This might really tell you how old I am

I tried two weeks ago to watch the penultimate episode of The Bill. But I watched about three minutes and found it tedious. So the last episode passed without my even attempting to watch it.

It caused me to think some what about my watching of police drama over the years. My earliest memories take me back to Dixon of Dock Green on the BBC in the 50s. I am a bit surprised to find that that classic lasted until the mid 70s. It seems so essentially post-war that it is difficult to imagine it surviving quite that long. Jack Warner, who played PC Dixon was older than my grandmother. And would have been 80 in 1975, indeed he was shown as being retired in that last series.

Perhaps the great British leap forward was Z Cars, then followed by Softly Softly. The Bill really grew much more out of those traditions of the flawed policeman who didn't always get their man.

There were good Australian dramas too, Division 4 which I sort of remember, but all seemed more or less the same. They are known much more by the flashbacks you see on Awards' Shows when you laughed at the flairs and the platform shoes and the Monaros that were driven in the 70s. And everyone smoked!

In the 80s, newly married we got heavily into some American shows, I remember Hill Street Blues which was a confronting drama and seemed pretty authentic. We also loved to watched Bergerac and fell in love with the island of Jersey. Pity that John Nettles morphed into the ridiculous Inspector Barnaby who is a rather pale shadow of the zesty Channel Island sergeant. This was typical of a move away from gutsy police drama on both sides of the Atlantic and towards shallow replicas of the former age.

Anything CSI or any other American drama of the current era doesn't hold a candle to the grittiness of the British Dramas and Hill Street.

As well structured as they are they are so tendentious that the only thing you can be sure of is that you are being led off in the wrong direction and all will be revealed. Plot smattered with the occasional sexual intrigues doesn't make up for the paucity of character development.

Indeed that's when I stopped watching the Bill too. I used to joke that I lost interest when they started kissing each other!

And that was probably 5 years ago!

It's a long journey from Dixon of Dock Green!

Free to air

The much vaunted advent of digital television has brought about a range of additional free-to-air channels. I am interested in the ongoing campaign (now appears to have been going on for over a year) surrounding the wealth of choice we now have available to us.

It is difficult to see just who or what this is aimed at. My first reaction, for example, is "Good, there is now so much choice I won't ever have to think about subscribing to Foxtel again".

Not that I ever seriously consider it. I am afraid that I could never come at pay-TV, though my children seem to lust after it. My impression is that the only thing I ever want to watch.. World movies.. is usually not in the packages that are being put together.

And whenever I see it at someone's house it seems like there is never anything on I want to watch. Or it is reruns of "Murder She Wrote" (Angela Lansbury was far better at baking pies!!) and "Benny Hill". I mean I used to think Benny Hill, as classic as he is, was facile in the 70s.

Any way while it is has been good to get a bit of an increase in programming because of the advent of all this new digital telly, the truth is that a lot of it is very repetitive.

I note for example that 2,7 and 9 show a lot of programs on 22, 72 and 99 (respectively) that have already been seen on the former channels. They also repeat their stuff, so while they seem to have 24 hour programming at least a third of that is stuff that they reshow in different timeslots.

There is also the emergence of a lot of repeats of long-running TV shows both British and American. I mean how many episodes of Seinfeld and Frasier can there possibly be to fill up the gaps. Even Coronation Street (which began in the 60s) and Heartbeat (which pretends iit's the 60s).

It may be free to air, but it's not new.

And yes, you can watch "Murder she wrote" on at least two free to air channels!!!

And, gasp, I even noted that free to air had "Benny Hill" on the other day. What next? "Rin-tin-tin" and "Champion the Wonder Horse".

I just don't get what's going on. But what ever it is it sure ain't new!

Choice and anti choice

The great difficulty for those of us who were born in the 50s is that on Friday nights on TV we are face with that woman...what is her name...you know who I mean she is the epitome of the lost 40s and 50s ...the one who was in Ab Fab ,,,after I Google I remember she is Joanna Lumley...she must be sad because now she is typecast as the lovely who grows old .
Well that's the ABC, but on SBS we are to pretend that we remember what it was actually like in the 70s....but I don't really
It is a bit of a tyranny, and I just wish we could get on with living in the present day

That's entertainment!

There is no doubt that current reality show Masterchef has been a hit (here). Another SC and I are now so caught in the grips of it that, tired as we were on coming home from my birthday dinner last night, we had to watch the time-shifted episode I had recorded.
Had I known that
a) the program would overrun and I would cut the denouement off the end of the tape
b) any way I could have watched the highlights on the internet

Then I would probably not have bothered to record it.
However it begs all sorts of questions.
Whilst each episode is slow as, could be at least 50% shorter if they just cut out the recaps...at the heart of it is the building sense of competition.
I have always thought this strange. As a former teacher it seemed strange to me to try and inculcate competition as the key and indeed most desirable quality of a given program. And as you go on, inevitably you associate with those who have been able (like yourself) to use this to their advantage.
What it has to do with learning, education, contributing to the corpus of knowledge etc....is beyond me. But when you consider that even the top echelons are bedogged by this (eg. the Nobel prize) it is obvious there is an unquestioning acceptance of it.
It is of course bizarre, but good TV, to see fine cooking being treated as a competition. When people get voted off because they get 8/10 instead of 9/10 it just stupid. But there would be no program if it was not competitive.
One of the good things about Masterchef has been the refusal by most fo the guest chefs to get sucked into the competitive mode, but rather to try and help the contestants as much as possible. Clearly the world of the chef is highly competitive, but there seems about it a camraderie which is to be commended. Good luck to them.

