Last chance to share a TV moment

Television "watercooler moments" - shared experiences of the previous night's entertainment discussed at work or at school - could finally be a thing of the past when Sky launches a service that downloads a mini-library of films and programmes to viewers' set-top boxes while they are asleep.

Sky Anytime TV is the next step towards complete view-on-demand entertainment which will bring to an end the era in which millions of viewers sat down at the same time to watch popular programmes.

Available to all of its two million Sky Plus subscribers next month, the free service will download up to ten key programmes such as Lost or 24 to a user's box overnight. Eventually, users will be able to choose what is downloaded, making the need to check television schedules a thing of the past.

But Sky insisted events such as sporting finals would still pull large live audiences. A spokesman for the company, Stephen Gaynor, said: "Video on demand is the end goal that we are looking for because people will want more programming at the time of their choice rather than by viewing schedules. There remain genres of programming that will always have a live audience such as major news events and sports coverage."

Adrian Monck, a former managing editor of Channel 5 News, said: "You only have to consider that whole reality television phenomenon, with events such as the Jade versus Shilpa row, to see that watercooler television is not entirely dead.

"But there is no doubt that, ever since the invention of the video recorder, the idea of millions of people sitting down to see one programme is going to fade away. Multi-channel television has taken care of that."

Paul Whitelaw, a television critic for The Scotsman, said: "While I think services like this are a good idea in theory, I think it's a shame that watching television has become such an insular thing. I quite liked the old feeling of knowing that millions of other people were watching the same programme as you at the same time, and the fun of discussing it next day. In a lot of cases saying 'did you see that thing on telly last night?' was a good way of launching a conversation with people with whom you might otherwise have nothing in common. How are we meant to plug awkward silences in the workplace now?

"We have far too much 'on demand' now. Call me a deranged old reactionary if you like, but I really don't mind watching TV programmes as and when the networks decide to schedule them. "

Sky hopes its new service will allow it to compete with rivals such as BT Vision, which allows users to download programmes "on demand" via a broadband internet system.

High drama and sporting showdowns keep us turned on

IT ATTRACTED 24 million British viewers - more than half the adult population - when it was aired in 1985. The episode of Dallas in which JR Ewing, left, nearly met his maker was one of the biggest "watercooler moments" in television.

Others include the March 1998 jailing of Coronation Street's Deirde Rachid, the 1985 snooker world championship final between Dennis Taylor, right, and Steve Davis, which kept a nation up well past midnight, and

the debut episode of Lost, the drama too implausible to be ignored.