Give Us A Break

“Fern is having some time off and we are hoping to see her back at work very soon.”

Welcome to another TV Weekly, a mini version of our ‘Friday Soap File’ – only for TV news. This week we were told Fern Britton was to have time off This Morning, only to return the next day, MTV are hiring the son of a famous dead footballer and we won’t be seeing product placement in programmes.. ..but we will be seeing Noel Edmonds reviving a house party style show.

No Product Placement on UK Television

Labour have rejected the European Union’s directive to allow product placement within programmes. Culture secretary, Andy Burnham, said that such advertising could further harm viewer trust in commercial television which has been already tainted by deliberate competition conning and deception scandals.

The news won’t be popular with the UK commerical advertisers who had wanted the rules on product promotion to be relaxed to fall in-line with the American television system, where many programmes are sponsored or feature in-show branding and product placement.

Burnham said in his view there should be a clear distinction between the on screen editorial content and advertising slots.

 

 

Well I suppose there is a fine line, having watched Coronation Street last night (15/06/08) there were a number of products spoken of within the show, the “24” drama series DVD box set being just one. It certainly wouldn’t have benifited the programme to have a close up of it, and a speech of how great it is, which is basically what product placement could see happen.

Lets keep programmes as just that, and the adverts in the breaks..!

Am I Just Getting Old?

Is being 31 old? I don’t know, I just look at some news stories these days and think, “what on earth”. BBC Three and MTV programming makes me think that ‘youngsters’ these days are happy to just watch a load of cheap, poorly made rubbish fronted by cardboard personalities. It wasn’t really like that only a decade ago was it?

The latest in a long line of such ‘programming of dubious quality’ comes from Camden-based MTV, who have commissioned a new reality show called Totally Calum Best: The Best Is Yet To Come.

The programme apparently has the same kind of format of other gutter level shows, Totally Jodie Marsh and Kerry Katona: Crazy In Love. If these people, who are generally famous for the sake of it due to their pathetic private lives, are what the young viewers in Britain want today then it just shows how bad our society has become.

The Celebrity Love Island star, famous for being the son of an ex-footballer who drunk himself to death, is apparently going to attempt to ditch his lothario image. Personally television needs to ditch these talentless no-ones, and start seeking some quality programming with decent, and hopefully talented, personalities.

Fern Off

Last Tuesday Digital Spy informed us that: ‘Fern Britton is having “some time off” from This Morning in the wake of controversy around her use of gastric banding weight loss surgery.’

Britton then returned to work the next day. I’m not sure if it was just poor reporting or guess work, but the story was blown out of all proportion when the article then went on to state: ‘She was absent from the ITV1 show for several days last week but was expected to return yesterday.’

Now, I’m not sure about Digital Spy’s maths skills, but my working out of her time off was actually two days for the week they are discussing, not several by any stretch of the imagination. Fern had the Wednesday and Thursday off, she doesn’t work Fridays anyway. The following week she was absent for the Monday and Tuesday, a grand total of four days.

The article continued with a comment from ITV: “Fern is having some time off and we are hoping to see her back at work very soon.” And how soon it was, the next day Britton was back, and looking as wonderful as ever.

Fern took time off from the show after it was revealed she had stomach surgery to help her lose weight. This seemingly upset some fans and viewers as Britton had indicated that she had actually lost weight through exercise and diet. In this age of image, to be honest, I don’t care what Fern looks like, she looks great thin, the fact is – she is a darn good television presenter and long may she remain at the helm of This Morning.

In Short:

• Ricky Gervais, scripted-only comic, is to sing the theme tune to new sitcom Toyboize. Ah well at least he can’t make a cock of himself with that.
• Big Brother scraped ahead of ITV1’s Brothers and Sisters in Love in the ratings on Thursday with 2.9m for the 9pm hour. ITV managed 2.7m.
• Russell T. Davies says his OBE will benefit UK TV drama. I think really, Russell T. Davis leaving UK drama will benefit it more, his stories are the weakest ones in Doctor Who. A good producer he may well be, writer he sure isn’t.
• Channel 4 is planning a physical game show set inside a large perspex cube. Oh just bring back The Crystal Maze and have done with it.
• Sky One’s re-launch of the LWT classic, Gladiators, had been losing viewers almost as fast as ITV recently. However this week the show managed to pull in an improved audience of 643,000. The game show sees lots of men and woman dressed in very tight lycra, if the ratings fall much lower how long before they bring us Nude Gladiators? What a terrible thought.

And Finally, Let’s Get The Party Started

Noel Edmonds to revive the feeling of Noel’s House Party – the former Saturday night entertainment series which aired on BBC One between 1991 and 1999.

The programme, according to Broadcast, will be called Noel’s HQ and will see a mix of House Party style segments mixed with new features. Sky One, who are behind the production hope to capture the feel of Noel’s House Party, especially as the show will have a live studio audience.

Sky have described the programme as an antidote to “broken Britain” – of course what people are already asking is, “will Mr Blobby be back?”

Mr Blobby was one of the biggest stars of the 1990s, with a number one Christmas song and best selling videos. In Noel’s House Party he would either be seen in ‘the great house’ falling over or as part of the ‘Gotchas’ which saw celebrities being set-up in often a ‘hidden camera’ style prank.

For a while Blobby, whos catchphrase ‘Blobby, Blobby, Blobby’ was shouted at fat kids throughout the 90s, had a more successful career after House Party than Edmonds. The pink and yellow thing went on to work for Children’s BBC with a regular slot on Live and Kicking the live Saturday morning magazine show and also became a regular on Jim Davidson’s Generation Game.

Edmonds however quit television presenting until 2006 when he was lured back to host Deal or No Deal for Channel 4.