Disappearing Up TV's Arse

I see television is disappearing up its own arse again. Once more the BBC is indulging in a bout of self-flagellation over 'breaches of trust'. This time it centres on the naming of the Blue Peter cat. No, I'm not joking. Apparently the production team ignored the viewers' choice of a name for said feline and called it 'Socks' instead. Really! Does anybody actually give a fuck? What's so terrible about deciding that it wouldn't be appropriate for an animal featured on a children's TV programme to be called 'Cock Sucker', or whatever the popular choice is, (it is certainly the kind of suggestion I would have made when I was a teenager). In addition to this non-scandal, the BBC is also beating itself up about phone-in competitions on Radio 6 Music which turned out to be fake, with members of the production team pretending to be contestants. Well, bearing in mind that everybody bloody knows that Six Music is entirely pre-recorded, not live, surely nobody was deceived into believing that these were real?

Television, and particularly the BBC, seems to be becoming obsessed with issues which the viewing public really don't give a toss about. Most of their angst seems to be founded on the false assumption that people 'trusted' TV in the first place. Trust me, viewers don't believe what they see on the box. The days when we all took what BBC News said as gospel truth have long since gone. Another issue which seems to have excited the 'chattering classes' of late is the question of whether the BBC is truly 'impartial' or whether it has a bias toward the 'liberal consensus'. Indeed, the 'liberal consensus' is talked about as if it were somehow a bad thing. What would the BBC's critics rather see - a 'Nazi consensus'? Surely the term 'consensus' is a clue here - it means that the BBC is reflecting the general view of the public at large. The bottom line is that most viewers, myself included, are more interested in the quality of the programming we receive, not just from the BBC but from commercial broadcasters too. I don't want lowest-common-denominator pap carefully tailored to offend nobody except those in possession of a brain - which is precisely what we'll end up with if TV executives continue their navel-gazing and keep listening to right-wing politicians, pressure groups and newspapers rather than their viewers.