I’m a television producer by trade – so what do you think is the question I’m most asked? Recently I was sitting at a table at a men’s dinner. The person next to me turned and said, “So what’s good to watch on television at the moment?”

The ‘Idol’ format has unquestionably become an international success for its producers. Local versions have been run in 11 countries. Watching the World Idol special, I found myself in the middle of a pop-star feeding frenzy.

Channel Ten’s Queer Eye for the Straight Guy has generated its fair share of comment since it began in October. The premise is that gay men are so much more stylish than their heterosexual brethren that they need to be consulted – in a Charlie’s Angels rescue mission kind of way – about every aspect of a straight man’s presentation (from crockery to nose hairs – I kid you not).

My eldest child is two and a bit. He spends lots of time charging through the house, jumping like a kangaroo, building Lego towers, riding his little bike and ‘reading’ his books. He also spends far more time watching television than did children of any previous generation. It’s more than I expected, but perhaps less than some.

Game shows are one of the oldest forms of televisual entertainment. We have been watching them since Pick-A-Box, all the way through Blankety Blanks and Sale of the Century, right up to the current leader of the pack – Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.

It has become something of a cliché to be concerned about our so-called fractured society. Modern Westerners are supposedly anti-relational, work-obsessed and detached from the communities that surround them.

Seeing the unfolding of The Bachelor – and its more deranged clone Joe Millionaire (where the ‘bachelor’ is merely masquarading as a wealthy suitor) is like watching a freeway pile-up: terrible to see, but you just can’t look away. Twenty five women humiliate themselves in the pursuit of a puffed-up piece of all-American plastic who happens to be looking for a wife. (Yeah, sure, not as much as he’s looking for fame and money.)

Oprah Winfrey – chat show host, actor, writer, guru – has many noble goals, quite a few of which she has achieved through grim fortitude and the strength of her charismatic personality. Through her daytime television show, her magazine, her book clubs, her altruistic institutions and her own writing, she has instigated charities that have changed thousands of lives, educated hordes of (mainly) women about literature and the value of books and has spread a message of self-determination and self-respect.

There are a group of television shows so shameful that hardly anyone will admit to watching them. Viewers learn to hide their secret habit like a disease. Serious addicts draw the curtains so the neighbours will not see.

Michelle Thomas has a theory about those fly-on-the-wall home invasion documentary-type shows. They make us feel good about ourselves.