This was one of the key findings of new research undertaken by the BBC looking at a style of television often described as “poverty porn” by TV reviewers.
The study was unveiled at a conference in Manchester, Who Benefits? TV and Poverty.
The event was backed by the RTS, the BBC, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and the National Council for Voluntary Organisations.
Click here to watch the full video of the event.
"BBC Three is not closing, we are reinventing online," promised Damian Kavanagh, controller of BBC Three, after it was announced the youth-channel would be migrating from televisions to tablets and computers in the new year.
The decision, which has been mooted for several months, was met with a mixed reaction.
So BBC Three is set to close in February. Good.
New to the show in January is the Virtual Voice, which will offer 360-degree virtual reality video, and a greater focus on BBC iPlayer to satisfy growing demand for content on mobile and connected TV platforms.
The Voice’s digital producers use Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and BBC online, adding new content to create a buzz around the show.
Brought forward in response to the terrorist attacks in Paris, this unsettling documentary investigates the women who support ISIS right here in the UK. Undercover reporting exposes the secret meetings and alarming reality of a domestic threat.
A group of RTS Wales members visited Celtic Prop Hire in early October, and saw items used in top TV shows, including BBC One’s Doctor Who, for which Celtic supplied various props in the current series.
Established in 1999, the Cardiff-based company supplies productions across the UK. Other recent credits include BBC's The Coroner and Sherlock as well as Sky 1's Stella.
The company also supplies a lot of props to the BBC’s Drama Village in Cardiff Bay, including for the long-running medical series Casualty.
RTS Wales joined the Institute of Welsh Affairs to host a lively debate on the future of Welsh broadcasting at Glyndŵr University in Wrexham at the end of October.
In a pre-recorded video message, the Welsh Government’s Deputy Minister for Culture, Sport and Tourism, Ken Skates, expressed concern about the weakening position of broadcast media in Wales.
The RTS Centre’s administrator, Hywel Wiliam, gave a brief overview of the key features of the current communications market.
One of the best contributions to the issue of the public purposes of the BBC was written almost 20 years ago by a then-future Chair of the BBC Board of Governors, Gavyn Davies.
He wrote: “Some form of market failure must lie at the heart of any concept of public service broadcasting. Beyond simply using the catchphrase that public service broadcasting must ‘inform, educate and entertain’, we must add ‘inform, educate and entertain in a way that the private sector, left unregulated, would not do’. Otherwise, why not leave matters entirely to the private sector?”
The classic sitcom no longer rules the TV schedules in the way that shows such as Fawlty Towers, Open All Hours and Porridge did in the 1970s. Or does it?
A panel of TV practitioners attempted to tease out the answer last month at an RTS early-evening event, “No laughing matter: how does comedy fight back?” This stimulating debate made one think that we could be living through another golden age of TV comedy without necessarily knowing it.
Sharon Horgan and Rob Delaney's acerbic comedy about a couple who get pregnant after a one-week-stand was one of this year's funniest new sitcoms. The second series has just started on Channel 4, and it's just as sharp, vulgar, and uproariously funny as the first. In the opening two episodes, the pair are adjusting to family life - and try to rekindle their romance with an ill-fated minibreak to Paris.