(First blogged 31st March 2004)
There’s more to broadcasting than knowing how to read an autocue…
Watching TV last night, it seemed that virtually all the channels available in the satellite and cable-free zone that is my current home were broadcasting the same programme: one in which a couple of eager and breathless young presenters (usually one male, one female) rush around interviewing ‘ordinary’ people about a house they’re doing up, or a planned relocation, or a garden they’ve allowed the experts to redesign, or whatever.
It made very boring viewing. And does so again and again, night after night. Cheap productions with cheap me-too ideas predicated on the cheap truth that people will suffer any embarrassment to get their faces on the telly.
And the presenters! Oh alright – I’ll grant you Ant and Dec have engaging personalities. But the ones on the property / garden / makeover / let’s-all-be-a-fly-on-someone-else’s-wall shows generally have no redeeming features whatsoever. Most of them can’t even ask a scripted question without it sounding scripted.
Meanwhile yesterday a great broadcasting life came to its sad but not unexpected end. We’ll hear no more Letters from America; and no more of Alistair Cooke’s distinguished, thoughtful, erudite voice. They should lock these ingenue TV presenters in a darkened viewing theatre and make them watch his documentaries on America over and over again until they’re really ready to step in front of a camera.
But they won’t: there’s not enough time.
