What aspects of today's television annoy you?

I've just watched the latest episode of the brilliant Homeland on Channel Four, and instead of giving you a minute to digest the cliffhanger last few minutes, whoosh. The credits get shoved to one side and we get two yes two promotions for forthcoming programmes delivered by a continuity announcer who has clearly not been watching the previous hour. How do they think this is going to make me more likely to watch these shows?

Am I the only one annoyed by the way the viewer is treated these days? What gets your goat?

Even worse than that, a screening of The King And I had some cheerful announcer telling us about the next programme during the closing credits, totally destroying the emotion of the moment.

TV today panders to the lowest common denominator. It's assumed - possibly correctly - that today's viewers have a limited attention span so, for example, wouldn't have the patience to follow a Dr Who story over 3 or 4 weeks. Hence the time honoured serial format is abandoned.

Also the preponderence of reality shows featuring celebrities I've never heard of. Yes, I'm a grumpy old man, perhaps, but TV really was better in the 60s and 70s.

I think it would be far easier to ask what aspects of today's television don't annoy you? Or perhaps not - nearly all TV is annoying!

The seemingly endless adverts. I buy the DVDs so I don't bother to watch it on TV, but I find there are some series (Wycliffe etc) that has a break in the programme where the advert should be and you have to wait while they have a little break for no reason. Now that really annoys me!

Bloody commercials!!!!!!!

...I remember reading somewhere recently, a pithy quote that sums it all up succinctly:

"TELEVISION IS CALLED A 'MEDIUM', BECAUSE IT IS NEITHER RARE, NOR WELL DONE..."

Amen to that!

If they'd keep them down to reasonable levels - and in between programmes rather than in the middle of programmes - I could live with adverts (convenient breaks to make tea or visit the loo to dispose of same). What really annoy me are the interminable trailers about forthcoming shows.

Been watching THIS MORNING for the 1st time in ages,and I can't believe what i'm seeing.
Constant advert breaks,and these bloody pre-filmed competition segments every 10 mins or so.On yesterday's edition one particular part of the show seemed to be hurried up so that they could go to the break.How on earth do ITV justify this?
And my biggest bugbear(like most people)is reality shows,especially the ones with those so called well below Z listed celebrities.Which brings me to the biggest culprit-IM A CELEBRITY GET ME OUT OF HERE!.Once again a new series has begun,and half of the contestants i have never heard of.

I agree with one of the previos posters,tv was a hell of a lot better in the 70s and 80s.

The bbc's attitude to imports. I remember the days when you could watch repeats of the original Star Trek at 7.20pm on a monday night. Or Lois and Clark at saturday teamtime in the 1990's. And it's a bit before my time, but back in the 60's, the man from uncle was a staple of thursday nights on bbc1.

But nowadays anything they buy from abroad gets buried in the schedules or shunted off to the cable channels. I'm sure the bbc are under intense pressure not to fill the schedules with imports and to produce home grown stuff instead. But some of these shows would probably do fine in prime time if given a chance. Imagine how star trek the next generation might have done if it had been on bbc 1 on saturday night primetime.

Medium was just as good as most home grown crime drama. It did need to be on after the watershed, but it shouldnt have been buried away how it was. I just wish they'd give imports a proper chance once again

ITV 2, VIVA, Really, The Bloody Kardashians (what the hell are they anyway?), any sodding reality program, soap operas, toothpaste adverts, Divina Mcall, Keith Lemon, poeple in audiences who feel compelled to whoop in appreciation, adverts were men are portrayed as complete idiots, TNA wrestling, yoghurt adverts, program's that have one interesting item but give you 5 minute snippets spread across an hour (Watchdog), thick but underhanded players on the weakest link...

I was thinking more about the way TV is presented to us rather than individual programmes. Say for instance, documentaries years ago used to carry an assumption that we'd be watching more or less from the beginning to the end. Nowadays, after each ad break, they have to waste time by filling you in on what happened earlier for the benefit of latecomers. I find this worrying, in that now TV is pandering to people flicking channels and not valuing what they see, or maybe they just think we've got the attention span of goldfish. If I've taken the trouble to put the programme on in good time and paid attention, I deserve some respect surely!

