The Television Show
- From: FCS <sipston_777@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 2 Aug 2008 09:18:50 -0700 (PDT)
I was having a dream that I woke from
to discover "The Television Show" today.
The salient points as I remember them
were that I was quite happy until I had
cause to walk past an office where one
of our engineers was in a meeting--just at
the point in time my name was mentioned;
I heard him say something to the effect
of "Oh, I don't believe this, I gave him
three weeks to sort that out." And, of course,
in the context of the dream, there was a
good chance that meant curtains for me.
Thing is, I had sorted it out--whatever it
was. But too late, they were on walkabout
And he was obviously making decisions
on misinformation he'd been told otherwise.
So the dream became a kind of obstacle
course in which my goal was simply to
impart the information that all was tickity
boo and the problem had been addressed.
This now involved going round parts of the
site I have never seen, trying to find where
the party was, trying to find the extension
of a room they might be in, trying to find a
friendly face who maight be able to pass
the message on for me. It even included
a moment of epiphany when I realised that
there was a phone in the stairwell on every
floor that and, as such, I was at the cutting
edge of today's young executive goalface.
I got someone on the line who could pass
on the message only to realise I couldn't
give the message in full for real reasons of
confidentiality as I was in open-plan hotdesk
land--which is how I ended up on the staircase;
and then had problems as my instructions for
how to patch through internal connections
had been hurried and perhaps even garbled.
But no, I got through. But only to voicemail,
by this time...and so on.
And as it was only five minutes or so into
the public debate that is C4's The Television
Show, when I woke out of this helterskelter
of a dream I really was quite sympathetic to its
presenter, Krishnan Guru Murthy, who seemed
to be in at not dissimilar state over the audience;
chasing around hither and thither, struggling to
stay on his feet on the shifting sands of real
time studio chat and guests perhaps trying to
wangle the subject into their own specialist
arena.
It is a shame as he is generally an accomplished
writer, presenter and journalist, that it was felt
these same skills, which rely on calmly considering
all angles, would be suited to refereeing the all-in
shouting matches such programmes so often
teeter on the edge of becoming.
I know it'll set C4 back some of its budget but
hre really could do with watching some of the
back catalogue archive footages of Central
Weekend Live, to see how they did it.
Such offerings as the BBC's "review" series,
with Late Review, Cultural Review, and so forth,
get round this natural seqitur of strong characters
with good reasons rubbing one another up - and
wherever you get strong characters with good
reasons they are likely to rub each other up - in
the same was as itv!'s "Loose Women"--by only
having a handful of them on.
I don't know how long the show itself has been
going to air (anyone?) nor how long Guru Murthy
has been its pilot, but it is a good idea. Sadly it
did justice to none of its topics at all, by dint of
trying to cover far too many in the space of half
an hour--which is where I suggest it takes a leaf
out of the old Central Weekend, even the old
TalkRADIO current affairs phone-in shows, by
asctaully being long enough to constitute more
than a paragraph of GCSE assertion punctuated
by vox pop soundbites.
There is no guarantee Guru Murthy would still be
up to the job - he got far too much of the runaround
today - and this is no detriment to his track record
in other genres: he is simply too honest and up
front for the chicanery and deception that being
a good ringmaster requires, he is very capable of
focussing in on his subject to get the best out of
them, but this is not good for the comparative
bumble bee cross-pollination of such debate, or
the railroading and shout-loudest mob mentality
such formats can lead to.
Forumla 1 Qualifying occupied almost 3 hours of
today's lunchtime schedules. Yet C4 seem to
think they can cover the rest of the month's tele'
in half an hour? Oh, come on, make an afternoon
of it in which the topics can be given the airings
they often genuinely do deserve.
New one on me, as I say, The Television Show;
yes it has potential, but it is not yet fulfilling it.
Certainly another show that would benefit from
stereo surround sound, not that I can tell if it did.
G DAEB
COPYRIGHT (C) 2008 SIPSTON
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