Greatest enjoyment is NOT on your screen

What comes on the screen these days is vastly more sophisticated than anything available when it was just two channels available in New Zealand. And with that comes the hunger for the best on offer.

NETFLIX, the Northern Hemisphere provider of the latest TV series and movies, is on the verge of arriving in the country.

Honestly, where are people finding the time to watch all this stuff? And yet the demand must be there. Before legislation clamped down on piracy, people were downloading whatever the latest series were, be it Lost or Big Bang Theory or Game of Thrones. They tended to be the younger generation. It is perhaps a reflection on a generation who have yet to own their own home and are idle in the evenings, and their clear disdain for what's on conventional TV on a particular night.

I will grant you that there are nights on TV with "not a lot on". In my childhood you'd have to wait a week, in anticipation, for the next adventure of the Six Million Dollar Man.

To defend against "not a lot on", I set items to record, like any other guy. The difficulty is, the accumulation of programmes becomes a bit hard to get through. I was doomed when the new sci-fi channel, Zone, came along, because it's something I enjoy, but there's no way I can keep up. I have retired parents who struggle catching up with everything they want to see from recordings. And that's because they're busy and active. They get out. They keep their house in order. They travel. They read books.

Try owning a house, and see how far you can survive without any property maintenance on a regular basis. Try seeing how long your two dogs will put up with you constantly in front of the TV, before they decide to exterminate your pot plants.

What comes on the screen these days is vastly more sophisticated than anything available when it was just two channels available in New Zealand. And with that comes the hunger for the best on offer.

It's an interesting parallel with media, in that entertainment broadcasting is up against a sophisticated and technology-savvy audience who will always look for the easiest way to get the best thing.

There's nothing wrong with that, but if we have reached a point where our entertainment is solidly provided by social media and TV offerings, we're becoming less sophisticated - and far less in touch with our surroundings - than generations before us.