REALITY TV & FOOTBALL!!!!! It doesn't matter what channel you watch (including the News and FilmChannels) that doesn't have adverts to watch games, updates and sport themed events! THERE ARE CHANNELS ESPECIALLY MADE FOR SPORT!! WE DON'T NEED IT IN GENERAL VIEWING!! I for one could live entirely without it and I thought that is what I paid my money to Sky for but ads between films on Film channels now are showing FOOTBALL promotions! Everyone knows what the word 'Sport' means so if you want to watch it then turn to a 'Sport' channel and leave the other channels for normal, intelligent viewers. And by that I don't mean the MORONS who watch constant soaps and so called reality programs like 'America's next top model'! Who the hell cares about a spotty, 8 ft tall, neurotic, brain dead, stick insect having it's photo taken????? Isn't it time the producers of programs started giving us some REAL value for money???

Most annoying aspects of our daily TV diet?
- news correspondents handing over to each otherusing first names, as if talking exclusively to each other, not to any wider audience. Must be an imported trick, probably from the US of A!
- news correspondents using their thumbs, to 'point' us to the obvious location behind them. I seem to remember that such use of thumb was considered ill-mannered, back in the day!
- Yes, the practice of preview/review that eats up the first and middle minutes of all newscasts. We're going to hear the same spoken words again, in a few moments time, are we not!
- I agree about the 'insensitive' voiced previews, so often used over end music - oafish! They often 'shrink' the previous programme end credits, to show a split screen visual of the prog that they are advertising, boors that they are.
So much to hate, so little to like!

i've just had a week off work & tried to avoid daytime tv,as i can't stand the endless PPI & accident helpline adverts,far too many of these!
Also,free view channels showing same old films week in week out!
finally-the Celebrity specials-anybody whose ever appeared on quiz shows/big brother/wife swap etc,get called a celeb & bunged on any game show going! boring!
far better renting a dvd!

There are far too many so-called 'experts' on sports programmes. Years ago, Match of the Day was around an hour long and featured about 50 minutes of actual football. Now it is 90 minutes long and we get the same 50 minutes of football and 40 minutes of 'analysis' from the likes of Alan Hansen and Mark Lawrenson who haven't played the game for 20 years. Their opinions are no more valid than anyone else who watches football regularly, so why do the BBC pay them thousands of pounds just to sit there banging on about stuff we can see for ourselves? Overpaid and pointless. I would give you my opinion on snooker commentators, but I could be here all day, so I won't!

How I agree with this comment; for every minute of actual sports coverage you seem to get twice that amount of guff. Commentators don't know when to shut up either: it's television, we can see what's going on without some idiot shouting hysterically into our ears all the time.
Agree about the snooker as well; I usually have the sound turned down, particularly when John Virgo is in full flow. There's only man on television who talks more claptrap than J.V. and that's Noel Edmonds!

The list is endless for the tat on tv these days.X factor and other reality shows for one.Am I the only person who thinks these shows are past their sell by date pandering to the egos of the judges.Toilet humour,done correctly can be funny but Keith (leigh francis) Lemon dropping his pants and stroking his nipples is surely the lowest of the low.The only way is Essex,dear god.Whats happened to this country.JEREMY (SHUT UP,THIS IS MY SHOW) KYLE makes jerry springer look classy.Getting angry now so I will shut up.................loose women aarrgghhhhhhhh,my veins are throbbing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

hallmark on sky, at first used to give you a 45 min non-stop show, then ten minutes to make a cup of tea, or whatever else, just enough time to avoid all advert crap, and for god's sake get rid of jeremy kyle, at least robert kilroy-silk was ok first thing on a morning................

