un-imagine-able

So there we have it. The Beeb’s flagship arts/culture/intellectual programme ‘Imagine’ (appropriately named after the weakest tritest most sentimental nursery rhyme ever recorded) delves into the world of the world wide web and tells us nothing we didn’t already know. All the usual suspects were there – blogs (c.f. girl with a one track mind doing her usual apology about how she is a post-feminist crusader for women expressing their sexual feelings, rather than what I suspect the reality is, which is mild titillation for the dirty apple mac brigade who like reading about how she likes to wank big hard cocks)), wikipedia, my space (c.f. arctic monkeys), you tube, the long tail – and it’s all lovely and wonderful.

The programme finished with Alan Yentob’s Second Life avatar floating into space; very appropriate for a broadcast that was lighter and fluffier than the top of a cappuccino.

Where was the dark side? Porn, chat room grooming, identity theft, scammers and viruses were all absent. There was no discussion of the use of the web by islamo-fascist and neo-nazi propaganderists or the creation of falsified images and news. No discussion of the sociological and psychological effects of online communication and ready access to violent and graphic images. No analysis of the effect of the www on art and literature. No questioning of the reliability of Wikipedia. No mention of how many people’s lives are being ruined by e mail overload and the expectation of instantaneous 24 hour response. This nervous breakdown has been sent to you by my blackberry wireless life-wrecker. Nope, in Yentob’s world, it is all good.

Sporadically Yentob would voice his concern as a TV producer about where the audience had gone, the implication being people no longer watch the telly because they spend all their time watching people eating Jaffa Cakes on You Tube. Sorry Alan but your analysis is rather simplistic. People are not watching TV because most TV is absolute rubbish, as exemplified by your own sorry programme. Build it and they will come, but not if you build it out of feathers and air. Take the Beeb’s current holy artrinity of Imagine, the Culture Show and Newsnight Review. “There is a sense in which” they are all shite. I have tried on three occasions to watch the Power of Art and each time have been forced by rising nausea to switch off after five minutes. These programmes are patronising, dull, and listless. One senses a brooding political agenda, a fear that anything too stimulating will be considered elitist. Heaven forbid that the Beeb should be highbrow.

As for Channel 4, don’t get me started. I read today that their alternative Queen’s Message will be delivered this year by a lady in a full veil. The phrase “she has a lovely face for radio” springs to mind. I can sum up C4 in one example, their advertising for Downfall. By all accounts Downfall was a superb and serious film about Hitler’s last days. But how did C4 advertise it? With full page spreads with the strapline “it has a happy ending – he dies.” C4 never responded to my complaint. The advertising complaints authority rejected my complaint because they judged that it was not offensive to enough people. What they missed was the reason why it was offensive, which was that it was STUPID. It was a stupid thing to say. Simple as that. And since then I have become aware of just how many stupid things C4 says and does. The lady in the veil is the latest example. It is an entirely meaningless gesture. How will she be miked – inside or outside the veil? Inside will be fakery, outside should guarantee her words are fuddled. It is all surface – ooh a lady in a veil. So fucking what. It is the content that should be the story, not what she’s wearing. Then there was that sorry excuse of a Friday night show “made” by 12 ordinary young people (yeah and the rest of C4’s production team). I caught an interview they did with gonzo porn king Ben Dover. When he said he had fucked over 100,000,000 women or however many it was, the audience gave him a cheering standing ovation. An audience with a majority of young women. They should have asked him how many STD’s he had – that would get them clapping.

TV has nothing to fear from the t’internet; it is being destroyed from within, by the Shoreditch Twats and loft dwelling City Centre Manchester idiots (CF Nathan Barley – the idiots have taken control), by the not-Oxbridge liberal left wing intelligentsia (aka The Guardian’s media wing), by people in silly spectacles and daft haircuts. Watching real-life beheadings, throat fucking or jaffa cake munching (and the last one is not a euphemism) on t’internet is no threat to telly. They need to make stuff that is original and stimulating. Doctor Who anyone?

Even more radically, make stuff that is entertaining. That people want to watch. And I don’t mean footage of real life cop chases, reality tv about really awful dull people, and a million make over programmes. I mean a million love songs.

Yes “troubled ITV”. Pretty much everyone I know and at least six or so odd million other people spent Saturday night watching the X Factor / Take That spectacular. Top telly. Build it and they will come.

Deal or No Deal (C4) pulls in something like fifty percent of the available viewing audience at that time every day. Despite Noel and his shirts and hair and beard.

So there’s old hairy Yentob going on about the democratization occasioned by the www, and he gets a young person in to show him how to set up his my space account and so methinks, I’ll befriend him , tell him where he’s going wrong. Maybe I can save telly and also track down my long lost mate Mad Anne (not to be confused with Fat Ann) who is his cousin or something. But can I find him? Na. There was an Alanyentob but he’s been discontinued. Maybe he was one of them identity thieves the real Alan so studiously omitted. There a million plain old Alan’s, mostly self-deferential types obsessed with how their lives have been ruined by being called Alan. A million loveless Alans. But the real Yentob had vanished. Floated away.