My already limited hours in front of television have been drastically reduced even further in the past two years or so. Apart from sporting events – and I have learnt to be very selective about these – gone are the days when weekends were occupied with just football; nowadays, one match is more than enough and apart from news updates, I practically watch nothing else on TV.
It is a choice I have made largely because I started to realise that watching TV had become a time-consuming exercise – perhaps I should say waste of time. I was ending up just looking at the screen out of habit, not because I was really interested in what was going on.
I have come to prefer watching series on DVDs I personally choose and can watch at whatever time I like. I find it much more fulfilling and it certainly is time spent much better than having to watch whatever is thrown at me by the various television stations, be they local or foreign. Added to this, I have made more time for reading which, again, I find more rewarding.
Still, my job being what it is, I cannot completely shut out what is taking place on local TV stations, so I do keep an eye on what is going on.
The TV season that has just ended was busier than usual, considering the election. The number of talk shows with politics taking centre-stage multiplied, and we had an overdose of politicians and know-alls appearing on our screens. There were also some presenters who, rather than probe their interviewees, were more inclined to let the world know their opinion and often talked more than their guests, worsening the situation as time wore on.
What we see on TV between July and September is lighter stuff, although this does not necessarily mean that the quality is good. Far from it, but let’s not go there.
The end of June is normally a time when TV stations take stock of what has gone on in the previous months and make plans for the next season that starts in October. My interest here is not the political stations, on which there would be so much to say and, most of all, argue about whether they should even exist. But that is an issue I will not go into this time, although it really needs to be explored, given that they are the cause of the financial difficulties both major political parties have found themselves in.
My focus is the national television station, which is financially supported by our taxes and from which we expect balance, fairness and moderation. So it is natural for criticism to be levelled at TVM each time it is felt that these three basics have not been met. It has happened under different governments, and normally it is the party in opposition and its supporters who feel that they are being short-changed or downright discriminated against, although there have also been occasions when the party in government has not been happy with some comment or particular show.
My main argument, when it comes to discussing PBS, is that it has become too politicised. I do not mean in a partisan way – in this, I think that producers and presenters of different shows go to great pains to have representatives of the different parties taking part in their programmes. By politicisation, I mean that TVM has too many talk shows in which politics is the main subject.
There was a time when we had talking heads only in the evening, and not even at prime time. There was also a time when weekends were free of politics. But in the past few years, PBS has offered political shows throughout the day, starting from breakfast time right up to night-time. Added to this, we now also have a second station run by PBS which offers repetitions of these political talk shows at various times of the day. The weekend is no longer without political programmes either.
It is definitely too much, particularly when the topics under discussion are limited and are very often repeated from one show to the next. The presence of politicians on our national TV station should be considerably reduced. We cannot continue waking up in the morning to hear politicians talk and go to sleep with their voices still lingering in our ears because what they said in the morning is what they have repeated in a different show in the evening.
PBS made this choice a few years back and I was among those who criticised it, largely because it was fomenting even more political division in our already over-politicised nation. I understand that as a national broadcaster PBS must have programmes that tackle national issues; but to have this for 24 hours a day, seven days a week, is not the way to do it. With what is going out live and what is being repeated on TVM2, there is hardly a time during which PBS is not transmitting something related to politics.
I think that now is the time to reverse this trend. We are a long way from the next election, and if this reduction of political stuff from the national TV station is not done now, it will never be done.
What the situation for the season starting in October will be is still to be decided. My plea is for those who will decide what programmes PBS will offer its viewers to consider a significant reduction in politics on our TV screens – and, as a consequence, of politicians and know-alls.
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