I have heard a few, what amount to being little more than tales regarding the reasons that we may lean towards different children’s tv programmes – for instance Magic Roundabout was watched by the parents of children who had all taken major forms of medication during the late 1960 and rumour has it there was a ‘seaman stains’ and ‘master bates’ in Captain Pugwash. There may be something more than slightly illicit about some of the other childrens tv that was around in the 1970s with the preparation for the imminent arrival of the internet and promotion of consumer items without our awareness. I recall the hand movements of the tortoise in finger bobs being very similar to those when I now use a mouse with a scroll roller in the middle between the left and right clicking buttons. I don’t know what degree of conditioning there was to lead to uptake of a product which we now find useful and indespensible I can’t say. It does seem that there should be some restrictions on the promotion of products through children’s tv without the awareness of the viewer and that commercial television should be restricted from undertaking this action.
And Jamie and the magic torch seemed to open up some form of dream-world probably linked to deep sea diving and the use of a torch which can highlight colour with only blue spectrum colours being let through deep water at relatively great depth. Maybe there was innocent intent with this one but it does seem like a child entering another world when his parents have gone to bed does seem like an invitation to hop online to enter the colourful world of the web.
Do you suddenly feel relaxed online when moving the mouse using a finger-bobs hand movement? There’s probably a stronger link with parental neglect to internet use than anything else and the contribution that tv programmes themselves make to internet addiction is probably minimal. It would be interesting to hear a BBC perspective on finger bobs though…
No comments:
Post a Comment