Are we short of ideas or are we so completely imbued in our political system that we are not able to come up with a fresh idea for a new programme?
Such a hue and cry over the winter schedules of our television stations, and yet all we are witnessing is a recycling of the same programmes and the same subjects, over and over again.
How is it possible that nobody is able to come up with an innovative programme? I don’t know, and seems that the management of our television stations doesn’t care. Even if in the case of certain discussion programmes like Xarabank and Bondiplus, we are witnessing the discussion of the same subjects that we saw last year and the years before.
Take Xarabank, and the issue of clairvoyants: this has been dealt with ad nauseam. Take abortion on Bondiplus, I was browsing through my e-mails and I found Lou’s invitation of January of last year to attend as a member of the panel that was discussing the same subject, only this time the venue was at the Malta Maritime Museum. Believe me, I am not mentioning these two programmes to pick on them but as an illustration of what I mean to say.
This reflects either the weariness of the management of these programmes or the indifference to new issues and topics that the people want to know about today. It also shows that they think that the same subjects that made a sensation one, two, three, 10 years ago and gave them a big chunk of the audience share will do the same this year. And the bad thing is that the same subjects are dealt with from the same old perspective. Nothing new is added and no new ideas come out of these programmes.
People change and society changes, and people want discussion programmes to reflect what they are saying in the streets and not what the politicians or the presenter is saying. This is the same as in the case of DJs: a good DJ is not the one who plays his own kind of music, but the people’s choice of music. And in the case of our discussion programmes it is the same principle: people see in the presenter their medium, their voice.
However, I am sorry to say that most of the management teams of these discussion programmes have been stricken with the bug that what does not interest them does not exist.
We would like to see new topics for discussions: the future of our university; the duration of the IT boom; what will happen after Smart City (will there be a crisis in the IT business, as there is at present in Australia where the IT boom is over, and the shift is back to metal mechanics, welders, etc?); the future of the Malta shipyards; how in line are we with our commitments to the accession treaty with Brussels? Is it true that millions of euros in fines are awaiting on us because we are not adhering to the treaty, especially regarding air pollution? How much are we giving Brussels annually? (As we only hear of how much we are receiving), and why and how is this happening?
People want to know why our patients have to go to the banks for a loan of LM15,000 minimum to finance their treatment, when we boast of a state of the art hospital and a free healthcare system. They want to know why people are collecting money to buy CCU monitors for the Gozo hospital, instead of government financing them. They want to hear about the problem of medicines, and so many other issues that hit us directly.
It is a grave mistake that for any management team to take the “I’m all right Jack” attitude. I know that we are in the midst of an election campaign and that every team is doing its utmost to clinch its seat with whoever wins the next term in government. So much so that we have witnessed many of them employing people from both colours of our major political spectrum in order to capitalise on them should there be a change in government and a change in attitude by the board of directors of the television company that is currently feeding them.
It is also a shame that the Broadcasting Authority continues to turn a blind eye to this and wastes its energy on making sure that there is a representative of each of the two major political parties. The Authority knows that its role goes deeper than that and the Constitution of Malta makes it clear that it has to be protect the voice of all political parties and of all sectors of society, and not just that of the Nationalist and the Labour Parties.
You may not know this, but nowhere in the Constitution do we find that the Broadcasting Authority has to be composed of two members from the Nationalist side and two members from the Labour side. It only says that the President of Malta appoints these members in accordance with the advice of the Prime Minister given after he has consulted the Leader of the Opposition. But it is human nature to protect the flock and the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition obviously make sure that their parties are heavily represented in the Authority, and they do not care about the other persons who belong to different political parties.
The Constitution states on paper that “the function of the Broadcasting Authority is to ensure that due impartiality is preserved in respect of matters of political or industrial controversy or relating to current public policy, and that broadcasting facilities and time are fairly apportioned between persons belonging to different political parties”. But we all know what is happening. Political party stations are not obliged to keep impartiality; only PBS and Smash are. Decisions are taken in the boardroom based mostly on party allegiance and not for impartiality’s sake. Any new political party in Malta is finding it very, very hard to have the same platform as the other political parties.
It is therefore about time that Maltese television stops insulting our intelligence.