Not always the most exciting publication . . .
... But this month's OfCom Broadcast Bulletin is quite the laff riot this quarter. Clarkson &al are acquitted on a charge of boorishness to Mexicans, Zac Goldsmith gets quite thoroughly put back in his box, and Frankie Boyle gets of pretty lightly all told. And, far, far more detail about the nefariousnesses of "Elite TV" and its "Premium rate phone TV" than any sane man who has ever seen a naked lady might want to know.
Idle Q: What was it about Johnson Beharry's performance on "Dancing on Ice" that drew 783 complaints?
Edit "this month's OBB ... this quarter? I am trying to cover all the bases here but still get it wrong. It's roughly once a fortnight.
Idle observation on flicking through. Did C4 really fucking cite Brian Potter from Phoenix Nights as an example of their commitment to disability inclusion in comedy?
ReplyDeleteYes they did! I suspect that someone was trying to brighten up an otherwise pretty thankless task. Or possibly that Boyle was being given an opportunity to write in his own defence, which if it was the case I admire him greatly for sneaking it in.
ReplyDeleteOne of my guilty work-procrastination secrets is reading these. The amount of detail they go into in describing the offensive behaviour on the babe channels is always surprising. I suspect there must be some kind of forfeit system in the office to pick the person who has to write them up.
ReplyDeleteJesus, Zac doesn't come out that well at all, does he. Zac Goldsmith made a complaint. The parts that weren't bollocks, were lies. The end.
ReplyDeleteTruth and honesty are such middle class values, don't you know?
ReplyDeleteI love the way they keep saying "while this was true between 1730 and 1800 on the 15th of December ...".
ReplyDeleteHas anybody ever complained that the girls aren't naked and provocative enough? ("I paid for the channel in good faith expecting to see naked women, and they were wearing thongs! All the best bits were covered!")
ReplyDeleteIt would be a "laff riot" if curtailment of free speech wasn't so sad.
ReplyDeleteHaving read through that, for recompense I'd like our host to do some beer mat calculations on the business model of 'premium rate adult chat', and whether it's like a polluter that factors a certain amount of fines into its operating budget. (Looking at the footnotes, the wank channels appear to have a fairly high, um, turnover in operators.)
ReplyDeleteI'm also morbidly curious about whether the 'performers' are aware of the amounts racked up, like home shopping hosts, and have a little light that flashes when there's enough in the kitty to cover any sanctions. 'Ooh, slap my wrist harder, Ofcom! You love it when we run rings round you, don't you?'
if curtailment of free speech wasn't so sad
ReplyDeleteVoltaire might be prepared to die for the right of Frankie Boyle to accuse disabled eight-year-olds of trying to rape their mothers, but I'm not and I doubt you are either.
whether it's like a polluter that factors a certain amount of fines into its operating budget
ReplyDeleteAs I understand it, there is a principal/agent problem here; the artistes are paid largely on commission, and the operators' job (in which they generally fail, as this is not an industry from which we should expect to see the next Ted Turner arising) is to keep them at least vaguely within OfCom guidelines. I am very surprised that there is a business here at all, and can only ascribe its existence to the same precipitous decline in video production costs that made "Friday" possible.
Mark Steel's memoir "What's Going On?" has a vignette in it that has stuck by me, in which he was interviewed by George Galloway on some top-end-of-the-EPG Islamic channel, in a studio which had visibly been doing double duty ... ahhh I've found it;
"Maybe the least prestigious I ever felt when taking part in a TV programme was when I was asked to be a guest on a channel set up by a businessman called Raj, who humbly named it Raj TV. Prime time every weekday evening on this channel was a chat show recorded in a corner of a disused office which oozed emptiness, hosted by George Galloway, so I agreed to make an appearance. The only objects filling any space were huge empty cardboard boxes, the sort a washing machine would be delivered in, and apart from George there was one technician and a possibly unnecessary makeup woman; to one side was the lonely table you sat behind during the show. I wandered round the basement waiting for fliming to start. In one corner, about ten yards from where George was sitting, was a bright red settee and another camera set up to point at it. Just as I puzzled why this was there, a woman brushed past me wearning only underwear and a tiny fluffy waistcoast and leapt onto the settee with a microphone. Then a voice came from somewhere saying 'Ready to go?' And she said 'Hi, welcome to the show, who ahve we got on the line?' She was making a cable phone-in soft porn show, I realised. 'Oooooo hello Peter (she stroked the microphone), that's a hot name. Tell me, Peter, have you eaten anything hot tonight, I like hot things, don't you?', she went on. Then I noticed a sign by this alcove, written in felt pen: 'NOTES TO PRESENTERS. Number one - Remember, girls, NO HANDS IN KNICKERS'
Scarcely comprehensibly, this was before Galloway's career as a public figure went downhill.
