Monday, November 19, 2007
MTVLX
Well, we were going to write something about the new Girls Aloud album today, but our copy has so far resolutely refused to drop through our letterbox. We are going to assume an innocent explanation for the delay for now, but if we here our postman walking down the street whistling future-pop electro anthems of incomparable genius then, frankly, there’s going to be hell to pay.
Instead, we shall turn our attentions towards the news that MTV has just launched it’s sixtieth - 60! - channel. Admittedly at least half of the sixty are time shifted “Plus One” channels, but even so this is still quite an impressive feat. It does, after all, take a certain amount of dedication and persistence to have that much airtime at your disposal and yet still use it for nothing more interesting than repeating the same episode of My Super Sweet Sixteen over and over again. The latest channel to join the family is MTV Arabic, part of MTV’s efforts to celebrate the world’s cultural diversity and local quirks by showing the same Hogan knows Best and Pimp My Ride style rubbish that the rest of the world sees, only with subtitles. But if that’s channel sixty, what are the other stations that MTV is pumping out to an increasingly disinterested world? Let’s have a look, shall we?
Instead, we shall turn our attentions towards the news that MTV has just launched it’s sixtieth - 60! - channel. Admittedly at least half of the sixty are time shifted “Plus One” channels, but even so this is still quite an impressive feat. It does, after all, take a certain amount of dedication and persistence to have that much airtime at your disposal and yet still use it for nothing more interesting than repeating the same episode of My Super Sweet Sixteen over and over again. The latest channel to join the family is MTV Arabic, part of MTV’s efforts to celebrate the world’s cultural diversity and local quirks by showing the same Hogan knows Best and Pimp My Ride style rubbish that the rest of the world sees, only with subtitles. But if that’s channel sixty, what are the other stations that MTV is pumping out to an increasingly disinterested world? Let’s have a look, shall we?
- Erm, TV? - Interactive channel in which a parade of androgynous types appear on screen and viewers are invited to text in and guess whether they’re a real woman or just a convincing transvestite.
- MTV+10 - Time shifted channel allowing those who were out doing stuff this time ten years ago a chance to catch the MTV shows they missed. Tonight, it’s 1997 and the powers that be still seem to find Tim Kash strangely employable.
- TMV - Special dyslexic version of the main channel.
- MTV Antarctica - Broadcasting a special mix of programs designed to appeal to an audience made up largely of penguins. Pingu features more heavily here than in other MTV demographics. Was original considered to be a really cool channel but support seems to be melting away, which is only to be expected in the current climate.
- DMTV - Edits down music videos to only show the participants shoes. According to the station’s charter they don’t have to be Doc Martins, but in practice this is all they’ve shown.
- NTV - Rubbish section of Noel’s House Party in which viewers were asked to suspend their disbelief and believe that a member of the public genuinely did not expect to be suddenly appearing on TV, having a chat with Noel Edmonds, despite the fact their TV had a camera on the top of it, there was a massive outside broadcast truck outside there house and that they’d been asked to sign a release form just thirty minutes before the broadcast began.
- MTV Germany - Dedicated to highlighting the best of German pop. And then broadcasts the same old American stuff for the remaining 23 hours, 55 minutes of the day.
- Gee! MTV - Nostalgia channel dealing entirely with the music scene of the fifties. Not to be confused with Gee-Gee MTV which only broadcasts jockey’s bemoaning the lack of horse racing related themes in modern music videos.
- Elm TV - Misguided attempt to rebrand Robert Englund, the actor behind Freddy Krueger, as a VJ. This aim was hampered mainly by Robert’s insistence on playing Dokken’s Dream Warriors, the theme tune to Nightmare on Elm Street 3, ever twenty minutes, before spending the next ten minutes declaring it to be the greatest song ever written before going on to explain in unnecessary detail why he feels this to be the case, which, at it’s most basic, boils down to the fact he’s in the video. This station replaced the old mtV station which Robert also fronted. And is also the geekiest joke we’ve ever written.
- Hem TV - Catering for an older, more mature, female audience, this alternates hop hop videos with advice on sewing. Most famous for it’s “From bitch to stitch” tagline.
- MTV Robbie - A station dedicated to Robbie Williams, filling its hours with Robbie news, Robbie videos, Robbie interviews and people just chatting about what they imagine Robbie might be doing right now. This station currently only broadcasts inside Robbie’s head.
- MTV Base - Essentially the same as normal MTV, only with more swearing and knob gags.
