Unwatchable TV
Oh boy.
Of all the BBC digital channels, CBeebies is the only one we regularly have on. It's a boon, especially between 6 and 7 in the evening. The great thing about it is there are no adverts for Barbies and cheap plastic crap. As for the rest of it, I find both the lowbrow BBC3 "yoof" programming and the middlebrow BBC4 "culcha" programming equally offensive. BBC4 is basically TV for the kind of people who don't watch television. Don't, in fact, own a television.
I've only ever watched BBC3 for a few minutes. I saw a couple of presenters on some entertainment news prog. She was reading her autocue, and you could see his lips moving as he followed what she was reading.
Pure genius.
This is a strange connection (alert), but it always puts me in mind of Lou Reed's "Take No Prisoners". It's a great album featuring an artist at the peak of his powers in terms of haranguing journalists and reviewers and celebrity culture with vicious accuracy. The reviewer on the page who calls the performance sloppy is missing the mark by a long way. The band is so incredibly tight that they stay with Reed throughout, even when he stops in the middle of a line to carry on his tirade. Like when he starts to sing the line "Little Joe never once gave it away" in "Walk on the Wild Side." He says,
"Little Joe.... Little Joe was an idiot. I don't know if you know that. He couldn't even tie his shoelaces and dress..."
But my favourite bit is where he talks about some writer, known to the other writers in the front row (one of Lou's beefs is that the bastard reviewers get free tickets to his shows and free copies of his albums and then slag him off), who was involved in writing entries for an encyclopaedia. he calls her Tiny Malice, and he characterises her as saying things like, "What's a word gonna make this thing interesting?"
Which I guess you have to think about, but she's essentially saying that she needs to spice up a subject because she's not interested in it -- an indication that she's so stuck up her own arse that she can't imagine a world in which someone might just be interested in the subject.
And I was reminded of this watching the unwatchably offensive Channel 4 docu on the voice. Because they're supposedly doing a history of the most amazing human voices in history, people like Maria Callas, Bessie Smith, Edith Piaf, Billie Holiday. But in order to "make it interesting" they have some nonentity called Beyonce doing a talking head, and play one of her videos over the closing credits.
Youth TV programmers. Dismemberment is too good for them.
Of all the BBC digital channels, CBeebies is the only one we regularly have on. It's a boon, especially between 6 and 7 in the evening. The great thing about it is there are no adverts for Barbies and cheap plastic crap. As for the rest of it, I find both the lowbrow BBC3 "yoof" programming and the middlebrow BBC4 "culcha" programming equally offensive. BBC4 is basically TV for the kind of people who don't watch television. Don't, in fact, own a television.
I've only ever watched BBC3 for a few minutes. I saw a couple of presenters on some entertainment news prog. She was reading her autocue, and you could see his lips moving as he followed what she was reading.
Pure genius.
This is a strange connection (alert), but it always puts me in mind of Lou Reed's "Take No Prisoners". It's a great album featuring an artist at the peak of his powers in terms of haranguing journalists and reviewers and celebrity culture with vicious accuracy. The reviewer on the page who calls the performance sloppy is missing the mark by a long way. The band is so incredibly tight that they stay with Reed throughout, even when he stops in the middle of a line to carry on his tirade. Like when he starts to sing the line "Little Joe never once gave it away" in "Walk on the Wild Side." He says,
"Little Joe.... Little Joe was an idiot. I don't know if you know that. He couldn't even tie his shoelaces and dress..."
But my favourite bit is where he talks about some writer, known to the other writers in the front row (one of Lou's beefs is that the bastard reviewers get free tickets to his shows and free copies of his albums and then slag him off), who was involved in writing entries for an encyclopaedia. he calls her Tiny Malice, and he characterises her as saying things like, "What's a word gonna make this thing interesting?"
Which I guess you have to think about, but she's essentially saying that she needs to spice up a subject because she's not interested in it -- an indication that she's so stuck up her own arse that she can't imagine a world in which someone might just be interested in the subject.
And I was reminded of this watching the unwatchably offensive Channel 4 docu on the voice. Because they're supposedly doing a history of the most amazing human voices in history, people like Maria Callas, Bessie Smith, Edith Piaf, Billie Holiday. But in order to "make it interesting" they have some nonentity called Beyonce doing a talking head, and play one of her videos over the closing credits.
Youth TV programmers. Dismemberment is too good for them.
posted by Anonymous at
Tuesday, January 13, 2004
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