There seems to be a disproportionate number of young people on the telly. I suppose they look better and TV is all about the look. This might make you think a consequent proportion of the audience is young. But no. We are told the greater part of it is from middle society: middle aged, middle class, middle youth.

So what’s going on here? I’ve heard two explanations.

One is that young people are watching less than they did apparently and the advertisers and programmers want to target and attract them back. There seems something perverse about this: they make programming for people who aren’t actually watching.

The other is that putting lots of young people on the box encourages a certain kind of voyeurism in the core market. In other words the old have a almost prurient interest in spying on the young whether it be for reasons of disapproval, envy or sex. They can do this as viewers free of sanction. This seems perverse too: both that programmers might assume this of their main audience and at the same time it will be to some extent true.

Perverse thing, the television.