Curse Bee-TV! A pox upon those farting pandas!

Bee-TV, in case some of you have somehow remained blessedly free of its influence, is a bunch of computer monitors mounted on busses and such, and blasting a mix of cartoons and ads. They are loud and repeat constantly (on one bus ride I heard the panda fart about twenty times).

I realize that most new forms of advertising meet with initial criticism and resistance: door-to-door sales. Telephone marketing. Spam. And eventually, the resistance fails.

On the other hand, if smoking can be banned on the grounds that it’s unfair to subject others to second-hand smoke, why can’t we do the same with television? Maybe some religion can be produced that’s against watching TV (or computer TV), that could be the poster child…?

Moving directly to civil disobedience, is there some sort of stealth technology capable of turning off computer monitors remotely? Or maybe one could figure out how to replace the program with porn or something, so that viewers find themselves watching ddong doing the nasty with the dog from jong no. 7.

(I think the pirate version should be called BEET-TV. And have a mascot of a beet, which would look similar to the bee…? Oh, never mind.)

And another thing. Whatever happened to Pingu? I liked Pingu.

Agree, some of the comics are rather stupid and the repetition doesn’t help. Though most buses I have been on have the audio turned off or at a normal level.

My resistance has never failed. I answer the phone in Spanish to foil them. I appear at the door naked, and they run away screaming. I’ve been very successful in keeping these vile curs at bay.

In the UK, if you write ‘Return To Sender’ on any mail, the sender must pay postage. Not enough people know this. :slight_smile:

If that were true here, I’d have a rubber stamp made up. :smiling_imp:

[quote=“Buttercup”]In the UK, if you write ‘Return To Sender’ on any mail, the sender must pay postage. Not enough people know this. :slight_smile:[/quote]I think they can refuse it if you send them a brick. Are you talking about using the return envelopes to send spam mail back ?

I never saw farting panda on there, but I did see “I’m a cute girl and my name is dung”, we must take different busses.

whitedot.org/issue/iss_story … ug=tvbgone

It’s amazing what happens when you turn the television off. People begin to talk! But maybe that was the point - they didn’t want to have to.

They did a no TV night in an area of Brighton - whitedot.org/issue/iss_story … n_brighton - and people came out into the streets, talked etc. Of course they wouldn’t all bring their sofas out every night if they didn’t have TV but…

TV is just too easy.

The thing I hate about it these days is always being able to find something watchable - without necessarily finding anything really good. Call me conservative, but I think only having 4 channels in the UK when I was a kid was a positively good thing. Quality not quantity. And you could establish within a minute whether there was anything on you wanted to watch, then turn the telly off if there wasn’t. Rather than flipping through 100 channels one by one then starting again at the beginning in the hopes that something had changed.

I’m not a fan of movie channels either. Beginning to sound a bit negative here! As far as I’m concerned they’re not TV. They’re a different medium - movies. Kinda like if the internet had been used to simply publish the text of books or newspapers. I don’t object to movies being shown on TV per se but I feel they’re unhelpful to television as a medium in itself.

I have the Chunghua Telecom internet TV system that gives about 30 channels of Taiwanese TV plus God TV - 'nuff said - although I have seen a couple of good dramas on it by chance, France TV5 - good but my French isn’t good enough though I have seen a couple of French films with English subtitles, Bloomberg and CNBC neither of which are really television - they’re a very boring information feed for money men. Lastly, it has Australia Network (kinda like World Service TV made by the ABC for satellite, cable, hotel bedrooms etc) . It has its fair share of “Aussie Dramas” - All Saints, Stingers, Outrageous Fortune (sorry, NZ) - one step up from Home and Away and Neighbours. Stingers at least, is quite watchable when needed. It also has a number of other dramas, documentaries, travel shows, quizzes and current affairs shows. Has quite a few dramas and documentaries imported from the BBC which are naturally pretty good too.

To me, it’s real, all purpose TV for everyone. Unlike specialised (ghettoized) TV (movie channels, science channels etc), you don’t always know what you’re going to get and consequently what I watch is much broader. I would probably rarely actively seek out programs about art or literature. But if I turn on and find someone talking about something that catches my attention, I learn about something I didn’t know about before.

And if what’s on doesn’t interest me, that’s it, I turn off.

Then I have the infinite variety of the internet to waste my life on. Which has its own pros and cons!

The numbing, repetitive ads aside, it does have some redeeming features. The one-week weather report is good, and the movie previews create a nice distraction from a boring ride. I also miss that leotard-clad yoga instructor performing her stretches.

Would the tvbegone work for this? Note that Bee-“TV” is not actually broadcast, but uses computer monitors.

I don’t know but it would be a great toy to have in pubs, cafes and restaurants here. There is a section on the website about responsible use of your tvbgone which is interesting - i.e. don’t use it in sports bars where people gather specifically because the TV is there. You might get beaten up!