Jayne Dowle: How television has become an empty vessel

However, when it comes to television, the stunning 26-year-old starlet and me are as one. She says she hasn’t had a set for five years, because she got sick of wasting four hours a night in front of “mindless” programmes and reality shows. She doesn’t miss it, except for documentaries and football. And if she wants to catch a big match, she goes to the pub.

Thinking about just how little I have actually sat down and watched television this past year or so, I can see myself heading the same way. Apart from Downton Abbey, the recent adaptation of Birdsong and the news, and increasingly, I even find myself losing patience with that, I can’t think of much else I have seen religiously, all the way through, every week, at the time at which it was originally intended to go out. And with Downton I even ended up recording it and watching it a few minutes late so I could fast-forward through the adverts.

In fact, thinking about how we get our entertainment these days – from our laptops and iPads, from on-demand film subscriptions and radios plugged into the listen-again function, I think it is time to think the unthinkable. Can we now begin to imagine a life without television? Especially when among all the talk of dumbing down, we learn that Radio Four’s very erudite morning news programme Today is giving other, more lightweight shows a run for their money. Is it any wonder that ITV1’s Daybreak has failed to impress?

What the people clearly wanted to wake up to was not Adrian Chiles in a woolly pully, but John Humphrys savaging Ed Miliband. There is something so utterly portable about radio that suits our mad modern lifestyles, multi-tasking, driving everywhere, that staid old television can’t compete with.

However, such is his devotion to the blokes’ channel Dave – aptly-named in his case – I can’t see my husband giving up his addiction to endless re-runs of Have I Got News For You? and QI quite as easily as I have shed my dependence on soap operas and DIY shows.

But it is the man of the house who has pioneered our latest entertainment adventure, signing up to a service which provides us with unlimited access to thousands of films and television series online. This could be the beginning of the end of the Sky package that I swear costs more a month than the electricity bill.

I recognise that if we were being truly modern, we would gather round the laptop to watch these exciting diversions of an evening. But we didn’t buy a 42 inch Sony Bravia two years ago just so the children can loll about in front of American teen-soaps and wrestling, so he is in the process of hooking up the laptop to the “big telly”.

He’s a sound engineer, so I’m leaving him to it. I’ve told him to give me a shout when I can assume my position on the sofa and click play. The choice of films is so mind- boggling, it’s almost more exciting than i-Tunes. But my viewing will be based on nothing more scientific than working my way through the oeuvres of actors whom I consider to be quite handsome. My telly. My rules. And that is the point.

It strikes me that the television itself has become the empty vessel, not us. It still is that box in the corner, but the crucial thing is that nowadays we fill it with our choice of stuff. It doesn’t dictate our lives and our schedules. It does what we want it to, when we want it.

This thought was somewhere in my head on Sunday afternoon as my daughter Lizzie and I channelled our inner Beyonces through the wonders of Just Dance 3 on the Wii. Apologies to anyone passing at this time alarmed by the sight of a middle-aged mother of two pretending she was on stage at Wembley Arena. Next time we will close the curtains.

Sunday afternoon television when I was six, like Lizzie is, consisted of Black Beauty followed by Songs of Praise. If those were the formative influences on my generation, no wonder we get over-excited when we realise that thanks to the genius that was Steve Jobs, we can make our own playlists.

And what gets us totally excited is that we achieve this feat of technology without having to crouch next to Top of the Pops pointing a cassette player at the screen while everyone else in the room had to sit in deadly silence in case grandad’s scathing comments about Boy George ended up on the tape.

Back then, we really thought that television had a future stretching into infinity, like Blake’s 7. What we didn’t realise was that we were right in the middle of the last episode.