Media Blackout

A recent email sent to me (no reason to disbelieve it) told of an event in Adelaide on Sunday 25th November, the day after the Federal election.

Approximately 75 people attended an Aboriginal smoking ceremony in Hindmarsh Square to observe John Howard’s “political funeral”.

John Howard’s coffin was bathed in smoke as Aboriginal Kaurna elder Uncle Lewis O’Brien performed a funeral rite in the Kaurna language.
Niwili White Forrest held the bowl of smoking leaves as they circled the coffin together.

Members of the audience placed “detention centre” barbed wire wreaths, WMDs, and flowers for those who have suffered under his regime, on the coffin.
MC Tauto Sansbury addressed the crowd, explaining how John Howard’s evil spirit was being cleansed from the country after 11 bad years.

BUT NOTE THIS
Channel 7, 9, and 10 cameras filmed the ceremony, but did not carry it in their TV news that night – Costello’s “resignation” took pride of place…

Klynton Wanganeen from the local community addressed the crowd.

Professor Peter Buckskin gave a powerful speech that outlined Howard’s impact on Aboriginal communities.

Pilawuk White, from the Ngangiwumerri people of the NT, said, “We now consider the country to be finally rid of John Howard’s evil spirit, and are celebrating the birth of a new era.”


She took the audience through a water cleansing ceremony from her country in which water is placed on the forehead and then on the navel

The mainstream media ignored this important event that symbolises the burying of the Howard era and the subsequent moving on.

No one belonging to a sectional group like a church or minor political interest group will be surprised about the neglect of the media. We can all lament that such a symbolic event was not given the media exposure it should have been. Hopefully, though, we can move on.
Surely the much awaited apology must not be far off.

Validity

One commentator, John Hyde Page, says about last Sunday night's 'debate'

Future generations will mock us - in the same way that we mock those who used to read the entrails of goats, or listen to the Delphic Oracle.

He is talking about the infamous worm the strange little gauge that had everyone's gander up, which fluctuated to allegedly reflect how 100 would-be voters reacted to the stuff that was being trotted out. Much has been written and I don't need to rehearse it again, but I rather agree with him.
I am worried about statistical validity, although my knowledge of such things is limited to having done 1st year Statistics at University. One thing I am clear about, however, is that Page is correct in suggesting that the worm is not to be taken seriously.
But what of the polls that we get once or twice a week in these pre-election days. We are told that some of the most serious ones are based on less than 2000 people being polled nationwide. We are assured this statistically valid. By my count there are 150 electorates each with about 58,000 enrolled electors. So if each electorate is polled then that is less than 20 people per electorate. 20 out of 58,000 doesn't seem to me to be really likely to be predictive.
Even if it a spread of the states then 300 people per State doesn't seem to me to be terribly likely to provide statistical validity.
Ratings
Equally well my previous question about who was watching what (here) was answered in the press today. It said that National Bingo Night was the big winner! The assertion in the Advertiser was that 1.6 million nationally, and 190,000 locally were watching Bingo. But only 1.4 million nationally and 135,000 locally watched channel 9's broadcast (incomplete as it was) though an additional 907,000 & 83,000 watched the debate through ABC. (see the Advertiser p.15 for these confusing figures).
Now forgive me but if I add these two lots of figures together doesn't it actually mean that both locally and nationally more people watched the debate (on 2 & 9) than watched Bingo...2.3 million v 1.6 nationally & 210, 000 v. 190,000 locally. But who cares.
And, as usual where do these ratings figures actually come from, and how do they declare them with such accuracy...and how do they account for people like me who were watching the debate and Australian Idol and SBS simultaneously! I am a true man!

Adelaide City Council elected a mayor and various councillors with less than 7,000 voters casting their lot. A flaw of voluntary voting.. But these people will make decisions which affect the whole fo the State who use the city of Adelaide.

These are musings, I guess, but perhaps we shouldn't believe everything we are told. Or even when we are told we should think about what it actually means!

Trial by media

The recent media frenzy spurred on by one of the Corby camp insinuating in a paid interview that all is not quite as straight forward as the recent book, or the endless television coverage would have us believe, has rapidly descended into an unseemly debacle.
Not particularly because (as one might expect) accusations are made and then the family defends itself, but because Channel 7 aired the original interview and then Channel 9 dutifully responded with the "other side"
But the other side seemed more intent on showing that the original report was sensationalist reporting and shoddy journalism than in getting to the bottom of the matter. That is they were reporting about their rival and not about the case.
Pleeeeeease!!!!
If that ain't pots calling kettle black then I don't know what is.
Now I happen to believe that Ms Corby is probably guilty, my sister-in-law read the book and believes she is probably innocent. As we batted this around over the Christmas hols and as we once or twice drove past Kerobokan jail recently, it was apparent to anyone that there is no way of solving this intractable dilemma. Someone must be lying. But lie detectors will not settle this; they are notoriously unreliable. [It's interesting for example that Channel 9 spent a good deal of its report debunking the lie detectors, which had been a a substantial basis of 7's report...and then without batting an eyelid offered to submit Mercedes Corby ...where do they get these names.. to the same lie detector test that their former ally Jodi Power had undertaken]
What ever else is happening here, I don't believe that that the TV stations are doing more than trying to improve their ratings.
They are not interested in truth, they are interested in stirring the pot. And guilty or not the Corby's, or anyone else, should be cautious about thinking that media coverage is likely tohelp the cause.