TV woes
12 September 2004 11:06 am
There was an episode of The Simpsons a few days ago which had Homer Simpson coerced into being a spy for the government to avoid being jailed for tax evasion. His mission was to incriminate Montgomery Burns, who was allegedly in possession of a trillion-dollar bill that Truman had printed post-World War II to help the French recover from the war. Burns was the pilot assigned to send the bill over to France but he disappeared with it. The enraged French people waiting on the other side of the Atlantic declared, "We will be snooty to Americans, forever!"
Anyhow, Homer and Burns end up running away with the bill together on Burns's private plane. As their plane takes off, an FBI agent remarks, "Don't worry, they'll be back. They'll miss American TV too much."
This is precisely how K feels about American TV. With cable and satellite TV, Americans have literally hundreds of channels to choose from. It makes watching TV in Singapore (even with the cable option) frustrating.To some extent, I agree with him.
On local TV we have 2 English-language channels, Channel 5 and Channel i (yes, lower-case i). Channel 5 audaciously calls itself "Home of the Blockbusters", which really is short for "Home of Blockbusters From the '80s and '90s You Have Already Seen Umpteen Times On Our Channel Before We Decided To Call Ourselves 'Home of the Blockbusters'". Examples of some of these blockbusters are Jurassic Park (and its sequels), The Fugitive, Die Hard (and its sequels), Pretty Woman (aaaargh! no more, please) and all the Indiana Jones movies. When Channel 5 does decide to show a "new" movie, like say The Matrix, they call it "The Movie Event of the Year" or "The Exclusive TV Premiere". Pffft. Prime time (8-10pm) is taken up by these movies. If not them, it will be the lame local sitcoms like Daddy's Girls, Police and Thief and Oh Carol! (I cannot even begin to describe what these are about. They're just LAME), which are mercifully always short-lived. The 10-11pm slot is taken up by American reality TV shows like The Amazing Race, Survivor, Fear Factor, The Bachelor, The Bachelorette, Extreme Makeover, The Apprentice, even something called Who Wants to Marry My Dad?. The shows that we really want to see, like CSI, CSI: Miami, Alias, 24, Buffy, The OC and Smallville (the last 3 being teen favourites) don't come on till 11 or later (like 12.30 am for 24), which is bedtime (or way past) for most working adults and school-going teens. The irony is that having the latest seasons of these shows is one of Channel 5's many unfounded boasts. What is the point of showing them if it's going to be at unearthly hours? What makes Channel 5 think that we would rather see Pretty Woman again than catch Season 3 of 24?
Channel i is another bag of goods altogether. This channel seems to position itself as the "refreshing" alternative to Channel 5, offering all the shows that Channel 5 can't fit into its schedule. This would include all the B-movies that sometimes even Americans have never heard of, such as Absolon, When the Bough Breaks, and all Chuck Norris and Jean-Claude Van Damme movies, and American TV series that got axed before the end of the first season, like The Handler and She Spies. All the other time slots are occupied by long-defunct TV shows like McGuyver and Major Dad (*gasp*). The only thing I appreciate Channel i for is Law And Order.
So we are left with Cable. But cable here means little more than 30 channels, inclusive of all movie, entertainment, sports, education, news/current affairs and just-for-kids channels, which averages out to around 6 channels per type. Not that great a variety. But still, the timing of shows makes more sense in Cableland. All the shows that Channel 5 shows at stupid time slots, we get to watch at 9pm. As for news and current affairs programmes, suffice it to say the local media are mouthpieces for the government. Nothing negative about the government is ever aired on national TV, on pain of defamation suits (The Economist recently apologised to the Prime Minister and the Minister Mentor for implying that nepotism is practised in Singapore). The day we have the equivalent of the very un-PC Saturday Night Live and The Dave Letterman Show here is the day koi rule the world.
I understand why, for an American used to the freedom of the media, watching TV on channels that seem to be dumping grounds for defunct American programmes and are highly regulated is a torment. I find it frustrating too. Maybe that's another reason why I read a lot. When you have lived in Singapore all of your life, you become stoic about such things, because you know that changes of the glasnost variety will take decades to take place, if at all. I still look forward to American TV when I move to New York, though. I was there long enough last year to become addicted to CourtTV, lol.
Older entries
Ramadan - 08 October 2006
Where I Have Been - 03 October 2006
Baby Talk - 10 August 2006
6 Weeks of Separation - 16 July 2006
Unacceptable Rudeness - 21 June 2006