Thaw dust

There is a joke about how someone told Worf he looked worried. The Klingon characteristically briefly touched the hilt of his and replied "Dolt! All of us have furrowed foreheads, and what's more, mumaw porghlIj pIw!" (loosely translatable as 'your body odour offends me').

Whenever viewership and listenership statistics are published - whichever their source - they acquire for me a similar combination of incongruity and incredulity as the above vignette.

There was once a rumour that when there was an audience survey in the offing, certain programmes, producers and presenters made sure that they trotted out the hot topics in order to fare well.

How true that is cannot be gauged by programmes that are not measured by the aforementioned yardstick, such as music programmes. So I was amused to see that according to the latest results, nobody listens to Mario Laus and Ivan Portanier on Radju Malta.

Since I listen to both, and I don't really like being called a nobody, I asked both of them for their views. Their replies were as nearly identical, inasmuch as they both considered Broadcasting Authority surveys a joke, and that in order to ascertain how many people listen, they suggested that the authority ought to send someone to the studio during a live programme. At least, while there, this person would be able to help out by taking calls from one of the lines. They said a presenter is in a position to tell whether he has listeners, if the phone rings incessantly as it does for them. Someone totting up numbers in an office is on the wrong side of a microphone.

Laus said: "My programme late on Wednesday night is even more popular than the one on Saturday afternoons. The battery of my mobile phone always goes flat after this programme. I mentioned this survey on air, and I had even more feedback than usual. I told callers that they must therefore be ghosts; and their replies would not do for a Sunday paper."

Portanier said: "I think the margin of error in authority's radio surveys is 95 per cent. They should come to the Radio Malta studios on Saturday afternoons and evenings and see for themselves how many listeners there are between 2 and 8 p.m. This time is Radio Malta's peak time listenership for the whole week. The number of listeners in one programme may add up to 40, perhaps 50; yet a number of these tell you that they are first-time callers who yet always listen to the programme."

• There is another catch-22 inconsistency in any set of survey results.

An esoteric station like Campus FM would tend to have a smaller, and yet more loyal, listener base. Yet the results do not make provision for this; one is only asked which radio station one listens to, and which television station one watches most, and that's it. So the people compiling the statistics must catch one of the listeners or viewers who are already in a minority, as representational of fellow enthusiasts. Even then, the chances are that different people listen to the same radio station for different reasons.

A case in point is Karta Saħħara, the title of which is a double pun, because the literal meaning of carbon paper which reproduces the world of children's stories also enchants us. It is presented and produced by Sergio Grech.

This new programme airs every Tuesday at 1.30 p.m., with a repeat on Fridays at 9.30 a.m. It includes the history of literature for children in Malta, interviews with authors, and fascinating discussions about both the text and illustrations of books meant for children, as well as reminiscences from guests.

• Sportscasters must really stop trying to compensate for their lack of fluency by padding out their reports. Mill-gżira t'Għawdex; mix-xena lokali; sab ix-xibka; l-iskor baqa' ma nfetaħx u għadu xejn b'xejn; partita fqira minn dik li hi azzjoni; these are but a few hackneyed phrases that ought to be made illegal.

Biex ngħidu hekk is usually said when a person has already said something - so why say it?

This week, Charles Briffa spoke on Lilian Maistre's programme about a similar idiosyncrasy of broadcasters. Rather than excusing themselves for having fluffed, they use the word anzi - and this makes it appear as if the second statement is somehow better than the first. The absurdity of it all is better exemplified by a sentence that says Spiru Chetcuti, anzi Ray Mamo, rebaħ it-trophy. Is it the fact that Mamo won the cup which makes him ostensibly 'better' than Chetcuti?

Meanwhile, on several stations we have been hearing that His Holiness Benedict XVI ser jagħmel mumenti ta' talb... Will there be someone standing over him with a stop-watch, telling him that the allotment of moments is up, and that he must hie off to the next location?

• Meanwhile, it is worth noting that Charmaine Vella has moved from Power FM to Calypso 101.8 with her programme Charmy Time, which goes on air every Sunday from 5 to 7 p.m.

• According to Foundation for Social Welfare Services chief executive Sina Bugeja, "... the protection of vulnerable people is not uppermost in producers' minds..." Bugeja was speaking about how important it is to protect the vulnerable, including children, during broadcasting.

Pierre Cassar, chief executive officer of the Malta Broadcasting Authority, voiced his concerns during the same interview, about how the aforementioned people could not always be aware of the implications of "being on television".

• Home and Garden Television (HGTV) featured Malta in yet another house-hunting programme. This time, it was a trophy wife with a penchant for tasteless clothes who was looking for a "place with a big balcony and an ocean view", not even realising that for the latter she had to go elsewhere. The realtor, of course, could only tell her that that type of property was "very hard to come by".

television@timesofmalta.com