Mark Thompson, the BBC director general, has accused ITV, Channel 4 and Ofcom of trying to undermine the Corporation by "top-slicing" the television licence fee...
Mr Thompson said: "There is a suspicion that for some years now there has been a small group of people who have been ideologically focused more on the principle of getting a wedge into the licence fee and trying to prove a point about the principle of top-slicing, rather than having a particular urgent need.
"When Ofcom was interested in a public service publisher, it was going to take about £100m and the licence fee looked like a good source for that. Then it was Channel 4 that was going to need perhaps £100m and the licence fee was a good source for it. Now, we are told regional news might need £100m," he said in an interview with The Media Show, on Radio 4.
I'm not one for conspiracy theories, but what if the recent decline of Channel 4 into a trashy freak-show wasn't just a result of relentlessly pursuing viewers by serving up a diet of ever more sensational (and cheap) reality TV? Maybe there's been a hidden agenda, too. "Dear taxpayer", insinuates Channel 4, "quality television is just so expensive to produce. We'd love to produce intelligent, entertaining programmes, but we're so poor and needy that all we can afford to make these days is a relentless stream of prurient tabloid drivel. Now if you could just see your way to bunging us a bit of that licence fee, I'm sure we could knock out something a bit classier."
Exhibit A - a (not unrepresentative) selection of C4's recent offerings:
Big Brother - yet another tired outing for the show which started C4's descent down the slippery slope into inanity
Shipwrecked - Big Brother with palm trees
Wife Swap - another excuse to bring a selection of ill-matched, shallow exhibitionists together and watch them bicker inanely (see Big Brother and Shipwrecked, above)
Bodyshock - Half Ton Mum/Dad/Son - an excuse to gawp, slack-jawed, at a selection of very fat people
Supersize vs Superskinny - an excuse to gawp, slack-jawed, at a selection of very fat and very skinny people
Fat March USA - an excuse to to gawp, slack-jawed, at a selection of fat Americans
Bodyshock - Two Foot Tall Teen, The Girl with Eight Limbs, etc, etc - an excuse to gawp, slack-jawed, at a selection of people afflicted with bizarre medical conditions.
Extreme Male Beauty - an excuse to to gawp, slack-jawed, at a selection vain and insecure blokes getting waxed, pumping themselves up with steroids, having their private bits hacked about and extended and generally humiliating themselves painfully in public
Embarrassing Bodies - by the time I've watched the grinning medic with the perma-cocked eyebrow who clearly fancies himself something rotten and the doctor cringe-makingly called Pixie pulling on their surgical gloves with a knowing smirk, I've experienced quite enough embarrassment without being subjected to people's flatulence, unsightly hair, incontinence, misshapen genitalia and other comedy ailments. This load of old tosh masquerades as a public service, but it's no NHS Direct - more like an unfunny version of Carry On Matron.
Embarrassing Teenage Bodies - leave them alone, for heaven's sake - being a teenager is embarrassing enough without sharing your acne with the nation
Tears, Tiaras and Transsexuals - the conveyor-belt of tedious, exploitative trash rolls on
A WI Lady's Guide to Brothels, Desperate Virgins, Virgin School, Dawn Porter, Extreme Wife - soft porn dressed up as documentary
A Place In The Sun: Home or Away? Grand Designs, Grand Designs Revisited, Location, Location, Location, Relocation, Relocation, Relocation, Room For Improvement, A Place In The Sun, - eye-wateringly boring property porn dressed up as entertainment
Extreme Celebrity Detox - please, just make it stop...
I'm not saying it is a conspiracy - just that anyone cynical enough enough to come up with anything as painfully awful as the current Channel 4 schedules is probably evil enough to devise such a dastardly plot.
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