Ponding effect

In a recent episode of Frasier, our valiant eponymous hero confronts Joe Martin - the Americanised Josè Martinez - in a vain effort to plead with the station owner for the reinstatement of a fired colleague. He ends up getting himself and the rest of the team fired, because unknowingly he has led their employer back to his Latino roots: henceforth all that will be broadcast on the station will be music from the old country.

This is probably the same idea as that in the minds of the people who gave us undiluted EWTN; after a while it gets tiring trying to understand Spanish through Italian and French, admittedly in between worthwhile viewing. But wasn't it cool of Melita Cable to provide this station, when so many people had been writing to the Press about it - especially since they had the vehicle, so to speak?

But who's grumbling? The undying respect for scripts spills over to PBS too, where the week's programme forecast is presented with the aid of several untidy bits and pieces of paper, with parts of some of them highlighted in yellow.

What this particular script doesn't say is that Kollox ma' Kollox is the cheap imitation of a programme on an Italian channel, where the dishes produced, however, are more for the delectation of the eyes, rather than filling of hungry stomachs. In Malta, rather the opposite applies.

It was taken as read that in an effort to prove themselves abreast of current events, our intrepid reporters would be off to the maternity wards of hospitals to see how many children had been born on Mother's Day. The spirit with which this reportage was carried out leaves much to be desired.

Whereas I don't expect a postpartum woman to dress up for the occasion of being interviewed for television, especially in this weather, I did expect less expanses of flesh being paraded. It would have been better all round were the names of the parents to be used without different surnames, too.

No doubt, all these women would have felt better had they been given one of those bowls of crystal-clear water in which beautifully diced Du Jardin vegetables nestle. But they would have been more convincing had they appeared cooked.

The dress code comment also goes for the teaching staff on Education 22. In order to be considered zany and modern they don't have to set a bad example.

On television, what you see is not necessarily what you get; and here I am not talking about trick photography. Murphy Brown, another fictitiously true media personality, went on air with a different hairstyle, in a programme where the characters discussed agism on television affecting men and women differently. Callers turned out to be more interested in the name of her hairdresser than in what she had to say. Of course, by the end of the show, Murphy had gone to the bathroom and torn off the wig, with the (in)appropriate noises.

Occasionally, what mathematicians call geometrical fractals, but the rest of us describe as happenstances, provide us with interesting coincidences. The local production of a vernacular Under Milk Wood is under way; Vinyl Records is offering a New York production with Dylan Thomas himself as the Narrator (it was the poet's last public appearance and was not a professional recording; he was due to visit Igor Stravinsky in California to discuss settings of his poetry and an opera but he died shortly after this complete 1953 performance), and the BBC is currently broadcasting a reading of the novel. Surely one of the three will make it to TVM soon?

And, speaking of talent, it is said that there are two types of lyrics; those you can understand and those you wish you couldn't. After the whiff of news about the junior, heaven help us, version of the Eurovision Song Festival, nothing more was heard... except that apparently the lyrics are to be composed by one of the children who will be singing the song itself.

So we can either expect a minor version of the country-style lullaby that Lynn Chircop's song has become, a sort of Anne Murray's Snowbird as it moults, or else poetic licence endorsed with meaningless syllables. I dare not mention the third and fourth alternatives.

On Saturday morning, at 7, Net Television abruptly but understandably cut off Fox News when it was time for the local bulletin. However, several of the items being mentioned in that particular report were not highlighted in the Maltese compilation replacing the continuation, or, for that matter, on other stations. So one wonders whether Fox is a service, or merely a filler.

One doesn't have to wonder, however, at how audiences that are made up of children are obtained. All the presenters have to do is scour the schools (educational or extracurricular) of any particular area, and Robert is your mother's brother. As the man said, being in the media gives me an opportunity to sit on a fence and keep both my ears to the ground.

And also to murder the language. Last week we had His Grace the Archbishop, alas frequently referred to as plain old Guzeppi Mercieca on Super One Radio, jindirizza bibita. This week, we have had several football players jindirizzaw il-ballun. The CEO of Maltapost plc must be laughing all the way to the bank.

One wonders how the "research team li huwa funded mill-Unjoni Ewropea" has fared so far. Probably better than those stricken by the unintentional dark humour evoked by the phrase "...finding those responsible for the suicide attacks in Saudi Arabia..." matched by those who are "jilghabu f'idejn it-terroristi" in Kenya.

So far I have never managed to catch at least one of the Valuri Insara clips in their entirety; but my friends say they are excellent. The good news is that they will apparently soon be reissued in pairs, as a basis for discussion programmes on television. My hope is that they will also be made available on videocassette for those organisations that would wish to use them likewise.