COMMENT & ANALYSIS<strong>Industrial</strong> <strong>Technology</strong> ISSN 0967-5787 www.industrialtechnology.co.ukEDITORIALEditorMark Simms BSc Tel: 01732 773268PO Box 342, Fax: 01732 365676Tonbridge TN10 4WDmark.simms@itmagazine.uk.comADVERTISINGRegional Director (Home Counties & South East)Mark West Tel: 020 8857 3661PO Box 49256, Fax: 020 8857 6330London SE9 4WTmark.west@itmagazine.uk.comRegional Sales Manager (Midlands & South West)Helen Hardwick Tel: 01926 484648Unit E3 Holly Court, Fax: 01926 484690Holly Farm Business Park,helen.hardwick@itmagazine.uk.comHoniley, Kenilworth CV8 1NPRegional Sales Manager (North of England & Scotland)Jan Anderson Tel: 01978 3147301st Floor, Hesketh House, 3 School Road, Fax: 01978 314731Sale, Cheshire M33 7XYjan.anderson@itmagazine.uk.comDeutschland/Suisse/ÖsterreichEisenacher Medien Tel: +49 228-2499860Welckerstrasse 22, Fax: +49 228-65007653113 Bonn info@eisenacher-medien.deOverseasGeorge Bennett MA Tel: + 44 161 374 56151st Floor, Hesketh House, Fax: + 44 161 374 64363 School Road, Sale, it.marketing@itmagazine.uk.comCheshire M33 7XYPRODUCTIONProduction ManagerSarah Curl Tel: 0161 374 56151st Floor, Hesketh House, 3 School Road, Fax: 0161 374 6436Sale, Cheshire M33 7XYsarah.curl@itmagazine.uk.comMAILING ADDRESSESPress Releases: PO Box 342, Tonbridge TN10 4WDAdvertising Copy (Production Office): 1st Floor, Hesketh House3 School Road, Sale, Cheshire M33 7XYCirculation Department: PO Box 85, Sale M33 2BBEmail: it.circulation@itmagazine.uk.comGENERAL ENQUIRIESEmail: it.info@itmagazine.uk.com Tel: 0161 374 5615As a <strong>control</strong>led circulation journal, <strong>Industrial</strong> <strong>Technology</strong> is sent free ofcharge to individuals in the UK who meet the terms and conditions of thepublishers. To apply for free regular copies, write to the CirculationDepartment. To those not meeting the terms and conditions, the magazine isavailable on UK subscription at a cost of £60 per year (10 issues). Singlecopies are £7. Overseas subscriptions (airmail) are as follows: Rest ofEurope including Eire £80 (single copies £9); USA $155 (single $18);Elsewhere £90 (single copies £10).Printing & production by Headley Brothers, Ashford, KentOrigination by Sarah & Marknew wavePUBLISHING LTDAUDIT BUREAU OF CIRCULATIONSBUSINESS PRESSIt was never likethat back in my day…As a child of the ’70s, I grew up with the likes of Thunderbirds, Joe 90, UFO andCaptain Scarlet, happily absorbing whatever producer Gerry Anderson wanted tothrow at me. Knowing that these were programmes targeted at children, Andersonmust have been mindful of the limitations of a youngster’s attention span, andemployed the trick of using a teaser at the beginning of each episode that montaged some keyelements of the action; not enough to spoil the ending, but more than enough to keep youalong for ride. Fast forward three decades, and programme makers are still going all out to getus to the end of their offerings, but the strategies have changed.And they sure ain’t changes for the better.A big advantage for them is that hour-long TV programmesdon’t actually last an hour. Once you’ve allowed for the ad breaks,your episode now only needs to last 45 minutes. And forproducers worried about the attention spans of their audience,these little ad breaks are a godsend, ensuring that no viewer needsto concentrate for anything more than 12 minutes at a time.Where even twelve minutes might be a bit of a challenge, theproducers get around this by spending the last couple of minutesof any segment telling us what’s coming up after the break, andthe first few minutes of any segment reminding us what happenedbefore the break. That means that in any given hour-long slot, there’s probably only around 25minutes of programme to absorb. That shouldn’t be a problem for anyone. Should it?Well, the various members of my household have taken to watching a particular makeoverprogramme on Channel 4, where some hapless lady who has aged before her time and lost allgrip on the rules of fashion is put through an intensive programme of cosmetic surgery, fulldental work, lessons in make-up use, a radical hair restyling and a wardrobe upgrade. It’spretty gruesome stuff, and you’d think that that fact alone would keep viewers glued to theirscreens. But just in case, the producers have long employed all of the tricks we’ve discussedso far. And now they’ve found one more: to reveal the ending of the programme right at thevery beginning. There’s more, too, because at the end of the programme they also show youthe ending of next week’s show. Surely a line has been crossed here.At a time when the UK is trying to set itself up as a global hub of innovation and designexcellence, this is pretty worrying stuff. We seem to be suggesting a contradictory picture of apopulace who can’t offer any project their full attention for more than ten minutes at a time,and who demand instant results without any consideration for quality. Further, I reckon earlyexposure to Anderson’s futuristic visions were among the things that inspired me to take up acareer in engineering. What I wonder, might today’s TV inspire? 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