There was a time when all English titles, punned or not, were removed from MTV (which at the time meant Malta Television) and Rediffusion, on the pretext of having "Maltese broadcasting for the Maltese by the Maltese" (and we also tuned in to Radio Deutsche Welle to alleviate the boredom).

Now it would appear that we have gone to the other end of the scale.

It was perhaps inevitable that texting would one day catch up with television. So a hip title for a forthcoming Super One TV programme is STR8.2.D.POINT. Unfortunately, with the penchant for cut-and-paste jobs having names that indicate this in a fancy manner, another programme is called Zugraga - and the missing dot on the Z gives the wrong pronunciation.

Now I've (nearly) seen it all. The A-Z Shop - the peddler in which, for want of a better dictionary, repeats ovvjament - even when nothing is in the least obvious - ad nauseam, recently made an offer she thought we couldn't refuse. Lamps (the type made of flexible stems topped by flowers with a light where the stamens ought to be - a sure temptation for children) are on special offer this time.

There is currently a huge discount on these; lamps - and with a pair of them comes a Crucifix (ovvjament b'Gesù fuqu, the lady said, thereby confirming the fact that her dictionary doesn't contain the word "cross" either) and the three items are being sold as a package.

At 'normal' prices, there would have been an expense of Lm28 - Lm10 apiece for the lamps, and Lm8 for the Crucifix. However, we are being asked to pay "only" Lm12. So I make it your typical buy one, get one free, and a nominal sum for the third article type of promotion.

I was nearly forgetting the cherry on the cake. These products, she said, would make good Christmas presents. I suppose, just in time for Easter, she will then have a horde of presepji with buy-a-ram-get-a-lamb-free type of pitch.

I wish that, just as Microsoft will be doing away with all chart rooms to safeguard tomorrow's generations, all television stations will do away with this trite selling of tat to safeguard the economy - at least that of everyone else if not of the establishments that churn out these products.

On the international front, things are getting rather more serious. America is not at all pleased, to put it mildly, with the coverage that Al-Arabija and Al-Jazeera are giving to the situation in Iraq.

Some columns ago I commented on the fact that it was not altogether inexcusable that Brendan Borg thought that "gale!" was the name of a girl, and so did not allow it as one of the words extracted from the letters in a longer one. Just recently he made a similar mistake, by disallowing the word "flab".

Merely tapping the words into a laptop, if the PBS (book) library does not own a Collins or an Oxford, would have sufficed. Unfortunately, there is another facet to this story; the children were not sure enough of themselves to insist that the words be checked against a reference books... unless they were warned beforehand that the quizmaster's word was law.

Did the parents of the children involved, complain? If they did, were they fobbed off, by having their children compensated off air, or were they told that it had all been a genuine mistake and that there was nothing anyone could do about it?

I had also commented about the pathetic way in which some people seek to acquire their 15 minutes of fame when I had mentioned Army Major Charles Ingrams, who, through a series of well-placed coughs by a member of the audience, had managed to cheat on the British version of Who wants to be a Millionaire? It would seem that the chap was not satisfied in this - and he went on to "star" in another "real TV" programme... involving wife swapping.

On a recent issue of Dawl Frangiskan, Fr William Axiaq, OFM Cap., was commenting on how certain personalities who take part in discussions play to the gallery in the hope of acquiring ever more of this evanescent fame and popularity.

This, and the above example, continues to point towards the downward trend I mentioned last week.

We see silly mistakes of Bum Bum Il-Bieb ilk all the time. The other day, on Qeghdin Sew, two of the (male) characters asked for ruggjata and the (female) handmaiden brought out to the terrace where they were lounging, two glasses of orange squash. The continuity girl forgot that colour television is actually available in Malta, and has been for quite some time now. Because I don't for a moment believe it was a visual joke, because otherwise, as is often done in this sit-com, one of the characters would have looked into the camera and pointed out the mistake.

It beats the other chap drinking from an obviously empty glass.

Then there was the caller on a cookery show who told the presenter that she often cooked chicken nuggets tat-tigieg imma. The sangfroid people on the media are supposed to have escaped this particular host - and he couldn't help laughing at her. Again - did his bosses drag him over the coals for this lack of common courtesy?

Medialink.com coined the Muzika Sabiha slogan but unfortunately they forgot to copyright it. So now, radio stations other than that belonging to this company are falling over themselves to use the phrase.

Meanwhile, the Station of the Nation still hasn't decided whether the names of years, and the names of numerals in the thousands, are to be read the same or not, or, for that matter, how they are to be stated. A year numbered 2001 is not the same as the same quantity of people.

I happened to be visiting a household, last Saturday, where the television was switched on to the repeat of the Malta Selection for the Junior Eurovision Contest; I listened again with half an ear and yet it struck me - again - how many times Analise Ellul tried to wheedle an applaws ikbar from the audience.

The first time around, it had escaped me how the words gurija and gurat were thought to be interchangeable - they are not. But, that having been said, I wouldn't be surprised if Sarah Harrison does very well in the contest proper; just as long as she does not allow emotion to lower the pitch of her voice.