At last! An informed analysis. How can there be so many channels and nothing to watch? And yes, I've taken to buying the boxed sets of the best programs (as you say like 6 Feet Under and Breaking Bad) to watch again in my own time. They can't even manage to tell you where they're at when repeating a worn out series. Has it ever occurred to the broadcasters to get together to try to plan the best viewing options for their audience?

Where is the creativity and imagination that you call for going to come from? How do we support a change (revolution?)?

The technology of free-to-air television is a hangover from the 1950's when only a limited number of channels were available. The internet has made this technology totally obsolete and financially unviable. Today viewers can download programs from anywhere on the world and view them free of advertising at a time of their own choosing, not that of a program controller. The only future for free-to-air is to continue to go downmarket, with continual broadcasting of packaged pap directed at a brain-damaged audience.

The financial future of free-to-air TV is very similar to that of newspapers and magazines, who are caught in the same bind.

Increasingly viewers will exercise their ability to stream programs that match their particular interests, at a time that suits them. Is this such a terrible result (except for shareholders)? Hopefully the Liberals will take the opportunity to slim down the ABC and SBS and save taxpayers a fortune.

There's the added problem that for commercial TV, I have become bored with such a profusion of advertisements. To avoid the ads on the programmes I watch, I use a set-top box to record (for me it's a PVR - personal video recorder) so that I can zoom through the ads to see only what I want. I do this especially with the news, current affairs, footy, cricket, and tennis. My wife does it with the movies as well.

I'm over being propagandised by ads.