From the television-viewing public of Australia: We applaud your attempt to bring us back from BitTorrent by airing popular US shows shortly after their original US airdates. However, your gesture is hollow and insincere as long as you continue to treat us as having no intelligence to make informed decisions about our choice of entertainment.
We do not appreciate your insistence on devaluing your hard-won programming with the following:
* distracting and idiotic lower-thirds (believe us, in the middle of House we don’t need to be reminded when Neighbours is on. If you intended to distract us from the programme, you succeeded — but we changed channel.);
* accelerated rolling or compression of credits to make room for promotion reels, destroying the readability of the credits (some respect for the folks that make the programs you use to make your money, please. If you can’t take 30 seconds out to thank the folks that produce your programming, YOU’RE IN THE WRONG BUSINESS.);
* worse still, the replacement of the original production credits with your own high-speed microscopic version (see above. Get a clue.);
* obliteration of theme music with continuous voice-overs that start from the first frame of credits until the last (in fact some of us can remember when a voice-over was exactly that, and you could still hear the original track);
* utter disregard for timeslots and scheduling, either by deliberate obfuscation (telling the guides that 8:30 is the start time, while the real start time is ten minutes later) or programming overruns (also likely deliberate. If I didn’t choose to watch Big Brother, I’m hardly going to stay and watch it while you make the program after it late.);
* station logos that add nothing to the security or traceability of material (“This capture of Sea Patrol, Sir, from the logo we think it was captured by an AUSTRALIAN from a broadcast from Channel NINE!”).
Call it whatever you like: fast-tracked, streamed, straight-off-the-satellite, we don’t care. Treating us like idiots is what’s driving us to torrents, not episode lag! For many of us who value the experience of being entertained and not that of being marketed-at, we are very likely to WATCH THE TORRENT and then BUY THE BOX-SET DVD.
The sooner you reposition yourselves back to being useful and valuable components in the entertainment supply-chain, instead of annoying and costly middle-men, the better -off we all will be.
Some hints at how this might occur:
* Ditch the lower-thirds.
* Respect your content producers, even those who are employed by your network.
* Setting your programming schedule is like making millions of appointments with your viewers. KEEP YOUR APPOINTMENTS!
* Remove the logos. I’ll admit that they’re less intrusive here than in some locations (or on cable) but they’re more harm than good.
Yours was an honourable industry that has been tarnished by overseas influence and corporate greed. Only you have the power to reverse the trend and make Australian TV great again.
Crossed Wires 