God Awful Australian TV

Look out! Mega whinge alert!

Oh dear oh dear. It seems the aussies have accidentally decided to follow the American TV broadcasting model: Utter shite, interspersed with irritating advertising drivel every 5 minutes. In the UK we enjoy having a good old moan about the telly; how awful and dumbed down it is, particularly with the advent of 'reality' tv programmes that seem to be reproducing themselves interminably.

Well. Not only have the aussies adapted some well known reality tv formats to make their own, eg. Big Brother, Australian Idol, etc, but they also broadcast the complete toss that is American reality tv in order to pad out the programming schedule. And, just to add insult to injury, Neighbours and Home and Away, which are currently tucked away at the 6pm and the god-only-knows-where time slots respectively on British tv, are featured as the cream of aussie creativity in prime time viewing slots of around 7pm. God! I can't understand it. Total tripe from the nation that brought us such movie greats as Gallipoli, Priscilla Queen of the Desert, the Piano, Muriel's Wedding, Shine, Moulin Rouge, The Dish and Happy Feet! And such tv greats as ...er... Prisoner Cell Block H...?

Even sport doesn't escape the madness of crapness. Trying to watch the Rugby World Cup match where the poms trounced the aussies (tee hee!), proved irritating beyond belief with all the bloody adverts shown in the middle of the game. I could barely see Johnny's thighs!

The only saving grace in all this trash is that aussie terrestrial tv is free, so there's no unfair licence fee to pay for a channel you only watch for 'Stenders' and Doctor Who.

If you can't manage without your telly in Australia, then the solution is to pay for cable or satellite tv courtesy of Foxtel or Austar -both seemingly Sky affiliated, so the facilities will seem very familiar to Sky users. Having said that, the ridiculousness that was Foxtel's customer service when we attempted to terminate the contract was not very familiar. It dragged on for months after we had moved house and started an Austar contract.

Thanks to UKTV you can still get a daily dose of Trisha, Emmerdale, Corrie and Stenders, albeit up to a year out of date. It appears to be the place where British tv channels finally send their programmes to die. Last week's exciting announcement was that "I'm a 'Celebrity'" is going to be shown on UKTV.... Last year's. So I know who won. Although I still don't know who he is.

After UKTV we mainly watch SBS (when last year's Top Gear is on), the History Channel and the movie channels. We also watch Sky news as, through the magic of the red button, we can watch the UK version.

Which brings me onto my next whinge: Why can't we in Australia view UK programmes via broadband like you can in Blighty? Well actually I know why and it's purely political. After sending whinging emails to the BBC and Ch4, I've learnt that it's all down to licensing; they aren't licensed to broadcast in other countries - or some such rubbish. The BBC said it was something they hoped would be available in the near future. I hope so because they're missing out on a lot of revenue in the meantime from desperate ex pats all over the world who are pining for Richard & Judy, etc.

So the moral is if you're a confirmed couch potato with square eyes, maybe Australia is not the place for you.