- MTVXXX - All nude version of the main channel. Recently taken off the air after viewers proved to be less keen on seeing Tim Westwood hosting Pimp My Ride without even a hint of bling than focus groups had originally indicated.
- MT Me - It’s output consists entirely of viewer-generated content, and even then only content that you, specifically you, generate. Subscription involves a special team of MTV engineers coming round to your house and fitting a high tech facilitator portal to your television, allowing you to take part in this new revolution in television. Suspicions that all they do is come round and fit a giant mirror to your TV are entirely correct.
- MTV Music - Experimental channel which broadcasts nothing but music videos all day long. Bosses don’t expect this format to catch on.
Sunday, October 14, 2007
All the Zeroes
X Factor was supposed to go ‘live’ last night, but apparently the unappealing antics of a bunch of thick necked is considered to be more important. Although it is, admittedly, quite hard to think of many occasions where the X Factor would be given priority. Anyway, once it does go live, we’ll once again be bringing you our weekly look at each show’s events, although we may be somewhat hindered this year as, despite having watched all the audition and boot camp shows, we have only the vaguest idea who this year’s finalists actually are, which is a testament either to the dullards who’ve they’ve got lined up this year or the poor state of our concentration skills. Still, it’s not like our ignorance on a subject has ever stopped as having an opinion on it in the past. Indeed, it’s practically de rigueur.
Anyway, as we prepare for what will undoubtedly once again be the year’s biggest demonstration of how charisma free the nation likes its popstars to be, we’d like to give you our X Factor Bingo Card of Inevitability. Simply print off and, as the weeks go by, score off the events listed below as and when they happen and, once you get either four corners, a line or a full house, feel free to throw it away. We don't particularly care.
Anyway, as we prepare for what will undoubtedly once again be the year’s biggest demonstration of how charisma free the nation likes its popstars to be, we’d like to give you our X Factor Bingo Card of Inevitability. Simply print off and, as the weeks go by, score off the events listed below as and when they happen and, once you get either four corners, a line or a full house, feel free to throw it away. We don't particularly care.
| Sharon attempts to flirt with a male contestant in a rather uncomfortable, vomit inducing way. | Contestant declares that they “Really want it”, unaware that that reasoning didn’t wash with Santa when they were a kid and it certainly won’t wash now | Louis likens a black performer to be like a “Young Diana Ross”, regardless of who they are, how they sound or, indeed, what gender they are. | Audience boo and cheer on cue like a pack of Pavlovian dogs | Family members of contestant are in the audience wearing cheaply printed t-shirts declaring them to be part of Team Whoever as if dignity is nothing more than a passing concern for them. |
| Louis attempts to flirt with a female contestant in a rather unconvincing way | Someone spontaneously decides to do a Westlife song that just so happens to be released on the Monday after the show’s broadcast | Contestant gets chided for not stepping out of their comfort zone and playing it safe | Simon Cowell forgets where he is and calls a contestant a cunt | A special guest mentor is declared as a legend for no better reason than they’ve got a greatest hits coming out |
| Dannii Minogue sits there, looking like a spare wheel | Contestant mimes picking up the phone and sending a text message, unaware that in sign language they’ve just questioned the virtue of the viewing public’s mothers. | Contestant gets chided for stepping out of their comfort zone and cocking it up | The judges entirely spontaneously decide to throw water over each other | Contestant starts crying when Simon Cowell throws them a vague crumb of approval |
| ’Tension‘ is assumed to be the same thing as ‘Pausing‘ | The studio audience reach such an unbelievable fever pitch of excitement at the events unfolding that they’ve clearly been starved of any sort of entertainment since the age of 2 to get so much out of some vaguely competent singing. | No-one mentions Steve Brookstein. Or Kate. | Louis will labour under the delusion that people will vote for anyone, no matter how awful they might be, simply because they come from their local area | The X Factor tour will be heavily promoted early on in the series, long before the audience gets a chance to realise just how poor a night out that would be. |
| Louis and Simon bicker tediously in a manner only one step removed from saying “I know you are, but what am I?” | Any contestant with a child/death sob story/child death sob story will wheel it out at every opportunity in a cynical bid to manipulate the emotions of the audience. | Losing contestant declares that we haven’t seen the last of them, safe in the knowledge that there’s at least one week’s worth of appearances on the Xtra Factor and This Morning lined up before we get to see the last of them. | Choirs are used by Simon like an emotional Mr Muscle, reaching the parts that the contestant themselves can’t reach. | Slowly but surely, the viewing audience lose the will to live and commit suicide by swallowing the remote control and suffocating |
Labels: Bingo, TV, X Factor 2008
Tuesday, April 03, 2007
The Next Factor
After all the intrigue, backbiting, apologies, some more backbiting and a bit of hand wringing as they tried to ascertain whether anyone still even cares about what goes on in the programme, the makers of The X Factor, have finally revealed who'll be replacing the hapless Kate Thornton and Louis Walsh in their respective roles on the programme. Although given that the main 'innovation' for this year's series seems to be the reduction of the age limit down to 14, an age where, since we left Victorian times at any rates, society generally tends to expect you to be in school, getting an education and generally trying to make something of your life, rather than spending at best ten weeks on a pisspoor talent show where the only education you're likely to get is in the fields of failure and humiliation and the best your life will be able to offer you even if you do manage to win the whole sorry shebang is a few appearances on local radio and a "Where are They Now?" feature twenty years down the line, they may well be glad that they're no longer a part of the escapade.
