Big Brother in 'torture' row - MediaGuardian

For the presumably small number of people who haven't made the connection already, the spectacle of reality television getting more and more horrendous - as is happening not only in Germany but arguably here at home - was foreseen by the incomparable Nigel Kneale in his 1968 television play, 'The Year of the Sex Olympics' . The play is set in a world where television is employed to keep the masses quiet, and when sex as a televised distraction begins to fail, ever more violent and disturbing on-screen events, some initially accidental, are required to keep the audience happy. The climax comes when the audience is treated to a murder live on-screen from a 'Survivor'-like island - and of course the audience loves it.

Needless to say, politicians across the German spectrum have been up in arms over the appearance on Big Brother in that country of a woman apparently having a nipple inexpertly pierced without anaesthetic. German viewers of the series have previously been treated to sex scenes (which of course are only challenging to UK and American audiences, where violence is the preferred entertainment and it's sex that's curiously alien: in the rest of Europe, normal human behaviour is seen as - well, normal) and nervous breakdowns. Now it's non-anaesthetised, blood-spurting nipple-piercing. Will it be murder next?

What we don't know is what the audience thought of the blood-letting, which was apparently fairly graphic and, of course, real. Were they avidly clustered around their screens cheering, as did Kneale's 'audience sample'? Or did they dislike it as much to watch as I did to read about? I have not seen the ratings.

And should ratings matter anyway? It is currently fashionable for the quality of television programming to be measured by the size (or at least the proportion) of its audience. Today, the Bazalgettes of this world will tell us, we have lots of channels offering lots of choice. People can have what they want: so much better than the bad old days when viewers were obliged to watch what people - like Lord Reith of the BBC - thought they should have.

This is, in my humble opinion, rubbish. People apparently wanting something is not a good enough reason on its own to give it to them. Because people can only choose what they think they want from a list of previously-existing things. If you were to put a blank line at the bottom of a questionnaire intended to give people the opportunity to suggest new programming ideas, I bet most of them would be left blank. Instead, people think they want more of this, less of that, or about the same of the other... The questionnaires list, and the focus groups ask about, programmes that exist or have existed, but seldom ones yet to be dreamed of.

The last big success is to be done again, slightly differently, because it's a safe bet with fewer financial risks to be taken on the part of the always-outsourced production company, and fewer ratings-related career risks to the channel controller. Programmes with any claim to factual content must be repetitious to the point of absurdity, because programmers believe those all-important ratings will be maximized if they can be followed across a commercial break by the dumbest member of the audience - never mind if half the people who might be interested have already picked up a book and the rest are watching the football, and never mind the fact you don't apparently need anything like as much repetition in a soap-opera.

Of course entertainment is an important aspect of the service that television - and broadcasting in general - can, and should, provide. But it's only one of three. There are two other functions that go along with it, and that should not, in my view, be allowed to be overshadowed by the twin gods of Mammon and populism. Those two other functions are "to educate and inform".

The quality that today's television programmes lack is not remedied by having more of them, but by having less and increasing the ratio of programming of meaningful content. Enough of this reality TV crap: let's have some real programmes for a change. Quality programming that educates, informs, and, yes, that entertains. But that entertains with more than cheap thrills - however much the audience appears to love it.

There may be a demand for snuff television, as Kneale so presciently pointed out. But there isn't a need for it. And there is a need for quality television programming, even if there isn't as much demand for it. Though there is probably a good deal more demand than some people believe.