THOUGHT FOR THE DAY
ROD LIDDLE
There’s a long trail a-winding — and it’s an insult to the licence-payer
Did you manage to catch the BBC’s new drama series Life On Mars this last week? It’s about a policeman who goes back in time to 1973 and gets to drive one of those nice old Ford Cortinas and beat up villains instead of arresting them. I didn’t see it — in fact, on the night it was shown I avoided watching BBC1 at all, in case I caught a glimpse of it by accident. Nothing wrong with the programme, I suspect — it’s had pretty good reviews, by and large. But by Monday evening I was sick to the back teeth of it. I felt as if I’d watched both this series and the second one they’ve already commissioned. I was already bored stiff by a programme I hadn’t seen.
The boredom had been induced by the most relentless, exhaustive trailing every night on TV. The very same clips shown over and over again, the same expression of surprise on the face of the lead actor, John Simm, the speeding cars, the bronze Cortina. It seemed to be shown for a week or more after every television programme post-six o’clock. There was no escaping. In the end, whenever the trail appeared, I screamed inwardly and turned over, making a mental note not to watch Life On Mars ever, ever, ever. My loss, I suppose.
What is it with our national broadcaster and trailing at the moment? I have not yet got my stopwatch out, but I reckon that at peak times the gaps for advertisements (which is what trails are, of course) are as long on the BBC as they are on our commercial channels. It is not unusual to have five separate ads in between programmes these days. Over the end credits of one programme the fatuous and invariably smug continuity announcer will start speaking (while you’re enjoying the music, or are contemplating the significance of what you’ve just seen — very annoying at the end of a film) telling you about what’s coming next — or even, on occasion, next week. Then there will be at least two separate, expensive little filmed trails for forthcoming programmes which you don’t want to watch and a reminder of what is on BBC2 or BBC3 or BBC4 at the moment just in case you’re either too stupid to read the TV listings or too lazy to pick up the remote control and find out. And even after this long-winded patronising rubbish, you’ll be treated to those incalculably irritating ‘idents’ which feature black people in wheelchairs dancing around to the naffest, most jaunty guitar riff ever written, just to let you know you’re watching the BBC, in case you thought you were out down the pub or reading a book. Then, if you’re very lucky, you’ll get the next programme, unless you’re so bored by the trails that you’ve switched channels or gone to bed.
There are trails and trails within programmes, too. On Match of the Day they always break off halfway through to show some moronic little dramatised film with very loud music to advertise a forthcoming football match to which the BBC has bought the rights. They even show snippets of the highlights of matches which are about to be shown later on the same programme: Gary Lineker will say ‘and coming later we’ve got Liverpool versus Blackburn (short clip of Steven Gerrard whining about something) but now it’s Arsenal versus Boro’. Why do they do that? What is the point of showing us the highlights of the highlights if you’re going to show the highlights in four minutes anyway?
And why do they say, every bloody night without fail, at the end of the Ten O’Clock News: ‘Newsnight is just getting underway on BBC2’? We know! It’s in the paper! It’s on the Ceefax and Teletext listings! And, what’s more, you told us the same thing last night and the night before, and the night before that. Is it a case of the BBC demonstrating its inclusivity, providing a service for those unfortunates who have, perhaps through a stroke or a car crash, been deprived of their short-term memories? Or do they think we’re all of us utterly stupid?
It’s the latter, of course. The programmemakers and the executives throughout broadcasting have been told too often that the average viewer has an attention span of two minutes and must therefore be informed, over and over again, what’s about to happen or what has just happened. It’s also a sort of fashion statement, part of the modern vernacular of broadcasting, and was known, while I was at the BBC’s Today programme, as ‘signposting’. The term itself makes me claw at my wrist in frustration and irritation. Anyway, the executives would insist that Today trailed some wholly inappropriate show on Radio Five Live or a forthcoming drama series on our network, Radio Four, and I remember complaining and being told, politely, to shut up because ‘signposting’, like it or not, was the future. Well, the executives were right about that. So it has proved, and, you have to say, how! Back then, Today received plenty of angry letters complaining about the trails, but the silent majority of listeners, we were told, found them useful. How did they know that? If they were silent, how did they know?
On the commercial channels, substantial portions of documentary time are taken up by reminding us, after every commercial break, precisely what happened in the previous 12 minutes of the programme. This is presumably to catch the casual viewer who has just switched over and might just be drawn in by a précis of what has already taken place. For the rest of us, it’s just plain annoying. As if television documentaries weren’t superficial enough already, they now waste valuable seconds on recapping when they could be telling us something new. Watching these documentaries makes me feel as if I am in a home for the mentally enfeebled, with some bovine nurse patting me on the head and telling me what I can look forward to for supper. And what I had for lunch.
They think we’re stupid, they think we’re incapable of looking things up, they think we need to be harangued and bullied, because we can’t be trusted to navigate our way around the television channels by ourselves. It does not matter that there are more TV listings, more previews in our newspapers, more information about television right there at our fingertips than ever before; they still feel the need to continually ram it down our throats. There isn’t much to be done about it, either. Complain and they’ll tell you that you’re in a small minority: ‘most people find it valuable’. Withhold the licence fee and you’ll be banged up. Smash the TV screen with a claw hammer and you’ll most likely get an electric shock. There’s no escape and no respite.
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