I was tidying out some cupboards the other day and there they were: some old copies of The Herald and an old version of me. The papers were mostly from around 2010 when I was reviewing TV and watching pretty much every new programme every week. So I looked through the papers and read some of the stuff that was happening back then, and compared it to now, and the message was clear. Clear and uncomfortable.

On the face of it, a lot of things haven’t really changed that much since 2010. Back then, I was watching I’m A Celebrity, and Britain’s Got Talent, and Doctor Who, and The Apprentice and 15 years on, all those programmes are still around. As it happens, the only one I’m actually still watching is The Apprentice because I like its certainty: Alan Sugar points his podgy East End finger at you and pride is punished and profit is rewarded and that’s that. It feels like a very 15-years-ago kind of vibe and I like it.

However, the bigger picture with shows like The Apprentice is that, even though they’re still being made, the viewing figures are nowhere near what they were. Partly, it’s because more people catch up on iPlayer, but even when that’s taken into account, people just aren’t watching terrestrial TV as much as they did. It was starting to change in 2010, but even so those shows were still a big shared experience for a lot of us. Not any more.

You’ll know the reason if you have anyone under 30 in your life: they don’t watch telly. A YouGov survey in 2022 found fewer than one in 20 of 18-30s watch live BBC on a daily basis and more than a third never watch it and I know this from my own experience: my god kids would no more think of watching a programme live on the BBC than they would think of........

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