This is the BBC

Those words were my first memories of radio

A very stiff upper lip presenter

Telling you the news in a ridiculously posh British accent

The TV shows from the British Broadcasting Service were equally stiff but void of commercials

Great drama and documentaries were the hallmark of BBC television

Then came along commercial television called ITV

They produced soap operas and comedies for the masses

Back then there were only two channels available on British TVs

They became great rivals competing for prime time audiences

We bought a weekly magazine called the TV Times listing all TV shows

Hard to believe that we actually spent time turning pages before watching the TV

News programs were at a fixed time daily

This is the Six O’Clock News

News At Ten

Friendly faces giving you updates on current affairs

We got to trust those presenters far too much

Believing every word they said 

They usually ran for many decades before retiring

Creating a huge stir when a new presenter came along

The Brits are totally obsessed with talking about the weather

But they will also go on for hours and hours about their favorite TV news presenter

When I moved to America the choice of TV was overwhelming

Comcast gave me almost 1000 channels to flick through

Most of which were absolute tripe

Fortunately they had a BBC channel which became my daily go to

Filled with nostalgic comedies and drama from the 70’s and 80’s

The theme songs were often better than the shows themselves

The Sweeny and Miami Vice ear worms are permanently embedded in my head

Comcast eventually got too greedy so we bit the bullet and cut the cable

We joined the new world of streaming with Netflix, Amazon and HBO

No longer constrained to scheduled weekly broadcasts

We could binge away all night watching back to back episodes of Breaking Bad

News programs were no longer entertaining so we stopped watching them 

Today’s dinner table conversations are all about TV binging

Oh you have to watch this new series on Netflix

Its only 25 episodes and you can binge it over three nights

We got weary and sleep deprived from too much TV bingeing

Especially during the enforced Covid lockdowns when we were glued to the TV 24/7

Technology has moved on leaps and bounds for TV watchers

Voice activated remotes save you from pressing buttons

No more repetitive strain injured thumbs from channel hopping

When I am alone late at night I whisper random words into the remote

Its like metal detecting in a muddy field

A mindless exercise that occasionally produces a hidden gem

When lost in the desert of crappy boring TV channels

I pick up the voice activated remote and utter my escape code

BBC