I have a little experiment for all you readers that also enjoy watching Television,ill assume you have a TV guide of some description please open it on any given day at say 8.00pm the times irrelevant choose any time you wish,now compare the programmes, could be “Jamie’s American road trip” [cooking programme] vs “Master chef” vs “Come Dine with me” vs “Floyd around the med” my point is this one TV channel will air a cooking programme if successful the other main channels will do a rehash of the same format just with a different name!

This lack of imagination is not limited to cooking programmes we have “Top Gear” vs “5Th Gear” vs “Men and Motors” vs “Used car road show” do you see where I’m going with this? I’m sure you the reader can think of many more examples? “Homes under the hammer” vs “Location Location Location” and on and on and on! “How to look good naked” vs “10 Years younger” vs “10 minute make over”, ill stop there.

What i find truly astounding is that TV stations pay people to come up with ideas or a premise for a new programme emphasis on new programmes! when clearly all the writers or editors are doing is opening up the TV guide looking at a successful programme then copy it and give it a new name!

This particularly frustrates me and my fiance we both write Novels Short stories Sit Com’s, we have yet to achieve great success and i feel its partly due to TV companies and publishers blocking new ideas from previously unpublished writers,they are content to copy each others programmes without even a shallow attempt at covering up their out and out copying of other peoples ideas.

A few years back i attended a BBC lead evening their idea was to discover a new Sit Com,people had written in with their ideas and scripts.The finalists all had their work acted out by professional actors in a large theatre the winning entrants work was then turned into a pilot episode to gauge public opinion, what a fantastic idea the BBC got a free new Sit Com and a new writer was given a chance to start their career.However now all the TV companies are looking at is each others work coping and re branding.

I feel with the revenue raise through advertising and licensing we the general public deserve more.