h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Afternoon all,

As I have said before, having watched Big Brother once in the earlier series I concluded that it was not my kind of TV.

Thus I have not seen any of the present activities, but it has been impossible to escape the news items ( and clips of J Goody ), and to have my own personal views on this programme confirmed.

It appears to resemble the Roman Arena, and some of those put into the place seem devoid of knowledge, whit, common sense, or good manners.

If any posters where part of the 8 million who watched it, would they care to explain their interest in what looks like the televising of the nastiest part of the playground?

Additionally, is there really a future for this channel if it continues to broadcast such (Jaded)rubbish?

Novo

Erm it has done rather well out of this mess hardly think Channel 4 is going down.

My guess is that the question was not so much whether the channel has a *financial* future - sadly, this kind of TV produces extremely high profit margins - but whether it has a future as a public value broadcaster within the idiosyncrasies of the UK broadcasting system. Or something like that.

I do think it's a shame the market has led Channel 4 to this kind of thing - though it still does show the more interesting things: documentaries, animations, short films, etc. It is one of the problems with the assumption that multi-channel TV is "inevitable progress", and "the Future" that a highly-regulated, small pool of channels didn't need to worry so much about competition, funding, and audience share. [It's a bit like the Royal Mail having to put up the price of stamps because the God of Competition now prevents it offsetting the costs through business rates.]

Even ITV - which has long been "down-market", in a sense, of the BBC and C4 - has had to sink even lower, launching late-night phone gambling (I mean, ahem, "gaming") shows. What's more of a shame is that the profits thereby obtained don't really go anywhere useful; a lot of it probably goes to over-hyped sports teams, by way of over-inflated "TV rights"...

Hm, I didn't expect to rant that much...
[IMSoP]

>>It appears to resemble the Roman Arena<< Novo

Oh dear Novo, that's where you couldn't be more wrong. If it did there wouldn't be a problem. The loser in that scenario was despatched to the big amphitheatre in the sky. In Big Brother the voted out loser, Ms Jade Goody, comes out, as she did last time she appeared on this pathetic programme, to be a very big winner indeed, making millions via tabloid media.

If only it actaually resembled the Roman Arena, it might be rather a good programme.

<>

Actually, in the spirit of self-flagellation that exists in 21st Century Britain, she's donating her fees to a charity of Shilpa's choice.

For behaviour that once would have been dismissed as just ignorant, she's been hounded by a pompous and self-righteous media and public. Suddenly, she's representative of our sick & diseased society and we must all examine our internalised angst and prostrate ourselves at the altar of the thought police.

In Britain today, you've got to be guilty of *something*.

What really gets my wick is the protests in India. Of course there's no racism there. They've got a caste system more rigid than any class system. People bleach their skin, as dark-skinned Indians don't get promotion or opportunities. A bride's dowry is significantly increased if she's light skinned. And they've got the nerve to throw a wobbly because a stupid white girl called an Indian girl "Indian"?

HiFanny

Yes, you're right, the Rena wasn't a good example. Furthermore I agree that were it actually so, it might make better TV. Certainly JG would havebeen more circumspect. As it is she seems to have a mouth like The Dartford Tunnel, out of which nothing of interest appears.


Novo

Morning Sigsfried,

If I had meant financial ruin I would have said demise, rather than decline.

I have enjoyed much of C4's output in the past. I just feel that the watching public are falling into the trap of watching something pretty obviously 'set up'.

There is no guarantee about what is said to 'contestants' beforehand, nor indeed any knowledge of what might be 'fed' to them whilst allegedly isolated. The choice of contestants is in the hands of the producers, as indeed is the edited versions of what is seen.

All in all IMHO it plumbs the depths of acceptable viewing. It is the sort of Damon Hurst of TV, in it's attempt to shock. I suppose the next step will be to have naked contestants, and for the producers to encourage 'joined-up' watching!

Novo

OK so given the benifts in £ terms that channel 4 sees as a result of this what incentive for them is there to do something about this 'decline' to me it seemed inevitable. Anyway one bad program doesn't mean everything will be to that standard/

Oh SWL, where to begin?

