"So I was just watching BBC3 the other night and ..." Nope. I would never say that. Or not in front of anyone I didn't know very well. Or at least not without several billion convoluted excuses. Because, while the advent of freeview has been wondrous (ok, quite good) in many ways, it has also created new problems for the humble telly watcher. Never has the channel snob-factor been so high.
Telly social climbing has always existed, of course - in the olden days, ITV was a bit common, and Channel 4 a bit daring - but it seemed as if those lines had started to blur (or, at any rate, Five had turned up to play the really poor relation). And then came digital, and a whole raft of channels that people pretend they don't watch, along with a rather smaller pile of others that people pretend they actually do watch. People fall over themselves to talk about how brilliant BBC4 is - but I can silence a room with one mention of Five US.
But why are we so bothered? It isn't just about programme quality. While that does, of course, contribute to how channels are viewed, it isn't the whole story. Take BBC3: Two Pints may indeed be a horror. But Drop Dead Gorgeous isn't half bad. Our channel snobbery is ridiculous - like buying a broadsheet and reading Closer inside it. But my guilty pleasure of watching repeats of Lovejoy on ITV3 doesn't actually remove any of my brain cells (and is a pursuit shared by a surprising number of perfectly normal people). So why the snorts of derision when I admit to it?
It's funny too, how reactions to telly channel-hopping are more extreme than those to radio channel-hopping. Radio 4 might be decreed the default channel of serious radio listeners - though by whom, again, I'm not quite sure - but you are allowed to turn over for some sports reporting, or even some pop via a local commercial station. We all need variety, after all. But on telly, apparently we don't. Or only the sort of variety that avoids certain channels. Or admitting to them, at any rate.