Pretty well everything they show and everything they say. BBC4 is good. The One Show is OK if you mute it and just ogle Alex Jones. As for breakfast TV don't get me started.

One of these days I shall abandon the box altogether. Radio 4, Radio 3 and Classic FM will do.

John, couldn't agree more - I would also like to enjoy documentaries without the "what you are about to watch" segment before the opening credits. I'll either watch it or I won't, don't spoil it first.

As was mentioned before, there are simply FAR TOO MANY adverts on television these days,as well as trailers!! Look at the SKY channels for example.....this satellite firm must be overflowing with cash with all the adverts pouring in.
For example, I recently watched the repeat run of STAR TREK:THE NEXT GENERATION from Season 1 on the PICKTV channel, and just when you thought the story was about to start after the beginning credits finished.....Commercial break. Huh, what the heck? What dimwit has the sense of placing a break just when the drama starts? They also place adverts when the drama is just about to end. Crazy!
As the sci-fi drama is about 45 minutes long, the adverts are approx 15 minutes long in total!

As you can see SKY are notorious for showing a ton of adverts/trailers every day!! :(
Another thing that annoys me is when TV companies place stupid banners across the screen showing what's coming up next. Aaaargh!
Reality shows are getting old hat too. Why do they always give us the same shows every year...Strictly Come Dancing, The X Factor, I'm a Celebrity, Big Brother, Dancing on Ice.....COME ON YOU TV COMPANIES.
Give us something NEW for a change!!!

As Paul Tapner said, it would be great if they could show some old classic repeats again, such as The Tomorrow People, Armchair Thriller, or Sapphire and Steel, or even a classic Dr Who story. It won't happen though sadly.

Pet hates:

DOGs (Digital Onscreen Graphics, i.e. the constant channel logos in the corner of the screen, frequently garish, occasionally animated)
Credit squeezing/cutting/accelerating
IPPs (In Programme Pointers, i.e those what's-on-next graphics over the previous programme)
Trailers (currently about 3 before each programme)
Excessive numbers of ad breaks
Product placement
"Talent" shows
Censor cuts so programmes can be shown in daytime rather than to their originally intended audience in the evenings

Ah yes, thank you. You seem to be more knowledgeable about the techie stuff.
IPPs is the one I couldn't think of, I referred to them as banners across the screen! lol
Those DOGs are most annoying too!

This is an interesting discussion. I thought it was only American television which was this bad, what with an excess of non-scripted (aka 'reality') shows, annoying previews crowding out the end credits, 10 to 11 minutes of commercials in a half-hour timeslot, bugs populating the corners of the screen, no commercial break between most programs, and commercials which seem to be getting louder and more frenetic each week. Sounds like British television is taking their cue from the junk-meisters over here.

I thank my lucky stars every day that the home video format was created years ago, so that I can watch older programming on video as I desire, w/o being stuck with nothing but what is pumped out by current producers for today's non-discriminating audience, as we were forced to between the 1950's and '70's.

What scares me most is: if the world of television has degenerated to the annoying level it has as of 2012, what will it be like when my grandchildren are of age? Prophets tell me that with the Internet beginning to take over program distribution, television and cable, as we know it, may not even exist in ten years. Perhaps, as our home-ec guru Martha Stewart used to phrase: "That's a good thing."

I hate the fact that great tv series end simply because there may not be enough people watching the series on tv. Have the execs ever thought about the fact that many people may jot watch a show because the show is too advanced for their brains or a person may not want to invest much brain power. That does not mean the show is bad. For example, in my opinion I loved Political Animals. It was soooooo good. The show was cancelled. I also loved The Gates. Noth of these series ended after one frakkin season. Urrrrg. Pissed me off big time. I guess it is better to have loved than to have never known love.but still, my goat is seething.

There are some real treasures on TV - Frozen Planet, Brazil, Sherlock, and some rubbish, as ever. I think there is too much TV - ie channels, and not stopping, and when one show is original it is overdone, and repeated in a whole host of ways.