And now we speak to Elaine from Television's "People on the Toilet"

It's a sad time in the world of tv entertainment when one of the best channels left is one that almost exclusively shows repeats of programmes from the BBC and the past few decades. And if it wasn't for a few comedy gems, Doctor Who and Sherlock, even the BBC would pale in comparison to the mighty man-channel that is Dave. Why are so many other channels filled with complete rubbish? What could possibly justify the sheer amount of drivel that fills the schedule on a day-to-day basis.

The main problem is that people are idiots. A bold claim one might say, but the evidence is clear. Programmes such as Jersey Shore, The Only Way is Essex, My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding and a whole host of documentaries on things like "the child with an arse for a face" get huge viewing figures while good comedies, documentaries and dramas are left with a comparatively pitiful number of viewers. So what do the people at the stations ask for? More crap obviously, which is why we're getting Geordie Shore soon (oh joy).

If these are the people you respect the opinions of when it comes
 to music, you pretty much deserve whatever you get

Look at the way game and quiz shows have progressed. We've gone from Mastermind and University Challenge, through Family Fortunes and The Price is Right, to Deal or No Deal. That's  right, this generations idea of a great family entertainment game show is one which boils down to picking a box, crossing it off the list and getting whatever is left at the end. The fact that so much is hyped around the task of picking a random box from a random person is a real signifier of how stupid people are getting. This is a game where the outcome is essentially made at the start of the program, by which box the contestant is holding. You could quite simply just open that box and give them that amount of money and the rest of the show would be an empty gap filled by the terrifying presence of Noel Edmond's beard.

She might have won a lot of money, but she can't help but fear the beard.

Then there's the entire genre of  talent contests. A concept which was dying out a decade or two ago as it was though of as old-fashioned and dull. I mean who really wants to see a bunch of talentless morons sing, dance or whatever it is for half an hour. Of course, the brainwave came to some tv executive who will go down in history as a worse person than Hitler,  Joseph Fritzel and Janet Street Porter all rolled into one, that people would enjoy this kind of thing way more if they got to vote on who stayed and who went. So instead of having a group of knowledgeable  talented and experienced people deciding, you got a bunch of fat, feckless morons with as much musical know-how as the packet of doritos they're gorging on deciding who gets to stay. Apparently this was a rejuvenating idea, because suddenly talent shows went from being barely watched and dying to being the most popular shows on television.

Of course, letting the public vote wasn't the only thing that made them popular again. Probably the biggest and most universally used idea even outside of talent shows was the concept of shooting footage of all the people who applied who were terrible and awful, and letting the public have a good laugh at them. The main draw of shows like X-factor for many people is not the contest, but the early episodes in which they get to see deluded idiots failing to sing and Simon Cowell having a go at them. It should really be disgusting that we think it is all right to publicly humiliate and belittle people and find it entertaining, but lets be honest, we've done it all throughout history and it's a cornerstone of human comedy. People enjoyed going to the stocks and throwing rotten fruit at people, and half our jokes rely on something bad happening to someone else.

I should really use less stock photos. Geddit? Eh? Eh?
I'll get my coat.

This was fine when we still accepted that it was kind of wrong to do. We laugh at someone falling on their arse but think to ourselves "oh I shouldn't really laugh at that". However television producers have embraced it as the tenant behind so many different programmes that it is getting out of hand. My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding may pretend to be showing us a different culture and exploring changes, but really it is an excuse for the average muppet to have a good old giggle and scoff at the silly ways of the gypsys and how they dress their children like midget prostitutes. All of the "reality" shows like Jersey Shore are based around the fact that most people will find the cast laughably stupid and will enjoy taking the piss out of all the dumb stuff they do.

This is kind of acceptable when you've got shows like Total Wipeout, when we laugh at people falling off podiums and getting hit by spinning padded objects. But in shows like this, the people go on knowing that they're going to make a fool of themselves, and what we laugh at isn't something that's valuable or a part of their character. We laugh at them falling down, but we don't laugh at them as people. In shows like X-factor, when we see a person who genuinely believes they are a good singer get ruthlessly slapped down by Cowell and the gang, we're often laughing at someone who isn't prepared for it, at something which is important to them, and we are laughing at them as people. We laugh at how deluded they are, at how they are bad singers- aspects of their individual character. Admittedly these people generally have it coming to them for applying to be on a terrible show like X-factor in the first place, but should we get as much joy from mocking others as we do? Isn't it kind of the lowest form of wit? Rather than telling jokes, making comments or observing the folly of elements of the world we look at an idiot who doesn't know they can't sing and laugh at how stupid they are. It's the modern equivalent of a village idiot but on a national scale.

Village idiot or X-factor contestant- who can tell?

The main problem is who can we blame for television being terrible? As businesses, producers should be making what people want to watch. We can't really blame them if what people want to watch is awful, intellectually insulting pieces of toss. You can't really blame society, because we've always been attracted to stupid things and it isn't like we could train people to like better programs. Idiots will be idiots, and they'll enjoy watching even bigger idiots so that they don't feel as bad about their own stupidity. The only real solution would be to go against all the teachings of our society, capitalism and democracy and admit that what is most popular isn't what should be made. But that isn't a real solution, it's just patching it up by not letting people watch what they want. Is it really a problem that there's dumb stuff on for dumb people? As long as there's an audience who is entertained by it, surely that is fine. The main issue is that it obstructs the production of good shows because time and resources are taken up making hundreds of terrible shows for terrible people. There needs to be a return, not only in television but in our culture in general, of the Industrialists concept of giving back. To Industrialists, in particular Andrew Carnegie who wrote about the issue, the rich who accumulated wealth should use it to make society better. As such, corporations who are doing well should make use of their profits to better the community and the lives of others. In terms of television, awful but popular shows should be used to accumulate wealth in order to fund the production of quality shows that are intellectually stimulating or culturally worthwhile. At least then when you're at somebody's house being made to watch some dreadful harridan getting her clothes off on national tv you could respectfully applaud her contribution to the arts. Unfortunately purely 'for profit' organisations seem to have forgotten the teachings of our ancestors. The only company which really does this still is the BBC, due to the impact of the licensing fee. However, given the amount of bile people spew at the license fee, who can tell how long we can count on this happening. Then we will be forced to watch Dave 24/7, viewing repeats of shows we've watched thousands of times, but which are still better than the drivel on every other channel.

Unfortunately there seems little hope on the horizon that the style of culture that is needed will return. The style of rich man who led to houses being built for their poor workers has gone. Which is a shame, seeing how we generally think of ourselves as better people than the industrialists who worked their people to death and who made young children work long and dangerous hours to survive. We should be keeping the good ideas of that generation and adding to it with our good ideas, such as "don't make your workers kill themselves doing your job".

We can only hope that in the future television companies come to understand that simply showing programmes aimed at the lowest common denominator will result in a large section of the population not bothering to watch tv at all. Personally however, I'm recording what few good shows there are left, so that I have plenty to watch once all there's left to watch is people on the toilet and Hollyoaks omnibuses