Alternative deployment

Peter Pan's directions on how to reach Neverland resemble others given in different books - including where it says "...till the cows come home"... only in this case it was Second to the right... and then straight on till morning.

It looks rather as if the talks about the so-called restructuring at PBS (and other entities) appear to be heading much the same way. Lately we have heard the fateful words "on the horizon" mentioned, and frankly, when I looked up the word, in a children's dictionary, I discovered that it meant "an imaginary line between land (or sea) and sky, that appears the further away the more you approach it". So far, so bad.

Meanwhile, life goes on as usual, or even more so, on all local television stations. Sample televoting question with multiple choice (two options, actually) answers; How long ago did the present Pope start his pontificate: (a) 25 years; (b) 81 years?

This, if any were needed, is proof positive that we are treated as sitting targets; chimpanzees who only watch television because the tea party is over and the Mad Hatter forgot to pick up the works for the next one.

This trend is further expanded in the news bulletins of the two political party stations. We have had enough clips of the respective, not respected, leaders of the "other" side being caught yawning, frowning, wincing, or with eyes glazed over.

That's when they are not shot from behind a waving flag or a mobile crane, half-obliterating them, with the intimation that they are thus 'not important', as our kids are taught in their Media Studies lessons.

Now, there is another tactic in use, which I had long been suspecting, but finally confirmed last Saturday evening. The pitch of the voices is altered slightly to make it nearer to falsetto, whenever sound bites from particular people are utilised. Somehow, I don't think this was a recording fault, but a pseudo-subliminal thing; no accident, but design. Oh, brave new world, right out of the pile-on of video-clip, recording of music (whyever not Gregorian chant in reverse, I ask you?) fratelli-cum-Masonic garb et al, from Bondi+, -, =.

And while the Catholic, Hindu and Muslim worlds were for the most part happy with the fact that Pope John Paul II had elevated Mother Teresa of Calcutta to the rank of Blessed, in Malta the ceremony representing this momentous event was relegated to the Community Channel (which most people don't think to zap onto, even 'just in case', unless they are reminded of what will be on it on the main PBS channel).

The usual plethora of homegrown blather was shown to people who would have appreciated watching the dramatised version of Blessed Teresa's life in English, who had to make do with watching it in Italian, on a foreign station.

And the mention of homespun wittering, of course, brings to mind the Miss Model of Malta contest broadcast on Net TV yesterday week. I was wrong when I thought that all possible permutations of titles involving the words "best", "Malta", "model" and "year" had been thrashed out, therefore.

What I found really, really pathetic was that the finalists, in their repetitive thank-you-mummy-I-love-you-boyfriend speeches, chose to speak in (broken) English rather than in their native tongue. Is it possible that not one of five girls realised she would have made a better impression had she used Maltese?

The rot had started early, however; the female presenter must have arranged her hair a zillion times before the screen faded; the male compere appeared overwhelmed by the overabundance of odd glad rags being worn by the contenders for the tiara, who had hardly enough room to spread out on the catwalk-cum-stage.

At the end of the ceremony, last year's winner actually removed it from her own head, and placed it on that of the new queen, amid the regulation slo-mo shots of congratulations from those who very nearly won it themselves, and the emotional overkill that these occasions always seem to inspire.

There is an Italian advertisement for a particular type of ham that involves a woman picking her nose... not that way, but from a host of models in a cosmetic surgeon's clinic, just so that she may appreciate its aroma better.

In Malta, we get a different type of catering advice; this week, for instance, we were told that chocolate is more healthy than fried luncheon meat.

Sometimes, it is the simplest, silliest, cheapest ideas that work on television - whereas those who boast about spending thousands of pounds on a set, or prizes, or to bring foreign artists from abroad, can only hold their audience by devious means.

Imagine a police identification-style one-way mirror placed inside a coffee machine. Marry this to the fact that where it stands is the place for factory floor or office gossip to be heard. Sprinkle with a cast of oddballs with precious little blood in their caffeine, and you get the picture - or rather a whole gamut - of what happens in the programme with the aptly punned title Camera Café.

I suppose you could call this out-of-the-closet humour, which understandably is not everybody's style. So alternatively, you could relax, while gaping at the constant changes of costumes, wigs, and even personalities, of the crew of La Premiata Ditta who don't even have to try to be funny.

We have a jumble of advertisements in Maltese, English and Italian on our local screens. So I hope the local agent for a particular make of car will not be tempted to 'import' the shoot featuring a couple of Mafia dons and their intended victim (who ends up in cement shoes) driving the car, with the punchline being "you need a really good excuse not to drive it".

Someone assumed that the reason I never went through with the lessons about how to write a telenovela was because the copyright owners stopped me through a writ; someone else said that I didn't have the stamina to finish the course and so had no more notes to which to refer.

The truth is much simpler. There is so much of that genre across the Maltese airwaves that unless you are prepared to pay good money for airtime, or have good connections, or what have you, even an Oscar-class screenplay stands little chance of wedging itself in before the next century.

So why bother? Try coming up with a new name for a magazine-format programme, or a discussion hour, instead, and you might break into television that way.