving images, but no matter how much I get dragged down by television that is actually of a high quality, it’s nothing compared with the way I get dragged down by something that’s trashier and as I often think, if this is happening to me, it must be happening to other people as well.

I can’t help but feel we are being fed poor ideals by the box of flashing lights that sits in our living room.  Cheap to make easy to digest competition shows, such as the box opening non-game No Deal or No Deal, the Weakest Link or Who Wants To Be a Millionaire have all set the tone for what should be desired and sought after and that is money.  I remember watching game shows when I was little where the prizes were somewhat a bonus as opposed to the goal, with any monetary incentives being incredibly small and the prizes taking the form of washing machines and fridges presented on slowly rotating platforms.  It was the actual taking part, being on television and playing a game that was what was important.  I suppose when Countdown starts offering money to its winners, then we know we’re doomed.

The other form of cheaply made easily digested yet simultaneously nauseating show is the reality contest.  Thankfully survival shows like Big Brother seem to be on their way out and really in later years I got the sense that Big Brother was abusing the mentally ill rather than providing solid entertainment, but they have been replaced with the trend for talent shows.  There’s the excruciatingly drawn out X Factor, or Britain’s Got Talent (And Must Be Stopped) or the inexplicably popular Strictly Come Dancing, the show with a title which has never quite made much sense to me.

With X Factor in particular, as its contestants are drawn from the public, there is something in the show that almost crosses the line into inspiration and I’ve often said that they could probably condense the whole thing down into a decent half an hour show each week, but instead they drag it out way too long, have a cabal of judges that are rarely qualified to give out the advice they do, mawkish sob stories to accompany each contestant and the beg-a-thon phone vote to pull in the revenue.

It’s almost inspirational.  Almost.  What frustrates me about the talent show is that it’s presented as the only way that an ordinary person like you the viewer at home can get into that business and that getting into the business is the only thing that will make your life worthwhile.  You see contestants taking a very binary attitude towards the show, some even suggesting their life would not be worth living if it weren’t for the show they were on and if they had to go back to their depressing life in their depressing house with their depressing family and their depressing non-television experiences.  It’s demeaning, insulting and deeply distressing to see show business talked up so much and the real world derided so much.

What I would like to see (and this isn’t purely my idea) is a show where talent scouts find bands and musicians that are already working and playing gigs and give them a shot at a better deal or increase exposure.  This would not only have the same entertainment value as one of these talent shows, but it would be less hit and miss in the audition stages and would also show audiences that if you want to do that sort of thing, there really is nothing stopping you.  Television has the capacity to be an educator and in many ways it already is, it just teaches us bad lessons.  If you think you’re a good musician and want to make a living doing it, there has never been a better time to do it and talent shows so rarely highlight this.  You can build a significant following online and there are always small venues to play if they like the sound of your stuff.

Of course, what I’ve described up there would negate one of the biggest draws of the talent show.  The audition whereby all manner of weird and wonderful losers come on to make a fool of themselves.  This is where television comes into its own.  People like to see someone fail and fall on their backside.  Ok, they might be moved to tears when the 8-year-old boy whose dog just died from cancer wins through his hardship and break dances into the final to ‘Hit Me Baby One More Time’ but really, what they really look forward to is the audition stage, because then they can see people fail and look stupider than they are.  I would put money on the fact that the auditions get higher ratings than the rest of the shows.

We like to be reminded that there are people out there that aren’t doing as well as us.  Sure, it can go too far and watching images of people who truly are deprived of a decent life can be uncomfortable as we sit on our leather sofas and eating our bodyweight in roasted meat, chocolate and crisps, but watching people who are in a similar position to you but making a fool of themselves is reassuring.  Watching other people is what causes the soporific effect.  We get to see people living lives and making mistakes without leaving our sofas.  This is where television becomes uninspiring and how the box of flashing lights keeps us down.

Nobody is immune to this.  Although it’s a cliché, television can turn us into zombies, living the surrogate lives of those that frequent our screens.  The person who plays World of Warcraft every night for six hours is probably still better off than the person who keeps up with Eastenders, Emmerdale, Coronation Street, Neighbours and Hollyoaks because at least they have something to show for it, even if it is just a series of visualised numbers propped up by an often flimsy global social network.

This is by no means suggesting that I’m better than most people incidentally.  I fall for this rubbish just as much as anyone else.  I actually rather embarrassingly got hooked on the X Factor one year, even if the constant tears after every performance aggravated me.  All I know is that the more television I watch, the less I do with my time and the less I want to do with it.  During a show I will often be thinking about all the amazing things I can do when it finishes, almost willing it to its conclusion, but as soon as it’s finished, my first action is not to get up and do it, it’s to find something else to watch.

Lenin once said that religion is the opiate of the people and that the church keeps people down and the population sedated.  That’s not true any more.  People are, at least in our western society, largely liberated from religious institutions, even when they consider themselves to be religious, but instead, we have swapped those chains for other chains that are broadcast directly into our homes and even cost a subscription fee.

I’m now off to be a hypocrite and watch some television.