Local Matters

I really must congratulate one of my local charity shops for the speed with which it moved to try and exploit the death of Sir Roger Moore.  When I walked past the Crapchester branch of the British Heart Foundation Shops on Tuesday, I was surprised to see that it's window display has changed since the previous day, to feature a selection of James Bond DVDs featuring Roger Moore.  These were accompanied by several Ian Fleming Jame Bond novels.  (I have to admit that I can't fault their selection of bond novels: all were made into films starring Roger Moore).  I know that it's 'all for charity', but I still couldn't help but feel that it was in pretty poor taste.  But it's all par for the course these days.  I'm only surprised that it didn't feature as a story on our new local TV station: That's Crapchester.  Or, as I like to call it, on the basis of its first few days of broadcasting: That's Crap.  On their first night of broadcasting (on Tuesday), they appeared to have only three stories: A charity fun run in Fartley, something about allotments and a priest whose shed might be Britain's smallest cathedral (don't ask).  In addition to these was a vox pop involving getting the reactions of local residents from across the county to the previous night's terror attack in Manchester.  Well, they claimed it involved people from across the county, but they actually interviewed three random Crapchester residents in the town's main shopping centre, (only a few yards from that charity shop window display).

This report also involved an interview with a local Tory councillor on the same subject.  All of which leads one to inevitably ask: why should anyone care what people in Crapchester think about what happened in Manchester?  We're nowhere near Manchester and, as far as I'm aware nobody from here was directly affected by events there.  Sure, it was a terrible tragedy, but it didn't happen here.  I'm especially not interested in what some Tory twat thinks about it.  Anyway, these three stories were cycled continuously for more than twenty four hours, until that added something new: a report on Crapchester winning some kind of award, accompanied by another vox pop.  Except it was actually the same vox pop, in that it had clearly been shot at the same time as the previous one, using the same three people and the same Tory councillor.  Other stories have been added since then but they all seem so bloody trivial.  It also doesn't help that they clearly don't have anyone monitoring the channel out of hours: last night, one report ran without sound at least half a dozen times.  Mind you, I get the impression that nobody is watching the channel at all.  Except me.  Every time I tune in I get the feeling that I really am the only person watching.

Clearly, they are in need of my services to help them create better content.  (Actually, according to the postal address they give on air, they are only a couple of streets away from me).  Perhaps this could be the new direction I've been looking for?  Producing no-budget local TV that nobody watches.  A bit like running a website, in fact.