WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?

So, Alex wins the X-Factor, ok so I said Austin would win but I'd forgotten how his bawling antics in the early stages had put paid to his chances. Diana started strongly but faded badly in the latter stages. I actually think I ended up wanting Ruth to win. This is all academic of course, because this year ITV have actually released the voting percentages from every week of the show. And the rumours were correct, Eggnoggin was actualy winning EVERY WEEK for the first six weeks and only lost out when Alex gained votes from other female contestants who went out towards the end. These figures also show just how influential sob stories and media hype can alter the votes. Remember Scott's first week travesty - the Matt Bianco song "Yeah, yeah"? Well, due to his sobbing after the judges comments he actually came second that week! Eggnoggin was also clearly just being voted for by everyone in Northern Ireland, even to the point where Cowell introduced him as "representing Ireland" like it was friggin Eurovision. Surely that's why whatshisname.........Leon Thingy won last year, simpky because the whole of Scotland was voting for him. Just be thankful someone half decent did win this year.

HELLO, BYE BYE

HELLO: Harry Hill is back! TV Burp on series link. Bing Gordon on Little Britain USA. Fonejacker. BYE BYE: Pretty much everything else on Little Britain USA, Stephen Fry in USA, nice scenery shame about the inhabitants.

WHY OH WHY OH WHY: PART ONE

Why oh why do they have The Omellete Challenge on Saturday Kitchen? Not one of the celebrity chefs ever makes anything that even constitutes and omellete and smug James Martin presides over the whole thing like he's Clarkson on Top Gear's Star in a Reasonably Priced Car.

IT'S THE X-FACTOR AGAIN, ALREADY!

So, the X-Factor reaches the finals stage and after a promising start, things go badly wrong with the Michael jackson week which was, Diana aside, pretty awful. I'm still trying to figure out who Cowell is looking to get rid of for the next series. Louis gets dumped with the bands category, which means he has no chance of winning, and Danni (who's trying way too hard after she was virtually edited out of the audition stages) gets the "Overs", including Daniel, who is being ribbed for looking like Ricky Gervais. Something which is causing more distress to Ricky Gervais than it is to Daniel. I want to get tickets to the live show just so I can shout "Do the dance!" at him. Failing that, can he at least sing Freelove Freeway one week? So who will win? Alexandra is good but unoriginal, Laura was amazing in week one but transformed into a pub singer in week two "Choo are not alone, Hi am here which-oo", Diana is lovely and talented but the teenage girls who vote won't like her, so, sadly, I think that Austin will probably win.

STREETDATE with HOLLY WILLOUGHBY

Jeez, they could use this as a means of torture in Guantanamo Bay. I challenge anybody to sit through more than 5 minutes of it. I barely made it past the opening credits. Who would have thought Holly '2CockGob' Willoughby could be this annoying?

DAWN OF THE DES

Has someone killed Des Lynam and replaced him with an android? Or is he just a Zombie? I've just watched Sporting Mastermind and was shocked to see how the once mecurial Lynam has, seemingly overnight, lost all his skills as a TV presenter. Granted he was already going downhill with his performance on Countdown where he could barely disguise his boredom, but his introduction on Sporting Mastermind must rank as one of the most monotone readings of an autocue since Jane McDonald hosting the National Lottery programme. His reading of the questions is barely any better. Give it up Des.

IN CRITICISM OF ALAN SUGAR

Does anyone else see the 'elephant in the room' whilst watching The Apprentice? The thing is, Alan Sugar is somewhat living on past glory's. What do his companies actually do? What does he actually sell nowadays? He sure as hell doesn't know anything about advertising. It was the same in the last series with the 'advertising' task. As far as Alan is concerned, all you need is to do is shout the name of the product at the viewer and show a picture of it. Job done. Perhaps someone ought to have the balls to point out that the advertising game is rather more sophisticated today (as Raef and Michael knew). Answer me this Sir Alan. Do you thing an ad' showing a Gorilla playing the drums to a Phil Collins tune would be a good way to advertise chocolate?

IN DEFENCE OF ALAN SUGAR

What is it with people moaning about Sir Alan's sackings on The Apprentice? So what if Simon was the most 'normal' bloke in the competition, he just wasn't ever going to be a business man, as he admitted himself. And Raef? Sir Alan summed him up perfectly - just a load of hit air. But who's going to win? I have no idea. It's interesting to see how Lucinda has changed from being a timid, shirker to really standing up for herself but I have a sneaky feeling that gobby Claire might actually be emerging as a favourite for Sir Alan. And you wouldn't have thought that a few weeks ago.

