The Ranting Room

I haven't found my favorite show on Discovery Channel (Man vs. Wild) in a long while. If they canceled it....!

mystic fred wrote:   on the subject of TV there are too many of the same old tired formats -   Big Brother - a freak show of child-like demented selfish racists - rather watch wet paint dry. - agreed Absolutely - bunch of talentless "If I'm really wacky here, I may get a career in TV" wannabees - NO! You'll be mauled by the tabloids & ruin any chance of ever being taken seriously in your life again - EVER!   A Place in the sun - leave the safe English suburbs to buy a broken down old ruin in Spain amid acres of dusty scrubland, miles from anywhere, no clean water and no electricity, the locals hate those f**king gringos buying their land anyway. if you have a heart attack forget it - a Doctor might come next month, and a builder might finish it next century.  insult your friends by charging them to stay there as only friends and family would be stupid enough to pay for that hell-hole. - worse than this, is Location, Location, Location... urgh! Aspirational TV - despise the lot of it!   Cash in the Attic - sell all your family's expensive heirlooms for pennies to waste on something really stupid, and that other one with the red and blue teams buying worthless junk at a boot sale and failing to make a profit at auction - all the boot sale sellers buy them at auction in the first place, stoopid! - Flog It!, David Dickinson's Crap, Car Booty and more..., I completely agree.  See my earlier rant. As a result of these shows, you can guarantee you can't sell anything at a boot sale without hearing the required stock phrase "what's your best price?" - IT'S A CHIPPED MUG FOR 20p YOU HEAD!   DIY programmes - don't see them much anymore but some posh fop used to wreck people's homes with his horribly tacky ideas - wasting money and reducing value of said property. - I happen to like the Nick Knowles one, because the Electrician is a complete waste of space and almost always causes power cuts, electic shocks and the like. ...and he quite looks like my uncle too - don't so much mind this one, as it can be quite funny   Vet clinics - watch ruthless vets drain worried caring pet owners'  bank accounts. - can you guess what it is yet?  Yes that's right, it's a squashed hamster! And what's the dead hamster got in common with a pelican? A large bill! Incidentally, cameraman, don't forget to zoom in quick on the owners at the first sign of tears!

Hold on, you don't have a jacuzzi and a diary room?

I thought ALL British houses had them fitted as law...

The 2005 Big Brother act says:

1. All houses are to be fitted with a large and comfortable chair.  This chair can only be fitted in a broom cupboard (or a room of equivalent size), which will thus be renamed "The Diary Room".
2. All houses are to be fitted with a jacuzzi in the back garden (no sheds allowed though), come rain or shine.  The jacuzzi will be large enough to fit 6 very lithe and bikini clad beach "babes" with bleached hair and an I.Q. of 56 (combined). N.B. Beach Babes are not supplied and are optional.
3. All houses are to be fitted with a loud megaphone, so Davina McCall or Demot O'Leary can throw you out after a 'phone vote.  N.B. you are not, under any circumstances, allowed to take any of your prized possessions with you, when you are asked to leave the house

I have all of the above.  You'll be thrown in jail if you don't.



Which is ironic, as jail is probably more hospitable than the Big Busted-women house.

When I'm flicking through the channels on cable, trying to find something vaguely worth watching, I'm frequently reminded of the Bruce Springsteen song "57 channels and nothing on".

chopper wrote: When I'm flicking through the channels on cable, trying to find something vaguely worth watching, I'm frequently reminded of the Bruce Springsteen song "57 channels and nothing on". Except it's a lot more than 57 now.

..and a far cry from the days when you had merely '13 channels of sh!t on the TV to choose from'

I still have just five channels. I've not yet bought a set top box, and I refuse to pay a monthly fee for SKY. Murdoch can kiss my &rse. I have literally trawled through all the channels on SKY and found nothing I wanted to watch, apart from a documentary on the bouncing bomb, which I'd seen before, and re-runs of 'Only fools and Horses'

I'll go digital when I have to. I dont watch enough TV to warrent spending any additional money on it.

Do you guys still have to pay that broadcast license fee in addition to whatever the price of "cable TV" (set top box, digital, etc., whatever you call it over there) is, for those that have it?

Yes - even if we own a TV that is incapable of receiving broadcast TV, (ie no ariel - just connected to a DVD player) we still have to have a licence - and it is the dwelling that is licenced, not the occupant or the TV set - so when you move you need to get a new one.

NaturalScience wrote: Do you guys still have to pay that broadcast license fee in addition to whatever the price of "cable TV" (set top box, digital, etc., whatever you call it over there) is, for those that have it?

In fact the TV license fee that we pay, only pays for the BBC channels. ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5 are funded mostly by advertising.

SKY is a rip off, because you pay a hefty monthly subscription, AND all those channels advertise their &rse off day in day out. Every program is broken buy an ad break every ten minutes. It's a con.

darqdean wrote: When I was growing up I use to get wound-up by the zimmer-pilots who kept harping on about how much better it was in the old days - like when we were kids watching Top Of The Pops my granddad would shout at the TV - 'That's rubbish - it's just noise - call that a tune - we had proper tunes in my day!' ad infinitum...   ...the trouble is...   ...it really was better in the old days: When there was only 4 TV channels we actually had more choice - less really was more; Now they spend (proportionaly) more money manking a cheap tacky programme than was ever spent making quality programmmes; We would complain bitterly if they had the termerity to actually repeat something - now we have so many chances to "see again" and have "catch-ups" it's hard to spot when the new episode is being shown; In the olden days they made a programme and that was it - it started, it finished, end of - now they ramble on for hours with endless spinnoffs and behind the scenes specials, big brother on the couch, big brother's little sister's friend's mate's other brother, big brother's big pile of warmed-up leftover crp - yet there is not enough original content there to fill a half-hour programme! Reality TV??!!! If that's reality then why haven't I got a jacuzzi and a diary room? Bah, Humbug!

darqdean wrote: Yes - even if we own a TV that is incapable of receiving broadcast TV, (ie no ariel - just connected to a DVD player) we still have to have a licence - and it is the dwelling that is licenced, not the occupant or the TV set - so when you move you need to get a new one.