The Five Most Pointless Types of ‘News’ on Digital Spy

We realise, this is going to come as a shock to any readers who’ve just awoken from a twenty year long coma, but there is a worrying surplus of “entertainment news” these days. Of course, by “entertainment news”, we mean “painfully desperate rehashing of press releases”. Back in the Golden Age Of Hollywood, it would have been “Humphrey Bogart in bar brawl with gibbon”, “Brando to be first man on Venus?” or “Hedy Lamarr invents torpedo guidance system” (that last one isn’t a joke, by the way), but now we’re expected to feign interest on learning that Jeremy Clarkson said something a bit right-wing, Paris Hilton is thinking of buying a hat, or that Lady Gaga has heard of Finland.

For reasons which we can’t even explain to ourselves, we keep looking at Digital Spy. Mainly out of some idiotic sense of loyalty, because we remember when it used to be called DigiNews, and was mainly concerned with announcing new channels popping up or closing down on the then-new Sky Digital service (“Bah, ITV are still refusing to put any of their channels on Sky”). Since then, it’s grown, taking in more mainstream types of news story (i.e. those appealing to non-spods), and grown into a hugely popular website as a result. Meanwhile, BrokenTV has remained resolutely unpopular and not that good. Why? Because we’ve got integrity, dammit.

 BrokenTV, post-relaunch.

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Don’t Blame Us, We Voted For Arrested Development

There’s currently a poll running on MediaGuardian’s website, asking readers to vote for what they feel is the best TV show of the current decade.

There’s a shortlist of forty shows to choose from, and as the date in the screenshot above shows, it has been running for over three days. Let’s have a look at a few of the current ‘scores’:

Ha.

Ha. We’re sure the above two are down to “the British public not liking someone once they become successful”, rather than “being fleetingly popular is more down to luck than brilliance, whereas long-term popularity needs genuine talent”. After all, Bo Selecta didn’t even make the shortlist.

Ha.

Hurrah. Back when Series A was being previewed, we’d thought something along the lines of “well, the involvement of John Lloyd and Stephen Fry is promising, but it’s just another BBC Two panel show. It won’t last”. Proof, as if it were ever needed, that no-one should ever listen to us about anything. And proof why they don’t, come to think of it.

Crikey. While we do watch and enjoy Top Gear, is it really 588 times better than Life On Mars, The Daily Show, The Thick Of It or House (each currently on 0.1%)? Clearly not. We can’t help but feel there’s some sort of Facebook Group chicanery going on. Ah well, it’s all academic, and once the actual Channel Four series that inspired this poll is broadcast it’s only going to be won by Max & Paddy’s Road To Nowhere, anyway.

The main thing to take away from this poll is that if The Guardian’s website is going to have a poll with forty options to choose from, they’re much better off letting people choose three options, not one.

[update]

A-ha. The figures for Top Gear might just have a little something to do with a thread called “Vote rig: Guardian best TV show of the noughties” on a Top Gear forum, and subsequent spin-off campaigns by Top Gear fans. We’d denounce this behaviour as reprehensible, except it has given us an idea as to how we might just be able to nab a 2010 Webby Award. All it’ll take is for someone to create a messageboard saying how great we are, and then have thousands of people using it. Our fingers are interlocking wickedly right now*.

(*We typed that using our thumbs.)

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Anti-News: "Idiots Are Misled Easily" Reports Daily Mail

Here's a new riff for us - trying to find the most pathetic example of non-news about television. Kicking things off, it's the good old Daily Mail.

Complaints have poured into the BBC over Jools Holland's New Year countdown television show - because the apparently "live" programme was recorded 11 days before December 31.

It meant the Hootenanny was riddled with anomalies that left many people baffled and angry.

And it came at the end of year in which the BBC was embroiled in controversy over faked programmes misleading the public.

The most glaring hoot on the Hootenanny, screened on BBC2, was the presence of Kylie Minogue - who in fact was seeing in the New Year in her native Australia.

Others gaffes included guest Lenny Henry getting the year wrong and the midnight countdown apparently being out of synch with the actual time.

Scores of viewers posted complaints on the BBC's official Points of View website. "In an era where the BBC and television in general is continually accused of conning the public, it amazes me that this sort of pretence of what the date is still goes on all the time," wrote one.

After all, it's not as if this is what's always happened with New Year's Eve specials featuring lots of really famous guests, is it? Really, how dim would you need to be to become "baffled and angry" that Sir Paul McCartney, David Tennant, John Simm and Kylie Minogue actually aren't working at midnight on December 31st, but more likely with their families at home?

Near the end of the article, the paper pointed out how:

Readers of the Radio Times were warned that the Hootenanny show was recorded before December 31.

Inappropriate use of the word 'warned', there. "Don't touch that fence - it has fifty thousand volts running through it" would qualify as a warning, as would "come any closer and I'm going to shoot you in the face with my gun". Stating that a television programme has been pre-recorded, as would be clear to anyone who isn't just looking for a stick to beat the BBC with, wouldn't.

But perhaps we're jumping the gun, here. Maybe the Mail is going to apply the same set of standards it expects from the BBC to every aspect of the media, and will treat them all equally. Just maybe, we'll see the following on our news-stands on Monday morning.

That's right. Someone with a blog on the internet criticising the Daily Mail. We went there. Tomorrow's big revelation: the RIAA - They're Not Very Nice.

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