Dumbing Down Poem by Mary Champion

These are the TV programmes that get my goat,
the ones that have me reaching for the remote:
on BBC, the ones where the first half is spent
previewing the highlights of the next fifty percent.
The ones on commercial TV are even more inane,
assuming the viewer has a miniscule brain.
The first tedious third of each quarter is concerned
with telling you what they are going to tell you in the second third.
And the last third's unique form of torture
previews what's coming in the second third of the next quarter
after they have told you what they said in the second part
of the previous quarter - after the superfluous start.
They all assume the audience, that's you and me
has the attention span of a toddler with terminal ADHD.