I used to watch lots of TV. I’ve watched all the soaps at some point or another. I must have spent well over a decade watching Saturday morning, and then Sunday morning, television. I remember the days of Going Live with @Schofe, and then Live & Kicking with @xxandip (The two wikipedia pages just brought back floods of memories… John Barrowman presenting ‘Electric Circus’!). T4 saw me through my hangover years. I’m not quite sure how many times I’ve seen each single episode of Friends.

But nowadays my viewing is much more limited. My guilty pleasures are Neighbours and Home & Away. They were the first soaps I ever watched, when Kylie was a mechanic and Sally was a little girl. In my opinion they are still slightly less scandalous and depressing that our British soaps.

They both get recorded on my PVR (that’s a digital TV tuner with a hard drive to save stuff on) alongside my seasonal favourites of Doctor Who, Strictly Come Dancing, The Apprentice and Have I Got News for You. But these days that’s about it.

I always imagined that being able to watch and record whatever TV I wanted would mean I would end up with hours of television to get through. But it’s quite the opposite. More often than not I reach for a DVD when I fancy some visual stimulation. Though the idea of TV on demand is a nice one in theory, in practice it ends up being another thing that I feel I have to do. If there is hours of TV waiting to be watched then it becomes a chore to watch it. I find Friday Night with Jonathan Ross far more enjoyable if I happen to catch it when it’s being broadcast, than if I have to catch up afterwards. I don’t find this world of on demand entertainment convenient, I find it exhausting.

Growing up in the days of the VCR you were able to record things, but if you went away for two weeks you could only manage a maximum of four hours (oh the joys of getting a few 240 minute videos for Christmas!) though I can’t actually remember leaving anything to record when we went away. I mainly used my videos to record movies, which is something I also tend to use my PVR for these days. Most of the time I just watched what was on TV when it was on, though in my later years I recorded Buffy (which coincided with dinner time) and watched it as soon as the episode had finished recording!

My younger self who was desperate to get Sky would be appalled at what I am about to say.

Maybe I’m getting old, but I find myself agreeing with people that compare a majority of our programming to junk food. It isn’t healthy or nutritional for our brains. For me having more channels and more choice means that I miss out on the really good stuff. Whenever I look through the TV guide I can’t find one thing I want to watch on all the channels that I have. I no longer watch adverts so I don’t see what’s coming up that might actually interest me. I’m sure that I’ve let quite a few fascinating documentaries pass me by because I just can’t be bothered to search for them amongst the repeats and complete rubbish on offer. When there were four channels (it took me a long time to accept Five as a legitimate channel) I’m sure there was much more quality. Maybe it’s just rose tinted glasses?

So if anyone has any ideas how I can avoid the chaff, and locate the wheat, that would be great. I don’t want to hate television. I think it is a fantastic invention to learn from and to unwind to, but I’ve lost the excitement about watching stuff on the box and I’d like to get it back!