JONNY & JOHNNY

So, you get Sir Alan Sugar on your chatshow. That'll be interesting and amusing. But, you then let some fat, talentless, chump called Johnny Vegas on the same show and you allow him to constantly interrupt the interview with embarrassingly unfunny comments. Two rules for chat shows. 1. No Johnny Vegas. 2. No Peter Kay.

HIGNFY - An apology

OK, so the Brian Blessed edition of the show was very funny. But the metaphorical axe is still hanging over the show in my opinion. Hislop and Merton do look somewhat tired of doing it. Or just mildly bemused this week as Blessed totally PWNED! them.

OFF OFF OFF OFF!

Have Britain's Got Talent's producers been scouring the local OAP homes aswell as the mental hospitals? This weeks edition was non-stop oldies. Even the obligatory oddball, Blue Tulip, was knocking on a bit and also reminded me of something I'd seen earlier in the evening on the latest episode of Doctor Who (which stopped being good about 2 series ago)

If you think she looks familiar, that's because this week's nutter has been seen on TV before as part of a documentary on stalkers. Remember now? She's the woman who claimed to be DJ Mike Read's wife. There's got to be something wrong with putting these people on TV for the public's entertainment.

BAD ADS'

Most ads' annoy me but every so often one or two deserve special mention. Currently the Berocca advert tops the list. You know? The one where they are doing choreographed moves on treadmills. If you're going to rip off a world famous YouTube video at least put in some effort and bring something original to the table. This is way below even being half-arsed.

GOING DOWNHILL FAST

Have I got News for you. Bring back Angus Deayton or kill this show off. The first two of this new series have been weak.

Friday Night with Jonathan Ross. Watching Ross embarrass his guests is becoming cringeworthy. The Ian Wright/Kirtsty Gallagher interview being a good example and this weeks "would you have sex with an animal" question to everyone in the Green Room.

Pirate TV

Managed to see the Calzaghe V Hopkins bout in the early hours even though I don't subscribe to Setanta and didn't pay a penny. How? I watched it via a stream. If you didn't know already, pretty much every sporting event is now broadcast over the internet in something akin to pirate radio broadcasting. I don't know exactly how it works but it seems some generous souls connect up their satellite/cable box to their PC and then 'stream' the events over some type of P2P connection. You can virtually guarantee that any event is being broadcast on a sports channel somewhere in the world so if you don't mind the commentary being in Chinese, or worse, by Americans, then you're sorted.

There are websites that post links to forthcoming streams but they aren't always reliable. Last night the links to the Calzaghe fight directed me to a site that wanted to install 'Zango' onto my computer first, which appeared to be some sort of nasty ad' generating spyware, so I had to look elsewhere to find a working link. These links usually appear only a short time before the event so it realy feels like you're trying to find the details of a secret warehouse party or rave back in the 90's.

I managed to get a working link for the fight even though the picture was a little choppy and one side of the screen was a live chat room full of overt racists and xenophobes. Unfortunately, it only lasted three rounds before the dreaded 'buffering' message appeared followed shortly after by a 'not broadcasting' message. Cue lots of WTF's!!! and NOOOOO's!!!!! on the chat window.

A frantic hunt found a Sopcast link to the HBO broadcast and I was able to view the rest of the match with only the occasional pauses.

This method of 'TV' viewing still seems to be something of an underground practice but it can only increase as word gets round. Then the TV channels are really in trouble.

WELCOME!

Welcome to BYEBYETV, my TV review blog. I say TV but you know how it is nowadays, you're just as likely to be watching on your ipod or bittorrent or whatever new fangled digital media content delivery sytem has been invented by the time I hit the 'publish' button.

I hope this blog will be a success, infact I'm desperate, I need this more than anything and my grandad who died last month always said I should start a TV review blog. But above all, I just want to give my poor kids a better life!

Okay none of that is true, but if you're a 'hopeful' you have to have a story or you just won't get noticed. Just ask every contestant on Britain's Got Talent which has just started it's second series and so far is following exactly the same formula as the last series. Oh, and the same formula as the last series of The X-Factor and probably all the other shows that involve auditions that I can't bring myself to watch one minute of.

The stand out acts so far are singing kids (one who says he's been bullied, natch) a Duncan Norvelle lookalike who does comedy pop star impersonations and who may or may not have anything better in the next rounds and a Phillipino lady who looks a bit Ting Tong but can actually sing quite well. The rest is predictable filler; obligatory nutters, deluded O.A.P's, terrible animal acts, toned young men jumping about and little girl dance troupes sponsored by Max Factor.

How much longer before Cowell's bubble bursts?