Friday 22 October 2010

This is the newsssss… God I wish it wasn't

Over at Blossom's place, she's bemoaning ITV News' apparent assumption that their viewers are utter morons. Coincidentally, I gave a lecture this week on genre, mostly contrasting Miss Marple with The Wire to discuss generic conventions, but I did start with a quick discussion of news conventions, starting with the music and credits. I showed the punters these clips:



This is ITV's News at Ten: a classic piece of work which packs authority, hegemony inconsequentiality and pomposity into a few seconds.



Now this is Chris Morris's spoof, The Day Today. When it was made many years ago, it seemed to be an achingly funny spoof of the desperate rubbish masquerading as TV news. Now it looks like the source of modern broadcasters' ideas. Does that make it even funnier or depressing?

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