HOW TO TELL IF A TV NETWORK HATES YOU
For the Canberra Times Tuesday 17 October 2006


Here's the really confusing part of television policy, apart from the idea that the media will soon be owned by 2.6 people who wouldn't notice the financial loss if they accidentally built an aircraft carrier every Thursday: why do the television networks treat their viewers with such total disdain? What with podcasting, DVD and cable options, and new media to come, can they really afford to keep being this mean to us?

Surely this can't be a sensible marketing exercise. Or are we at the point where the public is so used to being ripped off, abused and ignored, that we just roll over like a submissive puppy? Maybe because when we ring to complain we get a recorded message saying "Press one if you think we could be bothered listening to you, press two if you want a vole delivered in a small red truck, press three if you want to listen to a woman called Georgina who will have to speak to her supervisor and then accidentally cut you off after you've been on hold for 17 minutes. There are no other options."

The contempt with which TV networks treat us is displayed in many ways, most obviously in the corner of our screens, all the time. A corporate network watermark that mars each and every scene of every show, each exquisitely framed, painstaking shot by award-winning cinematographers (and also every scene of Temptation). It's a slapped-on slap in the face to every consumer who just wants to watch a show without being endlessly confronted with not-so-subliminal corporate logos.

Even though people complained when they were introduced, and nobody actually wants them, the networks keep them on, even the ABC. It's rude, it's annoying and it's a perennial reminder of the lowly position of the viewer. I mean, why not just put the watermark over the whole screen? They don't have it on the ads, because advertisers are IMPORTANT. We are not radiant and interesting, we are to be ignored and fed whatever we'll take without screaming.

In a news story on this issue, or if I was on the ABC, I would have to go to the networks for a comment, but I really can't be bothered. Because we've heard it all before. Some offensive stream of corporate palaver about "branding" and letting people know what station they're watching and avoiding pirating. Avoiding pirating? Who's going to be running off copies of Neighbours just because there's no watermark? And then there's "it's policy" (so was denying women the vote, sunshine) and "everyone else is doing it" (even 6-year-olds don't try that on any more).

The TV networks have other top ways of saying "Get stuffed" to their audience: starting a series and then dumping it; treating us to a moveable famine of timeslots, bombarding us with what seems like 11 ads in a row after the first seven minutes of a show hooks us in, and the unforgivable practice of jumbling up the intended order of shows so that instead of what writers might call a "narrative arc", or call me old-fashioned, a "developing story", we get a mish-mash of chippy-choppy episodes in which subplots go backwards and forwards, characters die and then we get to know them, and people have relationships and then fight and then get back together again... no wait, that's real life.

Will TV bosses read this, and care, and change because their viewers don't want to be treated like this? Ha. They despise us. And they don't mind telling us to our faces (hello, watermark). I mean, it's not like I'm going to stick my head out the window and shout "I'm not going to take it anymore" like the famous Peter Finch scene in the movie Network. I am going to take it, because what other choice do we have?

Hang on a minute. The Naughty Copyright Fairy in America has sent me some pirated disc copies of Aaron Sorkin's new series Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip starring Matthew Perry (Friends) and Bradley Whitford (Josh from the West Wing) so I could watch some divinely sassy dialogue about the state of TV. But I shouldn't, I ought to wait for it to come out on commercial TV, because the networks have been so good to us, they really deserve our loyalty in return. I should be prepared to wait, and take a chance that when it's bought by an Australian network, my sure-to-be favourite new show will be run in order, not replaced with random, unannounced repeats in the middle of a season, not stopped one or two episodes from the last episode with the lame promise of seeing the ending "sometime next year", and not yanked off the air because the wrong time slot was chosen for it in the first place. And you know, because I'd rather watch it with a big-arsed corporate logo in the corner. Which really encourages brand loyalty.

All of which is approximately as convincing as spray-on cheese.