If Jade is guilty of self-flagellation as you suggest, she'd hardly be the first. Far from being hounded by the media (bear in mind until she left on Friday, she had NO CONTACT WHATEVER with the outside world), like many BB contestants befor her she was confronted with her behaviour in the form of playback video and was shocked by what she saw.

The media may be making you uncomfortable with their reporting (and there are so many potential reasons you may find it problematical that the press and public were appalled by Jade's behaviour and have opened the debate into a wider one about society as a whole that I couldn't even start to form a response), Jade has no such problem with them.

Besides, compared to her estimated £8M worth, her appearance fee for CBB is miniscule and doesn't represent very much anyway.

Hi Sigsfried

No incentive at all, if the sole measure of the worth of what C4 ( or anyone else ) does is simply a matter of £'s

But there surely has to be more than money as a measure of 'value', or are we really so debased that anything is acceptable as long as it makes a profit?

Novo

The sole and onluy purpose of Chanel 4 is to make a profit, as is the case with any non-public funded broadcasting.

Such elistist notions as 'taste' don't enter it, me lad. Not when the great god Mammon is slouching towards Bethlehem, anyway.

Afternoon Blues,

I fear you are right.

But doesn't C4 recieve some subsidy or other out of the BBC 's Licence Fee pot?

Not that it would make a hap'orth of difference I suppose. Once the snouts have gorged in the trough, they willl only look for deeper and more juicy troughs. Perhaps I should look forward to naked ladies wrestling in mud?

Novo

>>Actually, in the spirit of self-flagellation that exists in 21st Century Britain, she's donating her fees to a charity of Shilpa's choice.<< SWL

So this includes all the millions she's bound to earn for years to come? Like the trip to the far east where she see's the light of racial harmony? The many magazine and tv interviews around the world, where she does all her mea culpas for charity. The defeated and broken Jade, who will be born again.

What's the betting in the spirit of pure self-flagellation of 21st Britain we don't see her welcoming Shilpa out as winner? I reckon for a re-united couple, crossing the racial divide, and Jade finally learning how to speak English, and appearing in all her glory in Bollywood, the sky's the limit in terms of tabloid earnings. But of course it'll all go to charity.

She'll be hard put to welcome Shilpa out as the winner because Dirk Benedict is going to win.

Saw about ten minutes of CBB on sunday - Dirk Benedict was talking about a press helicopter that had come over to look at Jade - he said, with nicely judged sarcasm, something along the lines of 'Well at least we know everything is alright in the world if the press are this interested in us. I guess nobody is starving in Darfor anymore, and Iraq must have all been sorted out for them to bother about this' I'd love him to win for this alone (plus the only other person I recognised was Cleo Rocco)

Channel 4 used to have a good documentary series - what was it called? They do still have some programmes I consider worth watching, but I feel less than there were. It seems to me that much of their 'serious' output turns out to be rather superficial & sensationalist.

I'm obviously a minority viewer then, if they target their output at the majority audience.
So long as advertisers wish to use the channel & fund programmes, surely it will continue? In what form, now that's another matter.

I think its best to break this into three distinct areas of concern.



Broadcasting.

Contrary to what Blues says C4's main concern is *continuing* to make, not merely profit. If it wanted to make a profit it could run alsorts of cheap shoddy gaming shows with 0898 numbers raking in money of people who are hoping for easy money back. Not to mention putting out loads of topless darts type programmes and lots of product placement programmes for huge wedges of payola...they dont.

Perhaps because they would rahter not deliberately plumb the gutter or because they are aware that they have to apply for a licence and one of the duties within that licence is to provide distinct programming.

Big Brother is pretty distinct, other channels have aped the format of BB with their own reality shows, not just for phone poll profit but because they get viewers.

The people who have posted here have opinons and tastes the mass of viewrs clearly have different ones to you doesnt make their's right and your's wrong...just different. So C4 in screening BB is doing its job very well.



Bullying and society.

"It appears to resemble the Roman Arena, and some of those put into the place seem devoid of knowledge, whit, common sense, or good manners.

If any posters where part of the 8 million who watched it, would they care to explain their interest in what looks like the televising of the nastiest part of the playground?

