Want to hear a joke? Two women watch East Enders. But one of them thinks it was an episode on “Only Fools and Horses”. Not laughing? Maybe you should have seen it acted out on Touch me I’m Karen Taylor last night on BBC Three. The punchline “that Rodney really is a plonker” had the studio audience in stitches.
The BBC’s never been wary of screening dire comedy shows but I can’t help feeling that material as weak as this is only getting screened because the corporation, even with £3.5bn to spend, is spreading itself too thin. I’m not the first to question the rationale of the BBC’s digital output but it’s not so much what BBC3 and BBC4 are for as why we still have BBC2, as those two channels pretty much divide its former remit between them. The situation in commercial television is even more baffling. There’s ITV2, ITV3 and ITV4, of whom all that can usefully be said is that one has repeats of Miinder and one doesn’t. Not to mention the three Channel 4s.
All this is clearly a response to the supposed fragmentation of audiences which threatens the big channels but how do you combat a threat by making it worse. TV should take a look at what happens on Guy Fawkes night. All over the country people held little firework displays in their own backyards. Not only were the results pathetic, but people were regularly injured and fires were started. So the authorities decided to to have a big display in the Park, and by and large, people started to go to that instead. It’s time for the BBC and ITV get their audiences back by stopping frittering away their resources on minor talents and saving up for the big display rockets.
