Things TV Needs To Do in 2012

Given TV's atrocious report card on what it needed to do in 2011, I thought that perhaps I should give it a helping hand in what it needs to do in 2012. Obviously, it should work on the stuff it failed. To recap and summarise:

Stop Moving Shows About on a Whim: To try and squeeze the most out of the ratings, time-slots get tweaked almost weekly. It doesn't work and only ends up frustrating loyal viewers.

Fill The Quota for Australian Content With Stuff That's Worth Watching: In all honestly 2011 was a good year for producing well made Australian content, but it wasn't a good year for producing interesting and/or entertaining Australian content.

Don't Play Promos or Adverts Over The End Credits: The credits of a film or intense TV episode are part of the atmosphere. We need that moment to absorb what we've seen and process that feeling of closure. Screwing with the credits screws with the whole atmosphere.

On top of these three points, there are a few new things that need to be addressed.


Keep Up the Good Work With the Digital Channels

For the most part, the secondary digital channels have found their groove. Sure, One HD has gone through some rebranding to become a competitor of 7Mate rather than a full time sports channel and 7Two seems to have no identity at all, but they're all showing stuff worth watching. ABC2, arguably the oldest of them all, has really matured into something that rivals ABC1. Go! has found its niche catering to the younger demographic, and does it well.

There's a new battle going on that rivals the ratings game, and it's a battle to have the most successful secondary channel. As long as the networks don't get too carried away with trying to use these channels to win the ratings game, then this battle can really only have one winner: Us.


Kill Off Old Shows (That Are Becoming Stale)

This isn't so much something that Australian TV needs to do in 2012 as it is something that TV needs to do internationally. Some old shows, like Doctor Who are still going strong because they can be taken in new and interesting directions without too many major tweaks to the formula. Shows like The Simpsons, however, need to be taken out back and shot. This show should have died about five years ago. There is nothing new or interesting about it. It degraded into lazy pop culture references and relies on celebrity cameos to keep it going. It needs to make way for something new.

This leads neatly into the next point...


Get Some Fresh Ideas

This point is almost begging for a "Fail" by default. Next year is already going to see the return of Big Brother. This is not the type of thing that needs to hit Australian screens next year. Our screens are full of derivative copies of stuff that's already been on the air because the networks think, "It's sort of the same, so it must rate as well as the successful thing it's sort of like".

Wrong.

If you put too much of the same thing out there, the audience will become diluted and end up not caring. We've got so many "crime" reality TV shows out there that I can't tell the difference between them. We've got an Australian version of The Amazing Race out there somewhere, but I don't really know where. We've got a revival of It's a Knockout that already seems to have gone quiet.

On top of that, we have line-ups that seem to be four hours a night of the same old stuff. Channel Nine can't seem to get over The Big Bang Theory, so it seems to have stacked it's entire prime-time line-up with similar shows or more episodes of The Big Bang Theory. 7Mate seems a little too reliant on old episodes of Mythbusters it's nicked off SBS. If we feel like we've seen it all before, what's the point of watching it again?


Calm Down on the News Reporting

2011 saw an increase in the hyperactive way that some news has started to be reported. Remember that collar bomb hoax story? It was reported and presented with such media scrum frenzy that it felt like a Hollywood cliche of a media scrum frenzy. This year was the year that news reporting crossed the line. It's gone from giving us news that's informative to stuff that is visually stimulating and supposedly "entertaining". As Media Watch has been pointing out, the commercial news shows (mainly Channel's Seven and Nine) are becoming so competitive about winning the ratings game in terms of news that they're a thin line away from a scandal that will rival the phone hacking saga in the U.K.

The irony is that none of it ends up actually being informative and as a result it isn't interesting. If everyone just calmed down, took a step back, and gave us some facts, then the people will actually have an idea of what is going on in the world.