Well, yeah, I am getting old and grumpy, but that's besides the point.

I was exposed to a lot of American television in its native format when I lived in Florida. That's enough to put anyone off TV for life: I used to tell people how the experience really made me appreciate how good the television is in the U.K.

But about fifteen years ago I realised I was watching a lot less television than I used to. Much less. At the same time I realised I was paying through the nose for a lot of things I just wasn't interested in watching, introduced by continuity announcers who all appeared to have degrees in being patronising. So I cancelled my subscription to Sky (the UK's main pay-TV provider). It felt really good - because I was no longer being driven to watch things just because I'd paid a lot of money for the privilege. I still had a huge number of channels to choose from, because I connected a different box to my dish and started to receive loads of channels from Germany, Austria, France and beyond. And I realised that I actually enjoyed watching shows on those channels more than I did those on UK TV. That got me thinking.

I tried to figure out whether I'm just getting older and grumpier, or if UK TV really is getting worse.

I realised that this is very much down to a matter of taste, so don't expect any sweeping arguments for a resurrection of the "golden age" of earlier programming, whatever your particular golden age might be. I'm quite well aware that audiences change, and that now that I'm approaching 60 there are precious few channels that are interested in engaging my attention as a viewer. Over the last decade I've felt increasingly disenfranchised, and I'm not happy about it. The thing about most German channels I watch is that they don't generate that same feeling of disenfranchisement. It feels like I'm the person that they're talking to. The fact that many programs begin by addressing their audience as "liebe zuschauer" or "dear viewer" is also one of the most endearing things ever.

European channels are much, much less frantic than their British equivalents. That appeals to me in a big way. The infatuation with hand-held camera work makes many UK shows look like the entire crew have overdosed on coffee. I have a sneaking suspicion that the whole trend caught on over here because film crews realised they could talk their director out of insisting that they lugged heavy camera tripods around everywhere. It's a nice effect in moderation, but nobody does it in moderation any more. Meanwhile, over in Scandinavia, viewers can sit down to watch a four-hour programme that consists of nothing except than the view out of the front window of a train travelling from Bergen to Oslo in Norway. I adore slow TV. I can't believe I'm particularly unusual in having an attention span that's measured in minutes or hours rather than seconds, but here in the UK television producers aren't interested in folks like me. BBC Three's news programme lasts for just sixty seconds. Are they taking the piss?

That train journey was filmed in high definition - and that is one thing that I have appreciated a lot over the past decade or so. I finally caved in and bought a flat screen TV and not only has it freed up a large chunk of the living room, I actually enjoy watching it. The box for European TV has been joined by a FreeSat box and the programmes that I do watch these days look absolutely stunning. Even there, though, things aren't as good as they could be: the bandwidth for each HD channel was cut down about six months after I bought the box, and I really noticed the drop in image quality.

The main problem for me, I think, is that I've amassed a certain amount of knowledge and experience about random things over the years. These days, a lot of the folks writing, presenting or producing programmes are a lot younger than I am. They don't know the same stuff. So there are times when someone asserts something on TV that I know is wrong. This is a big factor in driving people to talk about the dumbing down of television, I think. It's because these days, a lot of the folks watching TV are smarter than the folks making the programmes.

For example, back in the day most folks in front of the camera were either ex-forces (like Raymond Baxter) or were the product of an education system that favoured the classics. The tech people in the studio had a science background. Science programmes were made by scientists. Arts programmes were made by people who had a fine arts background. These days, universities offer degrees in media - a laudable change, but it means that media graduates don't have the same understanding of the world - or of the subjects they're making programmes about. For example, the graphics teams at the BBC News channel love to create channel bumpers that show information flowing into the organization's buildings and satellite dishes in the form of lots of glowing lines. It used to really wind me up, because the lines would just flow into the receiver at the top of the dish rather than being collected by the dish itself. I get grumpy because that means a news channel is portraying the world as one person thinks it should work, rather than how things actually are. I'm sure you're familiar with the problem.

The rapid pace of the media over here is also reflected on things like attention to detail. Most local BBC news offices have a less-than-refreshing attitude to details like spelling. In some cases checking simple facts seems to be beyond your average television journalist. It's painfully obvious that most have never seen the inside of a library - it's much faster using the internet, after all. Unfortunately, the information on the Internet isn't always as accurate. In fact, a large proportion of information on the net is complete drivel. The gullibility of the typical man in the street is amazing - have a look at some of the rubbish that the folks at Snopes have debunked.

Okay, I'm drifting way off-topic here. I do occasionally stumble across an interesting programme. BBC Four is a firm favourite with me and I've watched some great programmes recently there. While a lot of my favourites listed below are no longer being made, there are some current programmes on the list.

But to close this section, indulge me as I rant and rave for a bit.

I am utterly sick to death of the apparent need for everything to be plastered with red dots, logos, information bars, requests to phone in and vote, and general clutter that's there for the TV company's satisfaction, not mine. Do the folks at BBC Four, Pick TV or E4 genuinely believe that we won't know that we're watching their shiny new channel rather than BBC1 or ITV without a graphic on the screen continuously telling us that we are?

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• The camera operator doesn't know what a tripod is for
• The camera operator has just discovered what a zoom lens is for
• The channel broadcasts each show more than once in a pathetic attempt to boost ratings
• It shows members of the public in either "amusing" or "life threatening" situations, or both
• Stuart Maconie, Emma B and Davina McCall did an "I love this show" TV special about it
• Johnny Knoxville is in it
• It has pointless sound effects (stand up, BBC's "Blue Planet")
• It involves buying, selling, or decorating houses
• It involves buying or selling antiques
• The show involves phone-in voting and audience interaction
• Jonathan Ross is in it
• There's a canned laugh track
• It's about something that the people being interviewed have absolutely nothing to do with
• It's about something that the people being interviewed know absolutely nothing about

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• Let word of mouth do your advertising, not relentless plugging
• If it's a talk show, bring back Michael Parkinson to do it
• If it's a documentary, don't turn it into a dramatic mini-movie
• If it's a documentary, use people who know what they're talking about
• If it's a documentary, use graphics that are actually relevant and accurate
• If it's a reality TV show, sack the production company and go and do something else instead
• If it's a music show, make the artists perform live, and without backing tracks
• If it's a kids show, get Cat Deeley to present it
• Give a new show a year to find its niche, but...
• Call it quits when the show loses its edge
• Bring back Tiswas!

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