Robin Parker, features and comment editor, Broadcast magazine
How BBC schedulers must have winced when director general Tony Hall told the Radio Times last week that he suspected the 9pm TV watershed wouldn’t exist within “20 or 30 years”.
It might feel monumental coming from someone in such a lofty position, but tempting though it is for tabloids to run with “Axe the watershed, says BBC DG”, Hall knows which way the wind is blowing. Many of us still trust the schedule to shape our collective viewing, but increasingly we’re watching on demand.
Schedules are a foreign concept to my four-year-old, and his ability to distinguish between iPlayer and YouTube content, and the accompanying controls, is our responsibility. My eldest son is thwarted in any attempt to watch anything that happens to have been on post-9pm – which, lest we forget, includes older children’s and early teen fare on round-the-clock cable channels – by our impenetrable four-digit access code (I’m sure other parents can guess it).
When 4.2 million of us chose to watch Sherlock on iPlayer, we weren’t thinking about what time it went out, but when we wanted to watch it. Had the show been strictly adults-only, we’d have had to tick the over-16 box. It’s the refining of this particularly flimsy mechanism that will take us to the next phase. I’m sure the industry can manage that within 20 years.
Boyd Hilton, TV editor, Heat magazine
Thanks for arguing my case for me, Robin. Yes indeed it is up to parents to at least try to steer children’s viewing in the appropriate direction, and as you rightly explain, there are technologies in place to aid that. I’m glad they’re working for you and your family. Although I’m not convinced they can thwart your eldest for much longer. Meanwhile, Tony Hall’s attempt to predict what might happen in two or three decades’ time strikes me as an amusingly irrelevant observation. Maybe we’ll finally get those flying cars from Blade Runner, too. Of course what Hall and this debate is referring to is the changing way we watch TV. But that’s all way bigger than the issue of the watershed. Who knows what extraordinary version of television we’ll have in five years, let alone 30?
In the meantime, the old-fashioned watershed still serves a useful purpose. Not necessarily in preventing 15-year-olds from watching Geordie Shore or Game of Thrones, though. They’ll find a way to watch whatever they want. But the watershed does give us all a handy steer about what to expect from a TV show, which is why when EastEnders tackles difficult storylines at 7.30pm and The X Factor has “scantily clad” dancers of a Saturday evening, allowing the Daily Mail to print pages and pages of photos while complaining furiously about taste and decency, it still makes waves. Without the watershed, there would be scheduling anarchy. Frankly, any kind of guidance in these confusing times is a good thing as far as I’m concerned.
RP As long as we have schedules, we’ll have a form of watershed. I can’t imagine any broadcaster, however edgy, wanting anarchy to reign – though Channel 4 has arguably pushed things under the banner of public service with the extreme bodily examinations of Embarrassing Bodies. It remains a useful barometer for Ofcom in investigating breaches. But expectations? When PG fare like Our Zoo, Death in Paradise and Count Arthur Strong are post-watershed but soap opera rape storylines air long before it? It’s not as simple as all that. We must face up to the crossroads at which we find ourselves. Commute at any time of the day and the chances are you and everyone else will be elbow-to-elbow with someone treating the carriage to the latest Game of Thrones or Banana. What’s the solution to this? Blocking playback until 9pm?
BH Please don’t stop me from watching Banana on the bus in the morning. Not that it will ever happen. Yes we have the freedom to watch what we want, when we want, but I still like the watershed in the same way I like film classifications. If the BBFC gives [the trailer of] Fifty Shades of Grey a 15 certificate, that’s quite an indication that the movie version will compromise the extreme sex scenes of the novel, while Gone Girl’s 18 rating is evidence of that film’s fidelity to the sick and twisted tone of the book (see footnote). As far as TV is concerned, the shows you mention may not be the most adult of post-9pm fare, but from the other point of view, when BBC2 first showed Miranda at 8.30pm of a Monday, it was a signal that it would be fun for all the family. The watershed still helps. Just.
RP The BBFC analogy is apt: like broadcasters, it has had to adjust to changing viewing habits. At the risk of plot spoilers, the public can access detailed insight into the extent of sex, violence, swearing etc, which is particularly useful in the broader 12A bracket. Beyond a preliminary warning before a show starts, perhaps it is time for the BBC (and others) to employ something similar under its remit to “inform”?
BH Well the BBC goes to great lengths to warn us about anything edgy in its schedules, which is fine by me. I’m glad we seem to be in agreement that the watershed is still of use, though. While we still have linear channels, let’s carry on this proud tradition of knowing where and when we can find all the gratuitous nudity, sex, violence and swearing.
RP Yes – after 9pm, and at any time on iPlayer, 4oD, ITV Player or Sky’s virtual library of 18-rated HBO box sets. My main wish is that this wide range of viewing options puts an end to one bugbear of British TV: broadcasters cutting US shows to ribbons just to get them on before the watershed. There are so many options of how they can get viewers to watch them. If they’re going to protect the sensibilities of children and the easily offended for the foreseeable future, the least they could do is treat us like grown-ups.
BH Or in the case of The White Queen, a BBC/Starz co-production, we got a less sexy version than the Americans, even though it was shown after the watershed. Most broadcasters are starting to treat us like adults, though. The pro-censorship brigade has lost the argument. Sixteen years ago the Daily Mail was up in arms about Queer As Folk when it was shown at 10pm. Now Channel 4 is proudly scheduling Cucumber in primetime at 9pm while its youth-skewed spin-off Banana is on straight afterwards on E4, where teens are finding and enjoying it. And the young characters in Banana scoff at the very notion of watching TV, while they film content on their raunchy YouTube channels. So Russell T Davies clearly has his finger on the nub, but I can’t imagine he would want his excellent dramas being shown at 7.30pm. The watershed still helps great TV to be scheduled in its rightful place. It will be around for a while yet.