Diary of a TV Junkie: We’re not stupid, you know! Felicity Shea
OKAY, it’s about bloody time someone stood up and said, ‘Enough!’.
Free-to-air networks take note—stop treating viewers like idiots! You all do it and think we don’t notice but I’m here to tell you, we do. TV may be the opiate of the masses, but that doesn’t mean we check our brain cells at the door.
When I was eight years old I tried to con my sister into buying a jar of ‘magic’ air. This air, I assured her, would increase her physical abilities no end, including turning her into the fastest runner in the world and making her more beautiful than Barbie herself. All for the princely sum of one dollar. Naturally, she saw through this and told me what I could do with my air.
My point is that a con job is easy to spot a mile away and while viewers generally may be a little more worldly-wise than my seven year-old sister, the networks’ con jobs are just as ham-fisted and easy to spot as my rarified air rort.
Ten, let me start with you. Stop running Big Brother past its designated end time. It’s driving me nuts! I don’t watch Big Brother, I’ll never watch Big Brother and by running it late, you only force me to switch to another network that starts its programming on time (and is that really a risk you want to take on a Monday night?).
Running a program deliberately and consistently overtime is a cheap trick to artificially boost the ratings of the following program. Yes, Nine, I’m looking at you. Running Millionaire into Sex & the City is a futile tactic.
Oh, and Ten—what the hell are you thinking with your Simpsons coverage? Last Tuesday night, going to every ad break, you cut a character off in mid-sentence.
Bart: “Lisa, I’ve been thinking it over and next summer I—” [cut to ad break].
Not once, but three times.
And I’d like to know just how many people you think you fooled with your promo for The Guardian last week. Billing it as “The episode too good to see just once” and “Special encore screening” is rubbish. Just admit you don’t want to waste an “all-new” episode against the World Cup. We understand that.
Nine, screening an old episode of Sex & the City after a new one doesn’t actually make it a “special double episode”. A double episode is something entirely different and centres around season openers. It’s two new episodes which are filmed consecutively and screened back to back. The X Files used to do it often.
Seven, I have two words for you: Sports Night. It’s just plain mean to start a (critically acclaimed) show, screen only a handful of episodes and then dump it again.
While I’m at it, Seven—I know NSW is not an AFL market, and I know you’re a bit put out you’re not the official broadcaster this year; I’m upset too. But don’t betray your audience. Why drop Talking Footy completely in this market when the French Open was on? You could have sandwiched it between the French Open and NBC Today, so we could at least tape it.
Look, it’s not rocket science. If a program is scheduled to start at 8.30pm then start it at 8.30pm. If you’re running a repeat then don’t bullshit the viewer. And time your ad breaks well, so the program is not interrupted.
Can’t you wait for Bart to finish his sentence? Is a little respect too much to ask?
Diary of a TV Junkie is one small screen viewer’s observations of the television landscape. E: felicity.shea@reedbusiness.com.au.
