Archive for December 27th, 2009

Grave reporting from TV3

December 27th, 2009

I love TV3.

It has a singular inability to do anything right.  It is car-crash television at its best.  It is compulsive viewing simply because it is so bad.

For those of you who are foreign to these shores, TV3 pumps out an unending stream of the cheapest, tackiest American crap, interspersed with reality shows and rebroadcasts of the worst of ITV. 

They do have one programme that we watch occasionally for the laugh, and that is “Tonight with Vincent Browne”.  This consists of an unending stream of advertisements, with brief interruptions where Vinnie abuses his guests.  It’s not meant to be funny, but it is.

The presenters on TV3 are a breed apart.  The women are obviously employed on the basis of their looks rather than talent [with the exception of Ursula Halligan, who has neither] and all have to undergo a rigorous training in the Tallaghtfornian accent which is an accent that is unique to that television station.

They managed to reach a new peak of crassness yesterday, when they all but broadcast an obituary for our Minister for Hardship and Poverty, Brian Lenihan.  I should point out that he isn’t dead.

I have no great love for our Glorious Government, as you may have realised.  I take great delight in slagging them off, but even I draw the line at writing obituaries when they are still very much alive and kicking.  Not TV3 though.  Not only do they prematurely announce that Lenihan has cancer, but they then proceed to analyse the political scene after he is gone.  If that isn’t enough, they drag on some Cheerful Charlie who proceeds to tell us what a terrible disease pancreatic cancer is and that the prognosis is pretty bad.  He goes into great detail about how pancreatic cancer  is caused by smoking [which it isn’t] and that the best that can be done for Lenihan is pain relief.  Fuck me! Cheerful stuff.  But then anything is permissible in TV3 in the name of a scoop.  

You have to hand it to TV3.  For a station that strives to be the cheapest on the airwaves, they have excelled themselves once more.

Incidentally, in case you are wondering – the TV3 news is not in widescreen.  The only thing they broadcast in widescreen format is the advertisements.

But seeing as 90% of their output is advertisements, that’s OK.