On the box

Watching television is part and parcel of our everyday life. Television has long become part of our furniture, the living room, lounge or we receive guests. It's basically part of our culture and values, and the way we interact with each other.

There is so much diversity in television programs and programming there is not only huge popular appeal but audiences have become "fractionized" with different viewing habits, and varied tastes and likes.

My viewing habits center on watching news, films, series and documentaries, when they are aired. At times, there is an inner conflict between the degree I switch on to news satellite channels and that of watching films.

I try to keep a healthy balance, but I am afraid, me and the rest of the household veer to films and/or to channels were series are aired out. I am not ashamed to say that some of these films and series are really very good, they provide quality viewing, dealing with real life situations. They keep you watching and are eye openers.

I remember, there used to be a time when all there existed was bang bang stuff, and worthless detective episodes. While some of those still do exist, I think the general quality of program has become vastly superior to the past.

I don't want to start naming and reducing this piece to a public relations exercise, but there is definitely a great improvement on what was seen decades before. But this might be due to the technical improvements in the productions of programs, and in the quality of script, some of which is really very good.

On that score, I can think of television comedy which I really like to watch. Regardless of whether it's British and/or its American, there are some superb comedy viewing around simply because of the quality of writing, and writing script that will make you continually laugh for the next 20 or 30 minutes.

While it often said this is the hardest type of writing, I always wondered how does the writer do it, the kind of research he gets involved in and how does he wrote a funny script. While we might now be moving away from the original title of the article, it's at the end of the day about quality and entertainment.

I watch films because of their quality, and that goes for series and comedies. I watch news because I feel I have to, and not because of a special urge. But I also watch news to see the kind of events, and probably negative developments that are happening in the world.

Finally, and it has to be said, we have to pay a tribute to television regardless of the fact that some of us have been turned into perpetual couch potatoes!