Mark Thompson is personally going to pull the plug on BBC Radio 6 Music. By that I mean he is actually going to do it himself, then he’s going to use a chainsaw to cut up the rest of the studios in BBC’s ‘Western House’, cut up the sound proofing, chainsaw through the mixing desks and blow up the satellite dish on the roof like at the end of ‘They Live’.

Although sad, it’s going to be one hell of a show. It’s been a bit of a story here for the first half of the week but the BBC control the news and by Thursday morning it wasn’t really a story anymore.

I know that a bunch of you are upset and I’m personally worried that Joe of the Adam and Joe show doesn’t try to attempt suicide again - after all the pair of them have never had it so good. Where will Jon Richardson sleep? Has Mark Thompson not though about this? That’s about the limit of my knowledge of 6 Music.

What gets me is this; I can remember since 2002 the BBC have been saying that they want to cut down the amount of programming and focus on the quality. One can only assume that means less dreadful period drama, less Dame Judy Dench, less ‘My Family’ and more Russell T Davis. Since 2002 there have been probably thirty dreadful period dramas, more Dame Judy Dench¹, eight more years of ‘My Family’ and some more Russell T Davis - most notably involved the re-imagining of Dr. Who.

How has there been another eight more years of ‘My Family’.

What exactly did we cut? Well they started another two TV channels and they did something about, re-launched the website, created the iPlayer² and Planet Earth. Didn’t really cut anything then.

What gets me the most is something one of the reporters said on the news which was hastily covered over and ignored. Since the last formal promise the BBC made to cut the fat and concentrate on building muscles we’ve had more of the ‘Strictly Come Dancing’ style shows which don’t even make the Beeb that much money because they don’t sell ad time. On BBC Three we have to deal with shows like ‘Snog, Marry, Avoid’ which is in its third series and now tag teams the “Why don’t they just show more Family Guy” slot at night with the high brow reality show ‘Hotter Than My Daughter’. Need I say more?

I just want to slate Tim Dawson for his sitcom ‘Coming of Age’ which is just gash. It’s already been dubbed as the worst cultural artifact in British history, I don’t know how Fred Barron, creator of ‘My Family’ feels about his show missing out on that most prestigious of awards but I can safely say that Coming is the worst thing I’ve seen on Three ever. Even the weakest episodes of The Mighty Boosh were scores of times better than it, why can’t they just show that over and over. Better than that, just show more Family Guy.

It’s not all bad on Three though, Boosh was great and although it came out of radio³ and before that out of theater but it was most accessible on TV. That £100 million would have taken £24 off everyone’s TV license⁴ each year for the last eight years that the Asian network and Radio 6 Music have been on air. Or it could have gone to charity.

I don’t know guys, what do you think? I suspect I’ll be happy if a couple of the shows from 6 Music find a home on Radio 1, 2, or even 4 but you can’t keep them all. It just seems that instead of doing something unpopular like cutting a couple of radio stations and taking apart your award winning website you could just do nothing because it seems to have been both successful and unnoticed in the past.

Jon Richardson should have been given Wogan’s job.

Ben

1. why more! [↩]
2. which is great [↩]
3. how sweet would it be if they got their start on 6 Music? [↩]
4. which is a nonsense anyway [↩]

March 5th, 2010 | Tags: adam and joe, bbc, bbc three, ben, budget cuts, dame judy dench, dr who, hotter than my daughter, jon richardson, mark thompson, my family, planet earth, radio 6 music, russell t davis, snog marry avoid, wogan | Category: off-topic, playing catch-up | Leave a comment

I was told by my housemate a few days ago that the latest episode of Family Guy contained a brilliant Sarah Palin joke. Well I watched said episode yesterday and it does contain a pretty funny (and maybe offensive) Sarah Palin joke. The plot of the story is that Chris dates a girl with Down syndrome and in conversation she mentions:

“My dad is an accountant and my mum is the former governor of Alaska”

I like my humour on the dark side so I of course found it funny. However the¹ woman in question didn’t. Her daughter was much more disgusted however stating:

“If the writers of a particularly pathetic cartoon show thought they were being clever in mocking my brother and my family yesterday, they failed.”

I don’t really understand why the Palin family thought it was an attack on them. The only reference is that one line and the rest of the episode goes from peak to trough of offensiveness, that line being a trough. I know that Palin’s daughter, Bristol², mentions the entire episode but if I were her I’d have probably kicked up more of a fuss about the 3 minute song and dance number, featuring Stewie and Chris, about the appearance and actions about Down syndrome sufferers³.

A rebuttal was made by Seth McFarlane and by the actress who played Chris’ love interest – Andrea Fay Friedman. She personally found the whole episode hilarious, and why shouldn’t she? She hasn’t lead a normal life but she’s managed to achieve something out of it: she’s a Down syndrome actress. That’s right; the actress playing the character does in fact have Down syndrome. Surely that shows that McFarlane does have a shred of dignity, and he didn’t just get a current voice actor to put on a voice.

Now surely that is the definition of equal opportunities? You could say it is unfair to mock people who have special needs but then is it unfair to not mock them when everyone else is being mocked? Black, White, Aisan, Blonde, Ginger (etc.) all get mocked every day, but why not people with special needs? A great pet peeve of mine is the misconception of racism. Racism isn’t just purely putting someone down from a different race to you. Racism is putting someone down from a different race to you because they are from a different race. Surely not mocking them is offensive if you are willing to mock other people? Like the comic Brendon Burns said in one of his stand-up routines to a heckler: “maybe I am being racist because if you were a white chick I would have tore you a new one”.

“It’s not really an insult. I was doing my role, I’m an actor. I’m entitled to say something. It was really funny. I was laughing at it.”

Going back to Andrea Fay Friedman she said that she is proud to be an actress with Down syndrome, and good for her. The correct way to deal with something like this disease is to have it out in the open. It’s good that she is an actress with Down syndrome. As a script writer you shouldn’t feel that you have to avoid certain characters just because of a social convention. What would be even worse was to make someone look like they have Down syndrome by having them spend a few hours in make-up. In my eyes that’s just as bad as “blacking-up”.

However the biggest point that the Palin’s missed, which is worrying because it hits you across the face harder than Mike Tyson, is that Friedman’s character is a bitch. She’s a horrible, selfish person. The episode in no way states that all people with Down syndrome are like this, but just her⁴. Does that not show the producers diversity that they are willing differentiate between people with Down syndrome rather than just people with and people without the disease. The fact that they missed that is really a big thing to me - probably the most important part of the whole episode.

I understand that this is a tricky subject and if I have genuinely offended someone by what I’ve said or any of my terminology I apologise. I just wanted to get my views across. If I’m wrong then please tell me, I’d love to see it from a different perspective.

Nick

More »

1. idiot [↩]
2. really?! That’s what you’ve called your kid? [↩]
3. my apologies if that isn’t the correct terminology [↩]
4. in fact Friedman said she didn’t want to be bossy [↩]

February 26th, 2010 | Tags: Down Syndrome, Family Guy, Sarah Palin | Category: off-topic | Leave a comment