Television has changed hasn't it. I don't mean technologically speaking, and believe me a column in which I tried to bluff my way through such nonsensical jargon as 16:9 aspect ratios and surround sound stereo, even for that matter what exactly 'digital' means, would be very short and pretty sketchy at best. No, I mean that television has changed in terms of what it does, and how we treat it. A few weeks ago my daughter was moaning because I wouldn't let her watch anything, and I found myself slipping into the dreadful parent trap of trying to convince her how lucky she was by telling her how hard things were when I was a lad - that is to say, I told her that when I was little, children's programmes were only on for a short time each day, and that there were only three channels.

With hindsight it was a bit of a mistake, really, telling her all that, because she probably now thinks I was born in the Dark Ages. But it is true that back in the 1970s, and indeed into the 1980s, TV was restricted to three channels, and even those weren't on all day. And so perhaps inevitably any TV you did watch was rather more of an event. Mind you (and I didn't tell her this, lest she started wondering just how Dark the Dark Ages really were) back then we didn't have videos or (ha-ha!) DVDs either - in fact personally we didn't even have an audio tape recorder until 1979, and we never, ever did get a soda stream. I digress, but before I stop doing so let me just clarify that I got over my soda stream envy complex some time ago, so as long as I never hear that superlative jingle again (get busy with the fizzy - Soda Stream - sshh sshh get fizzy) I'll be fine.

To clarify though, in the absence of videos and the like, and with only three TV channels broadcasting from about 3pm until roughly midnight, TV was certainly a finite commodity and more of an occasion. I can still remember the excitement of occasionally being allowed to stay up and watch "Shoestring" with Dad on Thursdays, or sometimes "Starsky and Hutch" with both parents on Fridays. (As an aside, I was never that bothered about either show, although "Shoestring" with the then-hirsute Trevor Eve did have a superb theme tune. But if my brother was going to stay up and watch them, then I was determined that I was too.) Perhaps this limited timeframe for programming explains why I mainly recall watching things as a family rather than alone, certainly during the 1970s - whether it be the ubiquitous "Doctor Who", or "Grange Hill" or "The Muppet Show" or even "Dallas".

Back then (in, as we've established, the Dark Ages) one of the main goals of the TV schedules was to give us variety. So, for example, the BBC's Saturday line-up during its famous 'Golden Age' (a common euphemism for Dark Ages, but bear with me) went from sport to children's show to family drama to game show to adult drama to news to chat show. Although the terrestrial BBC and ITV (sorry, ITV1 as I'm legally obliged to call it nowadays) still endeavour to provide variety, most other channels are doing the exact opposite. So we get the History Channel or the Nature Channel or the Horror Channel or the Comedy Channel or (even more horrifying than the horror channel in my opinion) the Wrestling Channel. Rather than try and provide a range of programmes of different sorts to appeal to as many people as possible, the aim seems to be to concentrate on a specific type of programming. By doing that they may get less viewers, but those they do get are more inclined to hang about and not 'touch that dial'. With so many other channels clamouring for attention, it's now more important than ever to 'hook' the viewer and quickly reel them in. There's no sign yet of The Doctor Who Channel but if and when it arrives that will almost certainly prove my theory (not that I'll care about it by then, I'll be far too busy watching the TV).

Mind you, if this is a fair comment on where TV is nowadays, I don't think it can really be blamed. If part of the reason for TV's decline in... I was going to say 'popularity', but perhaps that's the wrong word; if part of the reason for its decline in status is the video age, then it's only reasonable for TV to respond by imitation. Video (and DVD) effectively give the viewer the chance to watch what they want, when they want; and so it is with the Travel Channel or the Decorating Channel or the Animal Channel. Indeed Film Four has recently become Film Four Weekly, which means they show the same two or three films every night for a week!

But before we all start turning our backs on the one true Billy Cotton in favour of the false idol of Rupert Murdoch, I'm not sure that having so many channels is the boon you might imagine. I don't for a moment want to suggest that back in the Dark Ages every single TV programme was of a high standard; but it's inevitable that with more channels on for more of the time there must be a lot more rubbish transmitted now than ever before, even before we start to factor in the subjective drop in quality over the past 15-20 years. So we get an awful lot of rubbish, and an awful lot of repeats (and an awful lot of repeated rubbish, which is just... well, awful). Despite having all those channels, my wife and I still find that there's nothing on we want to watch - the one advantage of having all these millions of channels is that it takes you a lot longer to go through them all before you realise that there's nothing on, so at least it kills a bit of time that way.

The other thing I notice with this shift over time is that there are very few programmes both my wife and I watch. Whereas in the Dark Ages we would all gather round to watch "Are You Being Served" or "Crossroads" there are very few programmes that Mrs Curnow and I watch together. Granted this may in part be due to the fact that we have rather different tastes, but a lot of it is due to having probably too much choice. Rather than having only BBC1 or ITV to choose between (and possibly arty old BBC2, bit of a rank outsider) and settling on just one or the other, we are now able to find, somewhere in the huge swamp of channels, something which greatly appeals to one of us (so that would be the Horror Channel for Mrs Curnow, old re-runs of "Cheers" for me) but which doesn't much appeal to the other. There are a lot of occasions when one of us is watching TV, but the other is doing something else entirely.

I can't honestly point at this lack of 'combined' viewing as a clear sign of the decline of Western Civilisation, but conversely on those rare occasions when we do both watch the same thing, there is something very comfortable and enjoyable about it. I say 'rare' and in fact, I can think of only about two or three shows in the past couple of years that both Mrs C & I have purposely watched. Last Summer I caught some old episodes of "Upstairs Downstairs" on UK Gold, and after an initial scoff or seven from my other half she started to watch it too and soon got into it. And it became, just for a little while, a daily ritual to watch it every evening; we went through the tail end of season 2, all of seasons 3 and 4 (and thus the whole of the Great War) like that. Quality counts I suppose, and to find ourselves discussing, for example, the motivation behind Mr Hudson's lack of enthusiasm for Jimmy's signing up, is surely a sign of how compelling and well-produced that programme was.

More recently we have both been watching "Waking the Dead" (Trevor Eve again, albeit with much less hair - and this week briefly tap-dancing, which was nice) and "NYPD Blue" which for some reason Channel 4 like to show just after midnight on a Thursday, so hardly peak-time.

I don't know that there's any great point to this (apart from having a bit of a moan about things) although wearing my Doctor Who Fan hat (well, anorak anyway) the issue of whether there is such a thing as 'family viewing' any more may become more important next year when the new Doctor and companion hit the screens. But I do know that when we watch something together it's a great deal more fun than watching it alone, and I do wish there was more of that.

And as a last, ironic note, the title this week heralds from probably the only programme that all three of us (that is myself, Mrs C and our littl'un) watch together: "The Simpsons". But that's a topic for another day...