Television and I.

I love TV, I love watching great TV, and I love making great TV, even better to conceptualize great TV ideas. So I take an exception to people who blurt out, ‘I don’t watch TV!’ as if that makes them sound intelligent because of the perception they have of the medium. The Emperor of Empathy (Oprah to the uninitiated) says this all the time, ironic coming from someone who was made by TV, but then as great as the Emperor of Empathy is, she’s not immune to talking crap, perhaps not as bad as Mara Louw, but crap anyway. It’s like Mondli Makhanya (Sunday Times Editor) questioning the reluctance of ‘’disciplined cadres’’ to talk about sensitive party politics in public, as if Mondli will take kindly to a Sunday Times journalist talking about many internal Sunday Times politics publicly.

I have listened with shock to fellow colleagues working in the TV industry proclaim with pride, ‘I don’t even have a TV set in my house’. Dude, you gotta be kidding me?

I certainly don’t look at TV as a substitution for reading, by all means please do read, but please do watch some TV as well. You see, TV has gone intelligent and powerful over the years, at least if you compare it to the Charlie Chaplin days. It can be damn entertaining too.

I really wish they can give us ‘Society’ (SAVC1 drama series) in a longer stretch than just 13 or 26 episodes at a time, I really hated to miss any episode of that drama-packed world of those four gorgeous women. Remember ‘Zero Tolerance’ (SABC2 Detective Series)? The only detective-drama series ever produced in SA worthy of being called ‘brilliant. Gone too soon!

Many people have unflattering opinions about Jika Majika, but I’m asking you – have you experienced the joy of seeing a 3year old dance and you know it was inspired by the youth dance show? Have you watched Khumbul’ekhaya and saw family members being reunited after thirty years? You still think TV is a chewing gum of the eyes? Yours truly once produced a talkshow, ‘3Talk with Noeleen’, and this one time we discussed organ donation and had people on death’s door pleading with the viewers to donate organs, two desperately-sick girls in that episode never lived long after the show, but the Organ Donor Foundation reported that a few days after the episode was aired they had received more than TWO THOUSAND new donors. That’s TV at its most powerful and useful. You see, there is good that eventually comes out of all the emotional exploitation of the guests, sometimes.

That's one of the reasons I'm weary of sleep-overs, your home-for-the-night might just be one of those without a TV set. BUT having said, I know the TV looks larney in the bedroom but it is bloody bad for business, bedroom business.  

And yeah, don't believe everything they tell you on TV though, even if it's Emperor of Empathy herself.

It's just the way it is.