"There's an old joke," says Woody Allen (or Alvy Singer, to be precise) in the film 'Annie Hall': "... two elderly women are at a Catskills mountain resort, and one of 'em says: "Boy, the food here is really terrible." The other one says, "Yeah, I know, and such small portions.""
I thought of this when I read this article about the BBC wanting to become more interactive. Apparently the Beeb has a long history of airing the licence-payer's feedback, going right back to "Dear Sir: The Correspondence Column of the Air" in 1950. One can just imagine what kind of a column of air that was.
The article then reminds us that
"in 1960, BBC TV introduced a five-minute show called Points of View. Hosted by Robert Robinson, it found a place in the schedule between Ask Mr Pastry and the BBC Inter-Regional Dancing Contest."
Thank goodness they found a slot for it. If the viewing public had been forced to choose between 'Points of View' and 'Ask Mr Pastry', there could have been riots.
I know we gripe a lot about the rubbish that's on air nowadays, but this does help to put things in perspective. What was on back in the old days may not have been any better, but at least there was less of it.
And I believe my good friend Mr Cholmondeley-Warner is very much of the same opinion.
![[RSS Newsfeed]](/themes/sotto/images/valid-rss.png)
![[This is a Roller site]](/themes/sotto/images/roller-logo.gif){kind=logo}