A ray of hope for television

The end of the ‘noddy shot’ is a ray of hope for television

Rod Liddle

05 September 2007

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Channel Five is leading the way to greater transparency

No deception is intended by this charade, of course — it’s simply the assumption that the viewer is dense. TV directors, mind, will tell you that it is part of the ‘grammar’ of television, as if television possessed anything so rarefied as a grammar, rather than a series of primitive guttural ejaculations. They say the same thing about ‘walking shots’ too, where the presenter is filmed walking about like a mentalist, and cutaway shots of people’s feet. These last two are used by directors operating on a very tight budget; they’re a cheap and speedy way of using up film over which the presenter’s voiceover can be recorded.

And this is the other point which David Kermode didn’t mention, but might well have done. Television is these days a ridiculously cheap and penny-pinching medium, despite the vast sums of money it attracts through advertising and the licence fee. Most of the programmes you watch are made by young people on very, very short-term contracts and very, very low wages. And by and large, as a rule of thumb, the more serious and important the subject matter and the more thought required, the more cheaply it will have been made. If David Kermode is serious about getting rid of those money-saving devices which, on a low level, con the viewer, then it will require an expenditure not merely of more imagination, but more money too. Send two cameras along if you want a shot of the reporter asking a question.

It has potential, this idiot box; every so often something bright and attractive glimmers through the ordure. As a medium it has immediacy and, at its best, resonance. But for too long the television industry has been mired in a self-disgust occasioned by its implacable belief that it must always appeal to the lowest common denominator, that its audience has the IQ of a lamprey. This is as true of even some of the most serious documentaries; it is especially true of evening news reports. David Kermode has recognised that it is a fallacy. It always was.