TV Eats Self

One side-effect of the recent writer's strike is that British networks have had to make up for lost imports, which traditionally pull big ratings on Friday nights.  Channel Four has been hit especially hard as they have long been at the forefront of the import market, being the first station to air many shows which went on to become huge money-spinners (Frasier, The Sopranos, Friends, Lost, and most recently Ugly Betty).  

So whilst the striking writers huddled round braziers, forced to burn promising pilot scripts to keep warm in the harsh LA winter, commissioning editors here have been forced to come up with alternative and original programming tailored to meet the needs of the Discerning British Viewer.  And what steaming pile of greatness have they served up to us?  Well, mainly film re-runs.  American films, obviously.  And one noxious show called Rude Tube.

Here, straight from the press release, is Rude Tube in all its glory - Alex Zane presents a countdown of the 50 funniest, rudest and most bizarre video clips to take the internet by storm.  From dancing prisoners to skateboarding dogs, the video viral revolution has made nobodies into superstars as millions around the world watch their antics online. 

There is much to criticise about this exercise in banality.  Firstly, anyone with a central nervous system is mind-numbingly aware of these videos.  Even if you don't actually own a computer, if you have only ever seen one once, at a distance, through the window of PC World, you will know what YouTube is.  There are tribesmen in the Masai Mara who are right now uploading mobile phone footage of themselves skanking to Uptown Top Ranking.  Squeezing 60 minutes of programming out of this is embarrassingly out of step.  Channel Four is your boss saying 'Chill Out'.

Secondly, this show serves only to highlight how TV has been left behind by the internet.  As with the music industry it has failed to adapt to this frightening new behemoth.  Indeed, the writer's strike  is all about film and TV cleaving to an old model which the web has rendered obsolete.  For some years now record label bosses have been holed-up in a cave surrounded by cans of New Coke and Sinclair C5s, muttering about how they could have been contenders, but for some spectacularly poor PR and decision making.  

Instead of using the gap in the schedules to create something original (or even to commission something original, plucked from the massive reject pile in the skip outside their shiny big offices), they have plundered something which recently had it's bones picked dry by The Richard and Judy Show.  This hypothetical new show may have been a massive failure, but at least it would have been a failure we'd never seen before.

At exactly the same time Rude Tube was airing on Channel Four, the repugnant producer in new ITV sitcom Moving Wallpaper was doubled over in hysterics watching a Star Wars Kid rip-off on YouTube, advising his writers that they had to include it in the next episode of their soap in order to "be down with the kids'.  It was odd to watch this fictional exchange and realise that this actually  happened in real life the Rude Tube production office.