Stepping into Kate's immaculate, if often ill-matching, heels is Dermot O'Leary, a man whose probably best known for his work hosting Big Brother's Little Brother, the magazine show which, if the last series was anything to go by, had the main job of awkwardly trying not to mention racism and instead search desperately for any sort of lighter moment, no matter how insignificant and irrelevant compared to what the rest of the country was talking about. Given his obvious uncomfortableness with the way Celebrity Big Brother turned out - and, as our CBB coverage should indicate, we know exactly how he feels, albeit we didn't have to do it in front of somewhat larger audience - it's no wonder that he's decided to jump ship. It seems unlikely that this year's edition of X Factor will have a race hate element to it, but even if it did we can't really see the judges getting too uptight about it, merely saying of a band that turns up in white hoods and performing against a backdrop of burning crosses: "Well, you attempted something bold and original there, but you didn't quite pull it off. Well done for trying, though!".
Ah the judges, and while Dermot may have been an obvious choice for the role of host - although our hopes were resting firmly on the shoulders of the lovely Fearne Cotton - choosing who was to fill Louis' slightly stained and unpleasantly warm seat must have been a much harder choice. After all, who else will, with the worldly expertise of the Westlife manager, be able to sit there and describe every act on the show as "A young X", where X is generally the person whose song the act has just performed, unless said person is a black woman, in which case they well be described as "A young Diana Ross", no matter what their performance was like or, indeed, whether they bear any relation to Diana Ross, young or old, whatsoever? As it turns out, it's Sinitta, whose contribution to the world of music, GTO notwithstanding, is not exactly hugely impressive or indeed relevant. Which, frankly, pretty much makes her a perfect judge for the show.
Stepping into Kate's immaculate, if often ill-matching, heels is Dermot O'Leary, a man whose probably best known for his work hosting Big Brother's Little Brother, the magazine show which, if the last series was anything to go by, had the main job of awkwardly trying not to mention racism and instead search desperately for any sort of lighter moment, no matter how insignificant and irrelevant compared to what the rest of the country was talking about. Given his obvious uncomfortableness with the way Celebrity Big Brother turned out - and, as our CBB coverage should indicate, we know exactly how he feels, albeit we didn't have to do it in front of somewhat larger audience - it's no wonder that he's decided to jump ship. It seems unlikely that this year's edition of X Factor will have a race hate element to it, but even if it did we can't really see the judges getting too uptight about it, merely saying of a band that turns up in white hoods and performing against a backdrop of burning crosses: "Well, you attempted something bold and original there, but you didn't quite pull it off. Well done for trying, though!".
Ah the judges, and while Dermot may have been an obvious choice for the role of host - although our hopes were resting firmly on the shoulders of the lovely Fearne Cotton - choosing who was to fill Louis' slightly stained and unpleasantly warm seat must have been a much harder choice. After all, who else will, with the worldly expertise of the Westlife manager, be able to sit there and describe every act on the show as "A young X", where X is generally the person whose song the act has just performed, unless said person is a black woman, in which case they well be described as "A young Diana Ross", no matter what their performance was like or, indeed, whether they bear any relation to Diana Ross, young or old, whatsoever? As it turns out, it's Sinitta, whose contribution to the world of music, GTO notwithstanding, is not exactly hugely impressive or indeed relevant. Which, frankly, pretty much makes her a perfect judge for the show.
Labels: Dermot O'Leary, Sinitta, TV, X Factor 2007
