Let's see -- for around $140 I can buy and watch 70 hours of Colombo or some other quality program at my own pace, in my own time. Or I can set aside a specific timeslot to watch Australia's Funniest Home Videos, and see lots of advertisements too, all for free.

Not much of a choice, really, is it?

Spot on. TV is in serious decline. It has lost young people who won't take the journey as the content is woeful and there are too many other forms of electronic entertainment now.

As for TV news - do yourself a favour and go to the Internet. It will be more current by four or five hours.

Hi John, I had thought that commercial free to air was great value, you pay nothing and that’s what you get, nothing.

As for news and current affairs? Thank goodness for the internet otherwise I wouldn’t have a clue what was happening in Australia or overseas, what a bunch of sixth form tragics.

Then I thought hang on a cotton pickin’ minute, didn’t the incoming ALP government grant absolution to Seven, Nine and Ten to their obligations to pay spectrum licenses?

That means that since 2007 they have pocketed about half a billion dollars of public money. It just gets worse.

Well we are witnessing a decline.
Sometimes it'd be a shame to interrupt all those commercials with a program.
And or better yet, an ad break during an infomercial.
We used to get stuff worth watching, like the domestic one dayers, which introduced us to the best of the rest, and or emerging players. The unscripted reality shows, are now relegated to late night time slots.
We used to pay a licence fee for free to air, and or, an aunty that broadcast commercial free cricket, footy and an assortment of British comedy or sit coms.
Or the occasional decent film.
I agree with other posters who say, if you pay nothing you get nothing, or even less.
Fortunately I have a DVD player and a library of decent films. So if I have to sit though another repeat, at least its one I chose and uninterrupted!
And as and when I have the means, I add to my collection.
I can also watch stuff on the net, and am just waiting for the optic fibre to arrive, to iron out the stop and start nature of some of the online entertainment.
We are spoiled for free to air choice, but only between stuff that's as boring as, watching grass grow, on Valium, or endlessly repeated rubbish?
Rhrosty.

What did I watch last night? QI and then that program about matching people with facial disfigurements with beauty addicts to see how the other half live, after that we flicked through the stations and every choice elicited a groan from at least one member of the family so we all retired to our various nooks to play computer games or in the case of the kids Skype and Facebook with friends.

It is something they brought on themselves.

They pushed until they got all the extra channels, only to find there was no worth while content to fill them.

They bought up old stuff, some of which could have worked, if they had not destroyed it with over exposure. Their lazy programing saw them putting on consecutive hours of some things, or showing them many times a week.

All shows have a limited life before they no longer work, & this life is dramatically shortened by over exposure, even of the best stuff. I often find a couple of things in the 7.30 slot I am interested in, often both on SBS, but not another thing worth watching for the night.

Of course it could be we have just worn out our capacity to sit through a soap. So many have filled the air waves for so long, I suppose our immune system had to get on top, sooner or later.