Sunday, May 06, 2007

ITV Logic - the land that time forgot

Re: the belated shift of the ITV schedules last night:

You [ITV] land - for your opening salvo of a new series of a show long past its prime - an actor who can cause swoons and cheers just by turning up. He may work for 'the other side' but hey, even you can't be that cranky since he is, clearly, one of the current hot properties of TV-land. This should be a thing you want to work in your favour. You know, maximise your audience. Dare I say that is the purpose of choosing your guests?

You [ITV] probably really hate YouTube for posting copyrighted - yet never released on any formal format - interviews. Could we beat the sneaky young things who would scoop or limit our viewers by posting the interview within hours onto YouTube? Shall we scupper their efforts to video and then post our gem?

Cloud doubts that ITV would have thought it through enough to have shifted the timing of Parky featuring David Tennant just enough so that anyone who set a video would later discover they have missed the DT alone segment and are now lumbered with the interaction with other guest stars. [Although given that David Mitchell was also a guest it wasn't all bad].

Anyway, here's my thoughts.

WHAT WERE YOU PLAYING AT ITV????!!!!

I mean, seriously, ITV, do you just want to piss off your remaining audience? You have a shite reality music show (Grease is certainly NOT the word by all accounts) and you clearly cannot compete with Who. You get a chance to capture some of that audience by judicious scheduling of some Tennant Extra just as we will go two weeks before Who returns. And what do you do? You shift the schedule for no clear reason and with limited notice - there was a very grumpy announcement at the david-tennant.com fansite at 22.10 to say that they had just realised that Parky would be starting a full 15 mins ahead of schedule (and these are the folks who would have spotted if Teletext or Ceefax had clearly indicated a schedule change after the TV line-ups were printed in papers and weekly listings but before the programme schedule started).

Hmmm. Just spotted that highlights are apparently to come later to the Parky website. Harumph. I hope they get utterly stamped on by YouTuber users.


On the up side though, I actually caught part of the DT interview. See, despite Cloud hating Parky (ITV-Parky being even more sycophantically awful than it ever was in its BBC hey-day) he let me turn over to ITV during the evening. [It's not my favourite interview show either, though he can have some good guests]. Funnily, this was an instinctive action on my part, and with no regard to the clock - I couldn't see it [was DT sending me a psychic message to turn over? Why didn't he get me to have enough nouse to find a video??!]

Anyway, there is DT! I got to watch about 5 mins before an advert break came in during which time DT awkwardly basked in the heat of an audience dominated by swooning DT fans. He spoke of his initial hesitation for taking on the role of Who (the familiar tale of "Who am I kidding?! Of course I'll take it!") and gave some nice recollections of doing Casanova, including recalling the game gals who were trooped on to be filmed for the quick succession series of conquests that he had recounted to the attentive/disgusted Edith.

There was also a discussion of acting 'climaxes' which probably produced more wet seats amongst the audience at Parky than has ever been experienced there. Let's say that as exhilerating as that was to hear him talking about that I could have done without being in the position of watching it whilst sat next to Cloud. That would have worked so much better with me watching it on my own on video.... It'll be interesting if THAT is a bit that they highlight on the Parky website...

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