By television I mean anything that appears on the dreaded box, including videos and DVDs as well as broadcast programmes.
My wife and I are not of the school that says you have to drastically curtail TV watching or not have it all, so the boys are well versed in the spectrum of entertainment available to them, and indeed the younger ones have inherited a wealth of videos from my oldest.
My job is three-fold. First I have to keep all the technology running. This of course also falls within the realm of fixing things, but it's also about masterminding a communications hub that channels various Sky and Freeview programmes to the required TV set in the right room at the right time.
And I've managed recently to procure a military grade VCR on Freecycle as the boys trashed a weaker model.
Then I have to police what they watch and when they watch within reasonable limits. This of course is the hard bit.
They've long since grown out of In the Night Garden (actually, they never liked that) and other fluffy stuff (didn't like much of that either), and virtually everything else seems to involve extreme violence of some sort, from Pokemon and their magic fighting powers to Oggy turned into mincemeat by his Cockroaches.
I have no answer to this. Well, actually I do.
And that's the final role – for any kid will tell you that anything on TV is much more fun if dad watches it with you. I know it was for me.
And that means they'll let me choose, and luckily they actually like a lot of the older stuff, such as the Jungle Book, Robin Hood, and Scooby Doo (although the last brings back disturbing memories – I was a lot more scared of it than they are).
This indeed is one of today's bare necessities for a dedicated dad.