With the arrival of a new discussion programme on Friday nights, this time on One, and hosted by John Bundy, Xarabank has its first serious competitor in its now established prime time slot.
However, the first topic chosen for Affari Tagħna was divorce, hardly a topic which has never been discussed before. Despite receiving largely positive feedback for his first programme, it is in the choice of topic that Bundy has to tread carefully.
For the last 13 years, Peppi Azzopardi’s show on PBS has made a name for itself for setting the national agenda of what people are talking about. “Did you watch Xarabank?” has become the inevitable question at many a workplace on Monday morning.
It is for this reason that any rival discussion programme, especially one which is competing head to head, must offer that something completely different, and at the crux of this is the subject up for discussion.
On divorce, it must be said, the general feeling is that the public has already discussed it to death. Every possible argument and counter argument has been laid out, analysed and dissected and any further debate is leading to a situation where we are simply going round in circles.
For Affari Tagħna to become relevant in the public psyche as a forum for intelligent debate, it needs to do more than simply be the “anti-Xarabank” as some have described it.
John Bundy has shown that he is capable of pulling in the audiences, and he has shown that he can conduct a discussion on an important issue with guests of a certain calibre. Now he needs to go a step further and be in tune with the mood of the country. In this respect, the mood of the country has already moved on from divorce legislation to other concerns and the challenge will be to not only be in step with this mood, but to go even further and read the signs at grassroots level to tap the pulse of the nation and anticipate what people will be talking about next.
It is common knowledge that, despite its consistently high ratings, Xarabank has its share of critics. In recent years, many have pointed out that the programme is doing a disservice to viewers (especially because it is transmitted on the national station, paid for by the taxpayer) because it has pointedly skimmed over the serious issues, and opted to go for more sensational, sometimes frivolous topics instead. There have also been allegations that Xarabank is slanted towards promoting the agenda of the current government.
One hopes that the emergence of a competitor in the field will not only provide viewers with more choice when it comes to which discussion programme to watch on a Friday night, but that the level of intelligent debate all round will be lifted as a result. Ideally, we will move forward to a point where television guests can argue their point civilly and courteously without resorting to shouting and rude interruptions. The mirror which television holds up to us should reflect a nation which has grown and matured in its ability to debate, rather than showing us an image which makes us turn away in dismay and switch over to foreign channels instead.