TV has become exploitative and cruel, says Ofcom chair Michael Grade

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2024/apr/14/tv-has-become-exploitative-and-cruel-says-ofcom-chair-michael-grade

by CaseyEffingRyback

41 comments

  2. Why use Love Island as an example, is pandering to the obsessive desire for 15 minutes of fame by those vapid airheads actually exploitative? Seems to me everyone is getting want they want, the audience gets its human zoo, the participants get fame, and the producers get really cheap TV.

  3. Which is why more people are looking elsewhere for their TV. One look at schedule has you are looking elsewhere.

    Magazine show for celebs to push their latest project. Tick. Soap opera way past its sell by date. Tick. Manufactured competition involving people you don’t care about running around and desperate for fame. Tick. Police show designed to make you depressed about the state of the country. Tick.

    The sad fact is that there are now a lot of countries making much better produced and original content than British TV at the moment, as long as you don’t mind reading subtitles, which also makes you put your phone down and concentrate.

  4. That’s a good take from ofcom. Only took em *checks notes* … 25 years.

  5. It’s always been very exploitative and cruel. Especially shoes like the x factor

  6. I remember a BBC advert, where they were bragging due to the unique way they were funded, it allowed them to take risks producing great comedy shows. What have they produced since Little Britain that were any good?

  7. TV has become tiresome and dull; that’s for sure. As for Love Island etc, the people who go on there must have seen these types of shows, and therefore know what will likely happen to them. Imagine being so desperate for recognition that they let themselves be exposed like that?

  8. I don’t watch normal tv and haven’t for over a decade now. Watch movies and series on streaming services, but that’s it. Learn any news from memes

  9. Everything has. We value human life and human dignity as little as ever. From women getting attacked and sexually assaulted through to knife crime, male suicides etc….fact is I think as a society we’ve grown far too accepting of it.

  10. I remember thinking the rise of Simon Cowell in like 2004 was making entertainment out of cruelty and mockery but things have only got worse since then… those sort of shows implicitly say ridiculing and judging people for entertainment value is okay.

  11. “Has” become? reality tv shows these days have a much better standard of care than reality tv even 10 years ago. taking love island for example, on the first few seasons contestants were allowed to drink as much as they want, were shown having sex, were fed half truths by the producers to encourage fights whereas these days they’re not allowed to drink much, their private time is private and the games they play aren’t lies as much. I think people who went on reality tv shows in the 00s/10s may not have really known the beast it would become and what it would mean for them but everybody who applies for a show now knows exactly what it entails, I find it hard to agree that they’re being exploited.

    Truly exploitative shows like benefits Britain, Jeremy Kyle show, can’t pay we’ll take it away arent really viewed favourably anymore.

  12. Big Brother (2000), X Factor (2004), Britain’s Got Talent (2007)…

    …Jim’ll Fix It.

  13. A lot of these shows set a really bad example of what a healthy relationship is and isn’t

  14. Big brother started this. Reality TV is cheaper and easier than actually having to write scripts and have sets and talent.

    I can’t stand the lot of it, apart from maybe Bake Off where there is actually some talent!

  15. TV is broadcasting what our sick society wants to see.

  16. *Reality TV

    Scripted television is still really good in this country.

  17. I haven’t watched tv in 15+ years. I caught a glimpse recently and it’s utter brain rot.

    Tv in the uk depresses the shit out of me

  18. isn’t that the same guy that did a TV show where teenagers licked grannies armpits?
    hypocrisy at the highest level lmao

  19. TV hasn’t become exploitative and cruel

    People have become exploitative and cruel. And they always have been. Except now TV allows us to realise it. People are shit.

