BS: TV is irritating

Subject: BS: TV is irritating
From: kendall
Date: 05 Jul 07 - 07:54 AM

I was just watching a program on the history channel, and as is so often the case, I get really irritated when a narrator makes glaring mistakes. This guy was talking about Africa, and he stated that Cameroon is in EAST Africa! Anyone with eyse can see that it is in WEST Africa.
A while back another geographically challenged narrator stated that Portland Maine was in Southeastern Maine.

They consistently mis pronounce Arctic and antarctic.
Does this bug anyone besides me?

Subject: RE: BS: TV is irritating
From: Paco Rabanne
Date: 05 Jul 07 - 08:04 AM

"At this moment in time" always gets me. What other sort of moment is there? News reporters always talk about "people rebuilding their shattered lives" Whenever anything unusual happens.

When Boscastle got flooded a reporter asked an old bloke who had had his house flooded "if he could ever re-build his life?" and the old bloke answered - "What? I'm not that soft"

Subject: RE: BS: TV is irritating
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 05 Jul 07 - 08:53 AM

Most TV is shite, our local BBC news programme, Look North, kept telling us last night that Kate Rusby would be singing, they actually broadcast twenty seconds of her.

eric

Subject: RE: BS: TV is irritating
From: wysiwyg
Date: 05 Jul 07 - 09:24 AM

Does this bug anyone besides me?

Yes, especially considering how many people think documentaries are careful history that they can count on as knowledge.

My current beef with that channel is the dogfight program that makes what looks like a kids' video game out of vets' memories. For "dramatic effect."

~S~

Subject: RE: BS: TV is irritating
From: JeremyC
Date: 05 Jul 07 - 09:31 AM

I find scotch tape and superglue, with a pair of tweezers, to be the best tools for rebuilding my life when it shatters.

Nah, just kidding. That would be alcohol, actually.

Subject: RE: BS: TV is irritating
From: Rapparee
Date: 05 Jul 07 - 09:47 AM

Really? Irritating? I never ever would have thought that. I thought everyone on TV was intelligent and if they didn't know something they looked it up. Kendall, are SURE that Cameroon isn't in East Africa? I thought it was somewhere in South America, and when I looked it up on the Internet I found out I was right.

At the same site I learned about the 47 states in the US, that Poland is part of Switzerland, that bananas are grown around Bethel, Alaska, and that London is the capital of Tajikistan. It all must be true, because it's on the Internet.

TV wouldn't get things wrong. I've known that from childhood and Walt Disney's show on lemmings.

People who write books wouldn't lie, either.

Like Tom Paxton wrote,

"I believe I do
I believe it's true
I believe exactly what they tell me to,
I believe I do
I believe it's true
I'm a simple guy, I believe."

Subject: RE: BS: TV is irritating
From: George Papavgeris
Date: 05 Jul 07 - 09:48 AM

I am there with you all the way, Kendall. My favourite pet hate is the way the once-excellent main news programmes on BBC & ITV have begun to dumb down, using eye-catching slo-fast-slo techniques or made-up footage of irrelevant things based on literal interpretation of the text being read. Like we need to have everything illustrated otherwise we won't get the point.

But then, since not that long ago, my role model has become Victor Meldrew (jaqui can explain). So some of my/our grumpiness, irritability, finickiness and general dissatisfaction is definitely age-induced.

Though we're right anyway. We know we are. Of course.

Subject: RE: BS: TV is irritating
From: GUEST,grumpy
Date: 05 Jul 07 - 10:03 AM

"favourite pet hate" ? I thought a "pet" hate (if the desription should be used at all) IS a favourite.

"dumb down" ?? Now that's one of *my* pet hates :-)

Subject: RE: BS: TV is irritating
From: Paco Rabanne
Date: 05 Jul 07 - 10:10 AM

Another really, really, really irritating thing that has crept into BBC and ITV news reports is the old man/young woman teams of newsreaders who read a line EACH of a news item. Then they walk around the bloody studio STILL reading a line EACH.

Subject: RE: BS: TV is irritating
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 05 Jul 07 - 10:10 AM

I haven't watched the history channel sorts of programs for ages because I find the use of "live actors" to be very distracting and not at all helpful. Give me the old talking heads any day, please! I know perfectly well that 10 years from now those people are going to look "out of fashion" even though they were put in supposedly period pieces and their haircuts and body piercings hidden. Do they think I can't imagine what it is a historian is describing, or that I am less entertained if I'm looking at a medieval illustration (and I personally like the technique of the close-up shot of a painting or illustration that slowly backs away or pans across the page). I look at those video reenactments and often times seems the people don't really look like the right size or ethnicity or other features of the time they're supposed to represent (hairy, dirty, bloody, emaciated. . . )

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: TV is irritating
From: wysiwyg
Date: 05 Jul 07 - 10:14 AM

I thought everyone on TV was intelligent and if they didn't know something they looked it up.