One last thing before I try to forget that this sector of broadcasting exists: the current target of Ofcom's ire
ReplyDeleteseems to be refusing to cooperate until it finds out whether the complaints are coming from rival channels. Which I bet they are.
(Hmm. Blogger's playing silly buggers.)
ReplyDeleteA combination of the strip-club commission model and the fly-by-night business structure of premium-rate phone smut makes sense, given the presumably sub-shoestring production costs. But there's the cost of the licence -- I suppose, at that end of the EPG, it's more than a premium account on Justin.tv, but not much more.
I was dragged inexorably to a sanction judgement on 'Playboy One', which contains this nugget reflecting on the operators' attempts to... keep it up as long as possible:
The Licensee said that over the course of Ofcom’s investigation it toned down the content of Playboy One and this had a significant financial impact on the Channel. In September 2008 Playboy TV took Playboy One off-air and re-launched it as Paul Raymond TV, an encrypted channel. It said that as a result it lost advertising revenue and the loss of the opportunity to “upsell” to its encrypted channels from a free-to-air service. In response to a question from the Committee, however, the Licensee stated that the principal reason for closing the Channel was that, being unable any longer to show such strong sexual material as previously as a result of Ofcom’s intervention, it no longer had a large enough supply of suitable ‘adult’ programmes to broadcast free-to-air. The drop in advertising revenue was also a factor however.
No shit, Sherlock.
(Apparently, Islamic channels get Ofcom's attention for expressing conservative religious opinions about women's rights, while non-religious channels aimed at south Asian minorities are overly generous in mentioning their programme sponsors. Perhaps they can have a confab.)
To Companies House!
ReplyDeleteThe sole director of Primetime TV (UK) Limited, Primetime TV Limited & Over 18 TV Limited is 39-year old Eli Nathenson of North West London who describes his profession as 'property developer'.
They're all claiming the small companies exemption from full accounts, and all have different year ends. The latter of which is a bit odd.
The accounts show not much. Total accumulated losses of c. £150k in total, and £300k of fixed assets.
More interesting stuff can be found in the annual returns and charges over the company. Eli has got the companies to grant himself a charge over their assets, making him a secured creditor. Which, for an entrepreneurial business, is a tad odd.
Even more interesting is that the main company is c. 50% owned by General Pacific Trust Company Limited, which is a BVI nominee trustee. The trail's likely to go cold there.
No smoking guns, but it's a bit odd, to say the least.
I think that basically these channels are what happen when the son or nephew of someone who owns an office building does a media studies course.
ReplyDeleteThey're all claiming the small companies exemption from full accounts, and all have different year ends. The latter of which is a bit odd.
ReplyDeleteBoth this and the 'secured creditor' wheeze strike me as entry-level obfuscation; the kind of thing that a certain kind of person might do "to make things difficult for the taxman", not realising that all it really does is bring a bit more effort and tedium into a job that's always hard and tedious.
...while also sending a signal that someone is trying to make things difficult for the taxman, which I would imagine isn't a signal you want to send. I should think that proper crooks have beautiful accounts.