  20. People love to say things are getting Orwellian and reference ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’ but the better reference is to [‘The Year of the Sex Olympics’](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Year_of_the_Sex_Olympics) – first broadcast in a 1968 television play by the BBC:

    “*Influenced by concerns about overpopulation, the counterculture of the 1960s and the societal effects of television, the play depicts a world of the future where a small elite controls the mass media, keeping the lower classes docile by serving them an endless diet of lowest common denominator programmes and pornography. The play concentrates on an idea the programme controllers have for a new programme that will follow the trials and tribulations of a group of people left to fend for themselves on a remote island. In this respect, the **play is often cited as having anticipated the craze for reality television**.*

    *Kneale had, fourteen years earlier, adapted George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four as a classic and controversial BBC broadcast, and the play reflects much of Kneale’s assimilation of Orwell’s concern about the power of the media and Kneale’s experience of the evolving media industry.*”

  21. i know TV doesn’t just mean live TV but i’m just curious, do many people 30 or under actually watch TV anymore? I mean i do watch shows from time to time but on netflix or online, and thats mainly sitcoms or documentaries. Most of the time i just watch youtube.

  22. Isn’t this take at least 20 years old, and therefore 20 years too late? TV became increasingly exploitative in the 00s, at the same time New Labour and the right wing press were scapegoating and persecuting benefits claimants.

  23. Jeremy Kyle has come and gone and they’re only just figuring this out now?

  24. If we only we had a regulator to deal with this kind of problem… oh wait!

  25. Most media has. The rise of social media is another example. Another example is trauma porn, true crime.

    Everything is an enemy and it’s gross

  26. Ofcom deserves to be abolished. Nothing but a bunch of petty censors. Its an Idea that belong in China, not the UK.

  27. Wouldn’t know, don’t watch the garbage. I get my garbage on the internet!

  29. It would be interesting to plot the people still watching TV against the IQ bell curve.

    In fact I’m sure broadcasters are very much aware of this.

  30. Reality TV is nothing more than the modern day equivalent of the Victorian-era freak show. It just moved to a different medium. People are selected for their stupidity and novelty value, rather than any obvious positive qualities. It’s cheap and there are plenty of people stupid enough to watch, which means much like politics, we end up getting what we deserve because we’re driven by the dumbest of society.

  31. It’s always been mixed results but modern TV is just 100% vile I don’t think I’ve sat down to actually watch live TV for 16 years. It’s not just the obnoxious adverts that feel like thinly veiled pavlovian conditioning but the truely awful shows I just can’t imagine anyone but Deano in his new build Deano house unironically sitting down to watch bradders or something awful like naked attraction. It’s absolute gutter slop.

  33. Michael Grade has definitely historically known what’s on in the TV world, and has always had good opinions about it and how to resolve it. He never ever tried to kill an innocent show that became a national icon over 8 fucking times over his own petty bullshit and taste. He should be trusted to head of om, absolutely 🙂

  34. Says the man who defunded Blackadder and cancelled doctor who

  35. But Tory politicians can still be TV presenters and spew propaganda though right ofcom?!

  36. It’s not just tv. Social media algorithms rewards nastyness and drama. People get torn down very easily and thrown out into the gutter whilst viewers watch the bloodbath. There’s doesn’t seem to be enough nice feel good things anymore.

  37. This news report could be from 2004…nothing new to see here.

  38. midwits enjoy their bread and circus, I don`t think it is right to deprive them of what keeps them tickled. This happens because fewer and fewer people tune in to watch TV, TV isn`t getting the viewership so it does not come with much ad revenue. What remains is whatever can survive in the low oxygen environment of terrestrial television, the cheap and easily produced slop.

  39. Tonight on channel 4, -Divs on the Dole, followed by -Fatty Fatty Boom Boom, then -Someone’s Tits, and finishing up with -Bad Parents. Truly a golden age.

  40. It’s gotten fucking boring is what it has become. No more interesting content, no interesting game shows, soaps are generally rubbish. The last thing TV was worth watching for, Clarkson era Top Gear, is done.

    I want to go back to when we had creative TV shows like Knightmare and The Crystal Maze.

  41. Geee… I sure wish we paid someone to regulate it.

    Maybe you could start by actually cracking down on those breaking the law, rather than giving them a stern talking to for a sixth offense?

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