The most fun game in town this week is giving British telly a right drubbing. If it’s not newspapers relishing the phone in scandals, it’s BBC executive Alan Yentob excusing his editing trickery on an Arts show that no one watches or Jeremy Kyle being found guilty of cruelty to chavs.
Yentob has been cleared after admitting he recorded questions for his show, Imagine, sometimes weeks after the interviewee had gone home, and according to papers from The Weatherfield Gazette through to Gardener’s Globe, the end of the world can only be a few days away. Apparently the chats were done by a researcher with Yentob edited in afterwards. I hold no brief for the man. I introduced myself to him once at a radio debate and received the same feeling of welcome and warmth as a rejected baby penguin must feel in a snow blizzard. However, what on earth does it matter who asked the questions on his show? It’s the answers that matter.
In the past few days we’ve seen Cat and Ant and Dec joined again in people’s conversation round the office water cooler but this moggie isn’t the Deeley breed who used to flirt with the boys on kids’ telly. It’s a Blue Peter cat who was named by the show’s young viewers in a poll. Except it wasn’t. Producers didn’t like the audience choice of Cookie so changed it to Socks instead saying in their defence that children had chosen a slang term for something naughty that will get you sent to the bad fire.
I like to delude myself that I know as many slang terms as is healthy for an old git but how come Cookie has escaped me - and everyone else? The Guardian confidently announces it’s patois for a type of street drug, whilst the Mail disagrees saying it refers to a lady’s front bottom. If the last one’s true I’m asking granny to bake me some for Christmas.
Meantime, Antandec have had their TV Comedy Award thrown in to doubt after claims the phone in was rigged. Do I really care whether the Geordies got a Perspex blob for their mantelpiece because they have twice as many family members ringing in as their rivals? They might have done the nation a favour and stopped it going to one of the Last Of The Summer Wine cast.
Having done broadcasting for many years I’ll now burst a few bubbles, so those of a nervous disposition look away now.
Despite bad old TV trying to convince you otherwise Pudsey Bear isn’t really blind in one eye, David Tennant doesn’t actually travel through time and sometimes broadcasters don’t get enough calls for a competition. Maybe something better is on another channel or perhaps the prize isn’t worth the effort, but occasionally the contestant cupboard is barer than Mother Hubbard’s during Lent. So, do you own up and say “sorry, no winner today because no one’s listening/watching” or do you pretend and make up a fictitious winner to save face? I hate to steal Christmas but when radio jocks say “Let’s go to line fifty three” sometimes there’s only one poor soul on the line who’s thinking he’s got no chance after being told there’s half a county cricket match crowd in the queue ahead of him.
Where I would draw the line, with a very rusty but sharp hatchet, is at those dreadful late night quiz phone ins on TV where you get the feeling viewers are being deliberately and unsubtly ripped off. The recent example of a presenter asking for the top five things found in a lady’s handbag with the correct answer being a JCB digger, three Weapons of Mass Destruction and Volume One of Tony Benn’s memoirs, was a case in point.
Ok, I’m exaggerating, but not much. The answer they revealed, after no one had won the jackpot, included a screwdriver and a balaclava and even Jeffrey Archer might think that’s on the dishonest side of creative.
My guess is this will all carry on as budgets drop, staff get paid less (in some cases just their bus fare) and revenue dries up either through advertising moving on line or licence fees not keeping up with costs.
But people aren’t daft, and they know what they’re doing when they ring in. One guy I came across received a call from the Quiz Nation channel after running up a phone bill of £7,000 in a month. He thanked them, said that he’d only have gambled it in the bookie’s anyway, and expressed gratitude for the load of pleasure he got from their programme.
Personally, global warming would have to thaw Hell after it’s frozen over before I’d ring a premium rate line, but I defend the rights of anyone who gets fun out of it.
Including the broadcasters.