Obvioulsy some people are bothered by the sight of people bullying other people. It would be bad if this were used for entertainment and I think C4 can successfully argue that while BB sets out to be entertaining it does not arrange bullying as entertainment. In much the same way that ITN doesnt arrange for children to starve in Sudan it wouldnt be fair to complain to ITN for the distress of having to see children on deaths door. The producers of BB have on this and other occasions warned (housemates) contestants that bullying will not be tolerated.

In the last few years you could easily have seen much worse public humiliation and browbeating going on in other programmes. The X-Factor is just one example, Hells Kitchen is another. Whatsmore CCTV shows regularly use footage of people being beat up in the streets. REAL actual fights over and over as if we have never seen grainty images of gangs of drunken people trying to hospitalise each other before.

Still it is document. It is not scripted and though to some extent the producers of BB do encourage people to loosen their grip on their inhibitions they never overtly encourage bullying or violence.

People are quite capable of that by themselves. They were in Roman times and we are now. What under the Sun is new.



Racism.

Now despite having a girlfriend who tortures me with the programme and conversations about it, it honestly passed me by and Ive been accused many times as having the worlds most sensitive racism radar.

Of course Jade has coughed to doing it, but the "Birmingham Four" confessed to killing maiming a pub full of people. Confessinos aren't all they are cracked up to be. The Birmingham Four it turns out were innocent.

FACT Shilpa Shetti herself was unsure if Jade or anyone had been racist *to* her. We are not here talking about *are* people racist and should they be allowed on TV if so we shold have seen the back of Prince Phillip long ago. The point is was Shilpa the victim of racially motivated bullying and did the producers allow it to happen. Well the answers as far as Im concerned are possibly and probably not.

Given the backlash to the Ron Atkinson incident anyone in broadcasting would be to worried for their job to be willing to allow racism to happen on their watch.

Moreover the possibility that people were racist towards Shilpa but not Jermaine Jackson seems odd. I think they were treated differently because they are different people. Three people have fled the BB house in this series alone none of them blamed racism. Yet just because they were not victims of it is no proof it didint happen to someone else, but all those cameras and microphones have revealed no cladestine plotting of a racist nature.

Jade has a limited vocabulary and struggles to communicate verbally at the best of times. Like many people out in the real world, which does not have a preview button like here, she now finds herself as many other people often are left to rue harsh words hastily spoken which people can point out the racism *in* the words and therby wrongly condemened them as maliciously racist.

one love

Blicky I always enjoy reading your thought provoking posts. Thank you.

>>Like many people out in the real world, which does not have a preview button like here, she now finds herself as many other people often are left to rue harsh words hastily spoken which people can point out the racism *in* the words and therby wrongly condemened them as maliciously racist.<<

But it's not like the real world because the vast majority of the people watching CBB, watch the compilation programme which is created by C4 from all the vast amount of conversations occuring over the previous 24 hours. The are 'creating' a drama out of all this material. And yes to a degree Jade has been caught out, along with others in the group. And I know she isn't the brightest but I find it hard to believe after 4 years of PR management, and media manipulation, leading to a very high profile tabloid personality, she didn't realise that what she said would become media 'dynamite'. I certainly think C4 hoped for fireworks, that's why they put her in there, but maybe they've bitten off a little more than they can chew.

I still expect her to make a pretty penny out of her racism, however the media chooses to play it.

If Channel 4 is going down then BBC2 is dead already. Serious, for the sheer variety of programming they put out im happy to endure the 2/3 months of the year of big brother (which I have been watching, and its been a bit good from a media students point of view - very cleverly done).

The whole racism thing has been blown out of proportion because people get a kick out of jumping on a wagon. Look at who the main culprit was. Jade Goody. Now whilst its been established between the two that it wasnt meant in an offensive way (even Shilpa herself didnt really care by the end of it), its Jade. When east anglia was mentioned in a conversation she said, and I quote, 'east anglia? I fort that was abroad'. Chew over that for awhile.

Whether its the short films that show case new talent, or the gripping dramas it churns out (notibly More4 however), channel 4 contintues to give out variety. Good for it thats what I say.

Oh and my indian house mate recently compared shilpa to julia roberts, as an example of star status. Again, Jade is just some random person whose earned wad for being thick...

With respect Blicky, Channel 4 has to make a profit before it can 'continue' to make 1 second of a programme.