I was asked recently to judge the TV section of the Race in the Media

I was asked recently to judge the TV section of the Race in the Media Awards (the results are announced on Wednesday). It was a fascinating and uplifting experience as there are some excellent documentaries and education shows covering everything from the US government’s criminal actions after the devastation of New Orleans to the plight of Polish immigrant workers.I watched over 50 possible contenders – about four of which were broadcast in prime time on any of the terrestrial channels. Working- class and lower middle-class culture and values are either patronised or openly derided in everything from EastEnders (scribed exclusively by minor- public-school pupils who probably think that Walford is a real place and that Phil Mitchell could be a hard man) to the increasingly desperate comedy output of British TV.More disturbing, though, is the way the boob tube virtually ignores the multiracial and multicultural nature of the UK. After all, if you want news, there’s the radio and the rolling TV services, and on the rare occasions that a story warrants an extended bulletin – or even ongoing coverage – they could just clear the schedules.Then there’s the way that television in this country completely and cravenly fails to represent the reality of British society in either its dramas or its current affairs. So, plenty of room for improvement there – we could start by going back to the 10-minute- maximum news bulletin of the 1970s and early 1980s, with, say, a five-minute local round-up.

They have to pad out their piss-poor reports so much to fill their 30-minute slots – which is also why the running order of most TV news bulletins rarely changes throughout the day, as they force-feed us the drip, drip, drip of government press releases and comment pieces ripped off from the previous day’s newspapers.When was the last time any television news operation broke a big story? When do they ever do any proactive, campaigning journalism (apart from exposing some poor corner-shop owner for flogging knives/ cigarettes/glue/booze to an underage kid)?Channel 4 News, with its smugnuts – self-satisfied and borderline creepy crew of “character” presenters – is particularly puke-inducing. There is way too much speculation from correspondents, masquerading as informed journalism, and the laughable overuse of outside broadcasts when a 10-second update from the presenter would suffice. There really isn’t 30 minutes of news worth hearing about in the whole world most days, so forcing local news operations with delusions of adequacy to fill half an hour a day is a cruel punishment for both the hacks chasing stories about a cat up a tree in Cleethorpes, and the viewers wasting valuable brain cells watching it while waiting for Emmerdale to start.But our national television news is also in a pathetic state. The half-hour local news bulletins around the country are, of course, a joke beyond parody – especially on the BBC, where they’re scheduled to follow the main news, and, in large conurbations, simply tend to repeat it. It’s the five per cent that’s good, or even great, that makes the rest bearable – necessary, even.”

The 95 per cent crap theorem is known as Sturgeon’s Law, and it’s oh-so-easy (and entertaining) to poke fun at the 95 per cent of TV and radio that is absolutely putrid pants with matching grubby grey bra – everything from Strictly Dance
Fever and ITV’s entire Sunday- evening schedule (Heartbeat, The Royle, Wild at Heart, Where the Heart is…

TV for incontinent Alzheimer sufferers) to the endless slew of property porn on all four channels.Then there’s the ghastly overload of grisly exploitative makeover shows, from the almost watchable, such as Trinnie and Susannah’s efforts, to the chavalanche of appalling rubbish such as Ten Years Younger and Bride and Grooming and You Are What You Eat, not to mention the endless variants on various non-terrestrial channels.What is particularly dispiriting about television at the moment is the way that even stuff that ought to be part of the magical five per cent has gone crappy The news, for instance. I feel like I’ve delivered a baby, against the odds, in the back of a car With a bit of luck they can teach it to walk and talk.”. It was the late 1950s when the science-fiction writer Theodore Sturgeon was accosted by an inebriate at a party who asked him what he did for a living. When Ted told him, the drunk said, “Why is 95 per cent of sci-fi crap?” “That’s easy,” replied Sturgeon “Ninety-five per cent of everything is crap. “I knew I had 11 days to relaunch and rebrand this French institution with a minute team.