Monday, October 15, 2007

This is funny

http://thetvcontroller.blogspot.com/

Especially if you know some of the personalities involved. Kudos whoever you are.

You know, I'm getting a bit fed up of all the holier than thou falling on swords that's going round at the moment.

It started with Greg Dyke and a few others over the WMD sexed up document. The effing Blue Peter cat naming scandal. The GMTV holiday phone in scam. The late night 'weirdo's phone in trying to win money' scam. The Comedy Awards phone in scam, the Yentob plagiarism accusations and Queensgate or Crowngate or whatever you want to call it.

Enough already! It's becoming the medias own sexed up WMD. Rap a few knuckles and move on. Nobody cares! Yes there seems to have been an endemic culture of using phone in's to boost revenue, and not always above board. We get it.

But no more of the sack cloth and ashes and finger pointing. Please? Fire who needs to be fired quietly and quickly and move on.

A couple of interesting points arose during my perusual of the 2006 BBC accounts. Yes I am that anal!

The BBC make almost as much from selling magazines as they do from selling programmes abroad. That's got to tell you something right there.

The average pay increase for BBC staff was 4.9%. Nice work if you can get it.

From a 3 Billion income, 2 Billion went on transmitted programming. By my calculations that leaves 1 Billion which didn't go on transmitted programming. I wonder what it went on? I would look but I'm not THAT anal!

But it seems to me that if Mark Thompson is looking for drastic cuts, eating into that 1 Billion would be a good place to start.

2 comments:

Jaded and Cynical said...

On one level I agree that these scandals are almost comically trivial.

In the weeek we learned about Her Majesty being embarrassed by that dodgy editing, we learned about 90 patients dying in just one hospital district because of third world standards of hygiene.

I know which of those issues I'm more worried about.

And yet. The accumulation of scandals does matter.

For a while now, you and others have been highlighting the wretched standard of broadcasting in this country. It's easy to go from one end of the week to the the other and not find a single programme that an adult could even sit through.

The unrelenting flow of sleazy revelations helps cast a little light on why that is. There are too many low-grade people in positions of authority within the business, and there's a widespread contempt for the viewer.

If some heads are finally starting to roll, the only response I can muster is: About. Fucking. Time.

English Dave said...

Jaded, I have no qualms about heads rolling. But have you noticed how the media is eating itself over this issue and why?

Well obviously you have!

''The unrelenting flow of sleazy revelations helps cast a little light on why that is. There are too many low-grade people in positions of authority within the business, and there's a widespread contempt for the viewer.''

Ayep!

They are a bunch of self absorbed media wankers who are completely out of touch with the audience.

But what did you think about Britney Spears and the custody battle?