Okay, I just wanted to say “Clear and presenter danger.” Let’s you and I see if there’s any chance I’ve got something to back that up.

I think I have. Earlier this week, a friend did me the favour of alerting me to how a show called “The Piano” was about to start on Channel 4. She didn’t then do me the favour of admitting that she soon gave up on it.

I’m not going to say that I only watched because of her, because she might hear me. Instead, I’ll tell you I watched because of her, and because it was about pianos, and because this episode was filmed entirely at Birmingham New Street Station. It was great to see the place shot so well, excellent to see it shown off.

But you remember Strictly Come Dancing and the way that its minute-by-minute format was duplicated by Dancing on Ice. (It may have been the other way around. Certainly one copied the other.) Then when that format wouldn’t quite do for the Great British Bake Off, they contrived a version which then went on to power the Sewing Bee, the Pottery Thingy, and possibly others.

All of these have been distilled into The Piano and the sense of sticking rigidly to a format is equalled only by how that format has one single overriding and mandatory requirement. Sod the piano players, sod the piano playing, we must never go beyond 20 seconds without hearing from the presenters or seeing them going wide-eyed at a) how great the pianists are or, it doesn’t matter which, 2) how bad they are.

This is factual television today. It’s never about the subject anymore, it is just about not letting us see the subject and always seeing the presenters.

I don’t know when this changed, when it stopped being that factual was about the subject. I suspect there’s a bit of desperation here, too, as these shows daren’t risk any possibility of viewers switching to something else.

Which makes me wonder if this all happened when television fractured off from three or five channels into myriad ones. It is cheaper now to start a new TV channel than it is to make a TV show.

Then of course there’s the internet and complaints that YouTube is training people into having no attention span. I thought that was true until I watched this show. Now I’m wondering.

There are stunningly awful YouTube channels but there are also excellent ones that figure if you’re not interested in the topic, you won’t watch — but someone who is will stick with it to the end and then probably subscribe.

Everything is cyclical and I know there must be factual shows that are not frantic to keep hold of us. But I’m arguably one of the target markets for The Piano — I’ve just started learning to play — and with the presenter-obsession and the artifice of its competition, I’m gone.