Project Tic Toc

I must admit that during the past decade or so I've become a bit of a stranger to the medium of television. I do watch the occasional programme and some of them are appealing but the era when a family sat together to watch the latest episode of a popular drama or a favorite sitcom seem as distant as the original transmissions of Sergeant Jones' recollections of his battles with the Fuzzy-Wuzzies.

Television is fast becoming a personal medium rather than a communal one. The increasing popularity of TV recording hard disk drives, You Tube, podcasts and other innovations from that wonderful 'information super highway' means that you can basically watch whatever you want, whenever you want. The BBC is soon to launch a service whereby key programmes from their most recent three week schedule will be available to watch directly from their website. Additionally landmark TV series such as 'Blue Planet' and 'Doctor Who' will become available on a permanent on-demand online basis.

The long term implications of such flexible scheduling is that the over subscribed sofa and family brew up that once signified the latest long awaited broadcast of the murder of JR Ewing, Basil Fawlty bashing his Morris with a tree branch or a battle on the baize between Terry Griffiths and Steve Davis is now sadly only a memory. The characteristic that made these TV events (and others) televisual landmarks was their inherent transience. If you missed the original broadcast then the chances were that you would have to wait some time before seeing it as a repeat on TV. Some bloke down the Pub may have had the wherewithal to record a copy on his VHS but these were seldom the sort of people that one would necessarily want to mix with.

Nowadays an anonymous source will have posted an extract from the awaited episode onto You Tube, Limewire or Google a couple of weeks before the programme is officially broadcast! In the worst case a full copy of the Japanese lip-synched dubbed translation of the episode, complete with subtitles will be available to view on the internet a few milliseconds after the credits have rolled on the original BBC2 version.

I'm not sure where all this immediate access is going to take us but the contrast with bygone years did cause me to reminisce (a worryingly popular pastime of mine) and
recall some of the TV programmes that were required viewing in the Medway household during my formative years.

One of my own favorites was the 'Time Tunnel' which was originally broadcast in the UK in 1968, two years after its Stateside debut. I particularly enjoyed one episode where the American heroes (Tony Newman and Doug Phillips) found themselves on Krakatoa before the huge volcanic eruption that destroyed the island in 1883. I've not yet downloaded this episode from the internet to play on my new video Ipod, a recent present from Mrs Medway, but I will do shortly.

In the meantime here is a ten minute clip from the very first episode of Time Tunnel which may strike a chord with a few older members of the flock. I suppose this site could be construed as a virtual sofa or am I being sentimental?