What causes me the most confusion is the question ‘why?’ Why are these fucktard network executives so short-sighted as not to see that peoples’ patience is being tested to its limit? Perhaps the viewing figures for these repeats still retain a sizeable chunk of the overall television audience, but is that because people still want to watch the shows being repeated to death, or do they just not have any choice in the matter? One thing seems certain: the art of conventionally-scheduled television could lose the battle to other media outlets if this trend continues.

Why watch endless repeats and the seemingly inexhaustible quantity of cooking shows (another terminal disease afflicting the small screen, I really can’t stand them) when one can simply use one of the many on demand services available to Sky+ and Virgin Media subscribers, as well as on the internet? Why watch only what the schedulers have you watch from their ivory towers built upon the foundation of premium rate reality show phone-in votes, when basically any film, series or even internet-based show can be accessed at the touch of a keyboard?

Maybe the answer to this great question of our age (overdoing it?) is a simple one…they want us to choose the other options. Perhaps they foresee the death in television schedules coming, as more advanced interactive mediums of absorbing content become more readily available to the consumer. Perhaps television confined to a scheduled timeslot will go the way of the dinosaur before this decade is out, but where does that leave those that are dependant on such services? I don’t know about you, but I know plenty of people who aren’t in the business of learning new tricks, if you know what I mean. What are they to do when conventional means of watching television go out the window? I don’t know, but I believe that Friends Syndrome is just the beginning of this shift in broadcast entertainment, and television as we know it may be lost forever.