[giggle]

Yes, and thanks to today's instantaneous-gratification trends, Hardi and I have been discussing for several months now that the younger set don't just believe the internet, and TV programs.... they also give every indication that they believe commercials. Especially the ones from the drug companies. Those are becoming a source of do-it-yourself diagnosis and treatment planning.

That's ONE way to solve Social Security.

~Susan

Subject: RE: BS: TV is irritating
From: Folkiedave
Date: 05 Jul 07 - 10:33 AM

Never owned a TV since I left home in 1961.

And as one of my students once said - "Does that mean you don't have a video either?"

Best regards,

Dave

Subject: RE: BS: TV is irritating
From: SINSULL
Date: 05 Jul 07 - 10:37 AM

Portland, Maine IS in the southeastern part of Maine.
SINS, directionally challenged and confused.

Subject: RE: BS: TV is irritating
From: wysiwyg
Date: 05 Jul 07 - 11:13 AM

Sorry, Sins, can't take your word for it-- you're on the internet. :~)

~S~

Subject: RE: BS: TV is irritating
From: MaineDog
Date: 05 Jul 07 - 11:29 AM

TV bugs me wo much that I never watch it. I' sort of glad to hear that I haven't missed anything lately.

MD

Subject: RE: BS: TV is irritating
From: John J
Date: 05 Jul 07 - 11:31 AM

One of my bitches: on commercial TV, when Pt2 of a programme starts, half of the has to be repeated - just in case our limited memory span can't stretch to remembering what we were watching 3 minutes ago!

I could go on. And on...

JJ

Subject: RE: BS: TV is irritating
From: George Papavgeris
Date: 05 Jul 07 - 12:01 PM

Paco Rabanne, I disagree with you about the old man/young woman teams of newsreaders. It gives me hope...

Subject: RE: BS: TV is irritating
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 05 Jul 07 - 12:51 PM

I find the use of "live actors" - what, as opposed to dead ones?

But I agree... using actors to portray period costume or a particular historical character and getting it wrong bugs me no end.

Like having Shakespear speak with an 'Esschurry' accent, or Beethoven going 'what?'

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: TV is irritating
From: Little Hawk
Date: 05 Jul 07 - 12:59 PM

Any TV can be simply adjusted to improve the quality of programming by 100%.

Just strike it a heavy blow dead center with an ax, a crowbar, or a big sledgehammer.

Or use a shotgun on it. Aim at the picture tube. Equally effective.

Subject: RE: BS: TV is irritating
From: Ebbie
Date: 05 Jul 07 - 01:18 PM

Not on national television but the other day an Anchorage, Alaska, newsreader reported on 'wind' farms. Pronounced to rhyme with 'mind'.

Subject: RE: BS: TV is irritating
From: Becca72
Date: 05 Jul 07 - 01:20 PM

Eastport is in Eastern Maine. Portland is in Southeastern Maine. Wells is in Southwestern Maine...

I'm with ya on this one, Sins.

Subject: RE: BS: TV is irritating
From: Becca72
Date: 05 Jul 07 - 01:24 PM

'scuse me...didn't mean Wells, I meant the Berwicks are in Southwestern Maine

Subject: RE: BS: TV is irritating
From: gnu
Date: 05 Jul 07 - 01:29 PM

I watch comedy (all types) and news and interviews (like Larry King, if the guest has a brain) only. And, except for the news, on tape, never live.

Subject: RE: BS: TV is irritating
From: RangerSteve
Date: 05 Jul 07 - 01:48 PM

During the first World Trade Center attack, back in the '90's, a news anchor from a New York City station announced there was a special phone number set up for people wanting to get info on family members working in the building. "That number is 437-404. Again, the number is 437-404. I'll repeat that number, 437-404." Apparently, he had neber made a phone call himself. (In case you're from outside North America, there are seven digits in a phone number).

In Philadelphia, the mandatory Cute Couple who anchor an early morning news show have a segment where you send in pictures of your one year old child on his/her birthday and they show them, around 630am. I understand mispronouncing some of the more exotic first names and foreign last names, but when "Katie Jones" comes out as "Katty Jo-Nez" or "Riley" comes out as "Rill - Eye", I have to wonder what qualifications, if any, there are for being a news anchor.

Subject: RE: BS: TV is irritating
From: Little Hawk
Date: 05 Jul 07 - 01:59 PM

You have to have good hair...

