ITV [25.04.07]
By Jared Read
I greeted the news that ITV is experiencing serious financial difficulties with great joy. You can just imagine Michael Grade sat around with his cronies in the boardroom. 'So, why are we losing so much money, chaps?'. No one, of course, would dare say that it's because for years they've been pumping out content that is the broadcast equivalent of the News of the World and Heat. Or they paid an astronomical amount for that bizarre acquisition, Friends Reunited. They probably just mumbled something about fragmenting media and Web 2.0.
Compared to the BBC, ITV is just shit. Don't get me wrong. I'm not wholly happy with the way Auntie squanders my licence fee. Do we really have to have, for example, a publicly-funded radio station that targets a few Poles working on fruit farms in Norfolk? But on balance, I like them - if only for Life on Mars, Doctor Who and the news.
The worst example of ITV's targeting the lowest common denominator is GMTV. The other week, on the day a big bomb went off in Iraq, Fiona Phillips was rabbiting on inanely to the winner of their 'Baby With The Sticky-Uppiest Hair' competition. Plus their weather forecasts are rubbish, and always prefaced with sponsorship for thrush cream or nit powder. And, in an earlier incarnation as TV-AM, they bequeathed the nation with the dubious gifts of Roland Rat and Timmy Mallett (although I always had a soft spot for bald eagle Gordon Honeycombe).
However, GMTV's worst atrocity is resurrecting the career of the most irritating man on God's earth - Keith Chegwin. Seeing him running manically across a council estate at 7.30am, before presenting a single mother of eight wearing a Marmite-smudged dressing gown with a cheque for £10,000 was always more than I could take.
So imagine my glee on hearing GMTV had been discovered ripping thousands of poor, skint souls off with their premium rate phone lines. Not only were they charging them an astronomical £1.80 to enter a competition to win a Ford Meriva, they were actually deciding the winner beforehand. So at the moment, ex-boozer Keith is off our screens leaving the nation's peasant underclass with no option other than to buy more scratchcards in an attempt to life themselves out of poverty.
The only thing that could make me happier would be the disclosure that Lorraine Kelly has been caught being roasted by a pony and a dalmation whilst snorting coke off a newborn kitten's back - thus forcing her off our screens, too.
It'd be like Frank Bough all over again.
Have your say...
Apparently Bradford City are looking at suing the Football league for letting them enter a competition they had no chance of winning etc etc.
Gav
Wouldn't the coke get trapped in the kitten's fur?
Steve
Can some one please sort your zebedee background screen out, preferably the receptionist as she's the only one who works in prego land! It's like coming down to earth with a bump after taking LSD
ps the coke doesn't get stuck in the kittens back as it slides off onto the floor - or stairs if you're outside.
Britannia Rescue. LV=/ all that kind of stuff//prego*.not csma. gosh
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