Children's television has really changed since I was a boy (this should be read by people with exceptional memories)

In the 70's children's television was so much easier to navigate. Remember at that time Channel 4 was still an invention waiting to happen, channel 5 was a long way off and Rupert Murdoch was still relying upon the media of newspapers. Nowadays there are hundreds of channels to choose from, the end result is that the children's sections have been dumbed down because quantity took over from quality. When I was a child I enjoyed Button Moon to follow Mr Spoon (sorry I sung that bit) A cheap paper plate with the lights dimmed and we kids really believed we were in space. Nowadays kids would need to be in actual space before they would buy into that illusion. We had Playschool with Jemima, Humpty, Big Ted, Little Ted and windows made to help us understand our shapes. I wonder what the Playschool equivalent is today. There was also time frames for kids TV, 1 hour at lunch and an hour and a half after school. Nowadays feckless parents can park their hideous offspring in front of the wide screen and keep them there until they have finished puberty (sadly the immature and irresponsible nature of some parents suggest to me that many of the parents today didn't quite mature through to the end of puberty)We watched why don't you, Blue Peter, Magpie and How and sadly these programmes were consigned to the dustbin of children's television history, but the idea of children as learners and doers has not been replaced, now we have a generation of children as watchers and passive observers. I joined in with a Handful of songs, a man with a guitar singing well loved children's favourites for us to sing along. Now we have rapper rappy disser singing ditties such as ' I ain't gonna run, when i'm sitting on me gun, you diss me with yer last breath and i bring you a certain death' cheerful? yes , but hardly puff the magic dragon is it? Anyway my idea is that all kids TV should end at 4pm and parents should entertain the children through family games, talk and activities. This is not a hardship, parents chose to be parents because they love children, they didn't do it because the family allowance is good (......so want to add to this) let us stop relying upon the box to do our parenting for us, it is a cop out, a get out clause, and when little Tammy is 35 she will thank Blue Cow for being a terrific surrogate parent and will not be able to recall your role in bringing her up. Change the channel whilst you still can.