ReplyDeleteJohnson Beharry is a mutilated ex-soldier. cf Cerrie Burnell (Google the name plus 'Daily Mail' or 'Guardian')
ReplyDelete..while also sending a signal that someone is trying to make things difficult for the taxman, which I would imagine isn't a signal you want to send. I should think that proper crooks have beautiful accounts.
ReplyDeleteOh yes. Recent HMRC transparency on their risk assessment procedure has made this abundantly clear, and having gone through the mill myself, bring to mind George Burns' probably apocryphal quote about sincerity.
Apparently what actually happened wrt Johnson Beharry is that after one of his perforances, there was a really nasty argument between the designated "nasty" judge and one of the presenters which caught the attention of one of the tabloids which in turn generated the 783 complaints.
ReplyDeleteI liked this:
ReplyDelete"In relation to the first of the specific statements made by Jon Snow, that Mr Goldsmith's account was “a complete travesty of the truth”, Ofcom noted that the point made by Mr Goldsmith immediately before Jon Snow made the statement, that Mr Goldsmith had offered Channel 4 an interview at 17.30, was factually correct. However, Ofcom considered that, taken in the context of a heated interview with both parties interrupting and talking across each other, it was not appropriate to adopt such a narrow interpretation of Jon Snow's comment. Ofcom considered it more appropriate to view Jon Snow's statement as a general comment about Mr Goldsmith's version of events taken as a whole. Ofcom also considered that Jon Snow's statement may have been intended to imply that Mr Goldsmith's version of events was not the whole truth. In this regard, Ofcom considered that it was legitimate for Mr. Snow to put forward an opposing view to that of Mr Goldsmith."
dd/delia - still confused. As far as I can make out, Beharry had a horrific war experience but isn't actually physically disabled in a way that would make him dance badly - so is the context that the official Cowell Judge was nasty about him, and someone else said "you can't be nasty about him, he's a war hero"?
ReplyDeleteOr did the Cowell Judge raise the war injury point ("if I were a WWI colonel, on that performance I'd have you shot"), in which case that's obviously unforgivable.
I don't think the injury - or anything at all particularly to do with Johnson Beharry - came into it. Digging around, it is apparently the case that Beharry's "coach" was a skater who had been on the judging panel in previous years, and that the remark which triggered 783 complaints (to OfCom; apparently "thousands" to the actual station) was "if anyone cared about your opinion, you'd still be on the panel".
ReplyDeleteIt was apparently seen as bullying. I think you might have had to have been watching live to catch the nuance. It's probably on Youtube.
"Voltaire might be prepared to die for the right of Frankie Boyle to accuse disabled eight-year-olds of trying to rape their mothers, but I'm not and I doubt you are either"
ReplyDeleteI wasn't actually referring to Frankie Boyle's comment (nor would I want to do a Voltaire either with regard to such speech in general - but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be legally protected) - there's much there to criticise Ofcom over that pdf without using that Boyle joke. Plus, Boyle was on Channel 4, a government owned corporation. I'm fine with certain restrictions on the BBC and Channel 4. But at least if Boyle was on some other channel, why shouldn't he be allowed to say whatever twisted jokes he likes (anyway, Boyle didn't "accuse disabled [a] eight-year-old of trying to rape [his] mother". I thought his explanation of it seemed reasonable if not exactly funny)? Regardless, he would be free to say them in a newspaper or on a blog, so a restriction on such comments from broadcasting in general makes no sense.
Also, a comparison with the Top Gear decision with that Boyle one is a good example of the arbitrariness of censorship.
Not sure I agree with Alex about arbitrariness.
ReplyDelete"You can make offensive jokes about generic ethnic groups (as long as they fall short of incitement to racial hatred) but not about specific, named children" isn't the only sensible cut-off one could take, but does seem to be an entirely consistent and reasonable position.
And one that I pretty much agree with, FWIW. While, as I blogged elsewhere at the time, the Mexican speech shows up James May as a bullying unfunny dick (while Clarkson's joke that closed the piece was actually quite good), that doesn't mean I think he should be censored. And while I do find Frankie Boyle funny, picking on specific individual disabled children is probably taking things too far.