Subject: RE: BS: TV is irritating
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 05 Jul 07 - 02:09 PM

Not anything to do with TV specifically ('cause I don't watch it so I can't comment) but one I hear on the radio often enough that it has to be on TV is "going forward". I take it that when people use the term they mean going forward in time. Well, have I missed the invention of something that allows one to go backward in time? Is it possible to go any way other than forward? Wouldn't "as time progresses" convey the same meaning without making the speaker sound like he just finished a crash course in the latest version of business newspeak?

Subject: RE: BS: TV is irritating
From: SINSULL
Date: 05 Jul 07 - 02:31 PM

Eastport is Downeast.

Subject: RE: BS: TV is irritating
From: treewind
Date: 05 Jul 07 - 02:32 PM

...so don't watch TV.

Anahata

Subject: RE: BS: TV is irritating
From: GUEST,petr
Date: 05 Jul 07 - 02:33 PM

the other day on some local news from Ontario, they had short
story about a kid finding a mammoth tooth on the beach or something
and the female news anchor started off by saying - heres one for the archaelogists and then proceeded with the story..

at the end of the story the other news announcer corrected her, saying
'anthropolgists'

ok how stupid are we..

Subject: RE: BS: TV is irritating
From: kendall
Date: 05 Jul 07 - 02:35 PM

Sorry, that was me without my cookie.

Sinsull, Becca72, I'll buy you each a globe for Christmas. Eastport is in South EASTERN maine. Portland is in South WESTERN maine. The shape of the state is decieving.

Subject: RE: BS: TV is irritating
From: Jeri
Date: 05 Jul 07 - 03:05 PM

Kendall, it's not in south western Maine. If it were, you could stay in Maine on the same latitude and go east. If you tried that, you'd fall off of Maine and be swimmin' wit da lobstas.

Portland may be in the western half of Maine, but when you add the latitude, the south in, it's southeastern Maine.

Subject: RE: BS: TV is irritating
From: Becca72
Date: 05 Jul 07 - 03:07 PM

Thank you, Jeri. That was my thinkin', too. East of Portland is ocean so counting the landmass of Maine, Portland is southeast

Subject: RE: BS: TV is irritating
From: Bill D
Date: 05 Jul 07 - 04:53 PM

Rita just cleared it up...Portland is on the East coast in the SouthWest quarter of Maine.

(William James tells the story of several men out camping when they saw a squirrel on a tree. They tried to get a better look, but the squirrel kept moving to keep the tree between himself and the men, so they fell to arguing whether they were walking "around" the squirrel or not, since the squirrel was always facing them.

One man (the Philosopher)came in late and told them simply that there IS no absolute answer, but it simple depended on a decision to adopt a common definition. If you all decide to mean by "around", being first to the north of the squirrel, then to the other directions, then the answer is yes, you were going around the squirrel (that is, the tree was the referent). If, however, you mean getting to the place you can see the squirrel's back, then the answer is 'no'. That sort of answer is a Pragmatic solution.

Subject: RE: BS: TV is irritating
From: Little Hawk
Date: 05 Jul 07 - 04:59 PM

Excellent. The philosopher had it right. It sort of points up the silliness of arguing about such things, doesn't it?

Subject: RE: BS: TV is irritating
From: WFDU - Ron Olesko
Date: 05 Jul 07 - 05:08 PM

TV is too easy of a target.   You can just as easily be irritated by radio, books, magazines, newspapers and the altercockers who sit at the counter of the local diner giving their history of the world. I can also show you piles of CD's and LP's with liner notes with "facts" that were pulled right out of the authors ass.

People make mistakes - television is created by people. You can get bent out of shape when someone mispronounces a word or uses bad grammar, but what is the big deal? Life goes on, with our without our whining.

I have worked in television and I know many people who make their living through it. I find it offensive when the industry is labeled as problematic. Most people I know really do care to get their facts right and offer something that people can learn from AND be entertained. It is not all crap.

I also find it amusing when people say they no longer own a television. Do they also boast about not reading a newspaper or reading a magazine?    Ideas and information come at us from all angles and if we can't trust ourselves to make judgements, perhaps isolation is the best bet.

Subject: RE: BS: TV is irritating
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 05 Jul 07 - 05:35 PM

But the REAL Portland is on the south west coast... east of Portland is Lulworth and west of Portland is The Lizard! You can try going south, but you'll hit France before you hit anything else!

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: TV is irritating
From: gnu
Date: 05 Jul 07 - 07:18 PM

Looks to me as about nearly as Sou'west as you can get on a map. Argue all you want, but, look at the map.

