TV broadcast
Programmes which are broadcast on television cater for viewers of different age groups, interests, educational background. Programme guides help you to make your own choice between the programmes whose aim is to entertain (chat/talk shows, quiz shows, comedies, cartoons, sitsoms, series, serials, breakfast/morning shows, soap operas) and those which want to inform and educate people (documentaries, wildlife programmes, nature programme, the news with weather forecast, travelogues, plays, dramas).

Couch potatoe lifestyle
Kids nowadays don´t read books, they don´t write letters and for most of their free time they just slump in front of a television or computer. The problem starts at school. Teachers have to give a lot of time to subjects like Literature, Maths, Science and foreign languages and so pupils do less PE and Games. Also, most pupils don´t walk or cycle to school. Some go on the bus, but more and more parents take their children to school and back by car. When they get home, what do they do? Do they play in the garden or in the street? Do they go to the park for a game of football or tennis? No, they sit down and watch TV or play a computer game. Many children have got a television or computer in their bedroom. When a child gets home, they switch his TV on and they don´t switch it off until going to bed – six hours later! If they want to talk to their friends, they us the telephone or the Internet. Kids today just don´t take enough exercise and they eat too much junk food, too. It´s very sad. We´ve got all these wonderful things – televisions, video-recorders, computers, cars – but they´re producing a generation of couch potatoes. The problem is very simple. Life is too easy for young people today.

Television
One disadvantage is that television destroys conversation and encourages us to be passive. We just sit and watch like dumb animals. Families have nothing to say each other any more. They just sit in front of the TV, switch it on and swich off their brains. On the other hand, through TV we can learn so much about our world and other cultures. It´s a wonderful source of information and it´s very educational. There are educational programmes and some are very good. But, on most channels, there is a great degree of violence and aggression. And all the blood, sex and violence has a bad influence on the cildren. On the other side, if they watch programmes made specially for children, they will find a rich source of information. Parents must learn to be selective about what their children watch. We have such a wide choice of programmes these days with the advent of satellite TV that we can all find something of interest for us, almost any time of the day. All we have to do is choose from one of the many channels. If we don´t find anything that suits us, then we only have to switch off. On the whole, television must be a good thing. After all, we can see events from the other side of the world as they happen. All the news in your living room, in an instant. And in full colour. Imagine. Somewhere in Australia, someone points a camera at an event, the signal bounces off the satellite, finds your aerial and fills the screen an instant later.

Radio
People who don´t like reading newspapers or think it´s too expensive to buy a newspaper every day and then throw it away, listen to the radio to be informed. The news is read by a presenter and there is also a lot of good music. There is usually a variety of radio programmes to choose from: news programmes and weather forecasts, chat shows (a programme in which famous people talk about themselves and answer listeners´ questions), educational programmes, quiz shows in which individuals or teams of people compete by answering questions, breakfast/morning shows (a programme broadcast early in the morning which includes news and regularly tells you what time it is, there are also usually songs, jokes and conversations with famous people), phone-in programmes (when people telephone in to give their opinion or get advice), and finally documentaries. Radio is very popular and many of us like listening to the radio throughout the day no matter what we are doing, like cooking, dinner, painting a room and working in the garden.