Sunday 15 July 2007

Confessions from a TV crisis meeting

Fifi wasted no time in getting down to business. Wow, she can be a hard nosed bitch when she wants to - and I am so attracted to that! We were all gathered in the boardroom bleary eyed and nervous. But there was no way I was going to become some lame duck fucking patsy with the Corporation on the fucking warpath. No, I had a *plan*.

This is about "trust" (she slapped her thigh for emphasis) and having an "honest relationship with our viewers". She said we need to be "swift and surgical" about all of this: "Have we misled the audience in any way?"

Deathly silence filled the room. Then something crazy happened. Entwistle stood up, looking nervous as fucking hell, and said to Fifi: "Ma'am, as I have only been in the job for a short number of weeks I humbly request that I am excused from this witchhunt."

"Oh do shut the fuck up George and sit down" Fifi barked back. Christ! She really did mean business.

Roly went first. He described an incident on Springwatch where the editorial decision was made to use fake archive of two owls having sex to 'enhance the narrative'. He sweated profusely throughout his testimony (I felt for the guy). He then asked Fifi if Bill Oddie's misogynistic hatred of co-host Kate Humble fell under the bracket of misleading viewers ("We try very, very hard to make it appear that they are bosom buddies on-screen").

Fifi did not comment but scribbled something down.

And then she turned to me.

I stood up, looking shit hot [obviously] in my recently dry-cleaned Executive Corduroy jacket, and said with a lot of heartfelt conviction: "I have spent the past 48 hours in heavy dialogue with all My Channel's key suppliers and have reached the conclusion that under the very capable stewardship of Julian, there has been no misleading content broadcast on the Youth Channel. We are whiter than white. HOWEVER, for me, that is simply not enough."

With that, I fired up my laptop and began a slide presentation on powerpoint. Peter The Billionaire looked petrified.

"So as from tomorrow, all independent suppliers will have to sign up to the Youth Channel 'Code of Young Public Trust':

1) All rushes will be submitted to a newly created 'Board of Young Public Trust' comprising of an ethnically diverse panel (all under 25) who represent all that is good about modern Britain.
2) All contributors will be sent a questionnaire after they have taken part in filming which they can fill out in total confidence.
3) All Execs will have to present their finished programmes to the Board (prior to TX) and be grilled for at least 3 hours about ANY issues to do with misrepresentation that arise (these inquests will be available for our viewers to download from the website).


And with that, I sat down and waited for the applause to kick in. Talk about being fucking proactive!! I could tell Fifi was impressed.

Peter The Billionaire was next. He coughed and stood up sheepishly: "We have this tiny problem with the nocturnal habits of Dickson Moss's agent........."

Four-nil to me I think Peter!! It is only a matter of time before your job is fucking mine!!

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Dear TVC,

Have you gone out of your fucking head!

I thought you wanted "Queer Street Mate" ?

How are we supposed to track down all those rent boys to fill in a bloody questionnaire ?

Are you trying to put us all out of business?

Anonymous said...

Oh come on! let's get fucking real.
How are we going to do Obs Docs without directing the mugs in the action.
We'll end up all day following their arses not knowing wtf is going on. AND where do we get the jeopardy without editing it out of sequence? Eh?
Talk about traditional standards slipping...
Oh, and another thing, you dicks in suits, what are you going to call that gaping arsehole in Channel Four schedules if any standards of fairness are applied? 'Bugger Off Big Brother'?
The audience are morons - they want to be spoon fed. It really doesn't matter if they think it's plasma-fucking-perfect.

Anonymous said...

I hope your insane idea won't catch on at C4 - otherwise Gillian's next series of "You Are A Fat Lard Arse" is dead in the water - we have had to lock most of them up on a starvation diet to fake any results. Even then we had to cheat in the edit suite to make them look half decent. Don't want that coming out.

You are a twat TVC - honestly you'll be suggesting next that all the 'professionals' we rely on should have proper qualifications.

Unknown said...

"All rushes will be submitted to a newly created 'Board of Young Public Trust' comprising of an ethnically diverse panel (all under 25) who represent all that is good about modern Britain."

You might be the "yoof" channel, but your grammar is appalling. It should read either "comprising" (with no 'of') or "comprised of". If you think that highly of yourself and your channel, then set an example to the txt gnrtion!

Anonymous said...

Hello Wordsmith - It's deliberate dumbing-down, FFS! Didn't you get Jana's "U may b OxBridge but FFS don't let it show" Facebook-memo?

"i. One deliberate grammatical error per paragraph...

ii. Deny ever having visited the Serpentine.

iii. Mispronounce 'Kaplinski' at every possible opportunity."

Anonymous said...

its ALL coming out now! nice to see the Beeb are deflecting critisim with hard hitting journalism

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/6900463.stm

do people really think that TV is real? the public are stupider than i gave them credit for!

Unknown said...

Hello Anonymous, obviously I'm not on Jana's Xmas card list. Neither am I one of her Facebook friends. There is no excuse for dumbing down, but ever since Aunty broadcast Ulrika's "joy of text" night, it's been downhill all the frigging way. I hope TVC wasn't responsible for that turgid piece of illiterate crap.

On the other hand, mispronouncing Kaplinsky has to be a good game. Anything to annoy her and wipe that smug smirk off her irritating face.