Subject: RE: BS: TV is irritating
From: kendall
Date: 05 Jul 07 - 07:33 PM

Lay a compass on a map with the needle pointing to Madawaska, the most Northern point in Maine. Eastport Maine is in the southEAST section of Maine, and Portland is in the southWEST section.
Remember that the state is tilted toward the west.
Landlubbers shouldn't argue with old sailors.

Subject: RE: BS: TV is irritating
From: kendall
Date: 05 Jul 07 - 07:35 PM

Better yet, picture this: You are in Fort Kent Maine, and you want to get to Eastport. In what direction do you head?

Subject: RE: BS: TV is irritating
From: catspaw49
Date: 05 Jul 07 - 07:38 PM

I'm irritated by Ron Olesko.

Actually, I'm not. But Ron, after reading your post it had to said! LOL...sorry (;<))

Spaw

Subject: RE: BS: TV is irritating
From: Peace
Date: 05 Jul 07 - 07:43 PM

"Better yest, picture this: You are in Fort Kent Maine, and you want to get to Eastport. In what direction do you head? "

Easy. First ya get to Welshpool and then go WNW from there.

Subject: RE: BS: TV is irritating
From: Peace
Date: 05 Jul 07 - 07:59 PM

OPTIMIST: The glass is half full.
PESSIMIST: The glass is half empty.
ENGINEER: The glass is the wrong size.

Subject: RE: BS: TV is irritating
From: Jeri
Date: 05 Jul 07 - 08:08 PM

Hey Kendall - I got it! Most flat maps have been smooshed and aren't realistic representations of a round world. Hopefully, this will work. If you divide Maine up into quadrants, Portland's in the southwest one.

But although Portland is in the southwest of Maine, if you travel east, the ocean is where you'll be.

Subject: RE: BS: TV is irritating
From: WFDU - Ron Olesko
Date: 05 Jul 07 - 08:39 PM

It's okay Spaw, I irritate myself as well!! :)

Subject: RE: BS: TV is irritating
From: kendall
Date: 05 Jul 07 - 09:27 PM

So, don't travel east. Travel southeast from Fort Kent Maine, wind up in Eastport.

Subject: RE: BS: TV is irritating
From: kendall
Date: 05 Jul 07 - 09:30 PM

Sinsull, I wish the whole mudcat clan could see the humor in you arguing directions!

Subject: RE: BS: TV is irritating
From: katlaughing
Date: 05 Jul 07 - 09:35 PM

Well count me irritated, too, Ron!**bg**

katsupportedbyRog'stvwagesforovertwenty-fiveyears&counting

Subject: RE: BS: TV is irritating
From: Seamus Kennedy
Date: 05 Jul 07 - 11:21 PM

Kendall, thanks for that information.
I'm going to be performing in Fort Kent, ME later in the year, and I was wondering how I'd get theah from heah and back again.
Now I know.
Ya gotta love the 'Cat.

Seamus

Subject: RE: BS: TV is irritating
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 06 Jul 07 - 04:26 AM

Ron - I'd happily boast about not reading a magazine (well, a certain type of magazine) if anyone I knew would be remotely interested... they all WANT to know what Jade Goody has done, where Paris Hilton is sleeping tonight (and with what) or who's had more botox done...

I can proudly say I have never EVER bought a copy of 'OK' magazine. I relish the fact that I've never seen a copy of 'Playboy' (although I understand it usually has a couple of good articles) and I wouldn't be caught dead with 'Hello'!

There.. does that make you feel better?

If you want, I can honestly say that I've spent as much time this week reading, as I have watching TV. The advantage with a book is, if I fall asleep before the end of it, I can pick it up and read it again. Bereft of 'repeat ad nauseam TV' (Terrestrial and digital only), I'll have to wait for weeks until the CSI I fell asleep to last night is repeated.

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: TV is irritating
From: Folkiedave
Date: 06 Jul 07 - 05:14 AM

I also find it amusing when people say they no longer own a television. Do they also boast about not reading a newspaper or reading a magazine?

It doesn't work like that unfortunately Ron.

Whenever I announce to people that I don't own a TV (in response to conversations the begin "Did you see.......last night.......) the response is invariably "but there are some good programmes about ......on.

Unfortunately these programmes are not the ones that get the ratings; the programmes with the best ratings are invariably soaps and other "entertainment" programmes and not "informative" programmes. In the UK it's East Enders and Coronations St.

First of all I get most of my information from the radio - the pictures are much better.

Secondly I also buy a decent newspaper (as opposed to a red top as we call them).

I have seen American TV (ugh) and Spanish TV (even ugher).

Now again I don't know how it is in the States but when I was at work I used to hear people say all he time "There's nothing on the TV tonight" all the time.

So I don't bother having one. And never have.

And I post on Mudcat of course :-).