Washing pow(d)er

Lately, in many spheres, there has been much talk about how duplication of work by different entities wastes both financial and human resources.

This does not seem to apply to PBS and E22, except in the convoluted way which may only be called a double negative.

The 22AM programme goes out simultaneously on both stations. This means that one may "buy one, get one free". And before someone says that "not everybody receives E22" - well, then, why is the programme not broadcast at a different time anyway, such that one may have a choice between two items to watch.

Not, however, a programme such as the recent one about a children's lesson on belly dancing, of all things, where the girl without a milligram of body fat was ironically chosen as spokeswoman for her more typically rotund peers.

Has the irony of how Martin Micallef and Anna Bonanno (two discarded jewels in the tarnished Station of the Nation crown) still appear on TVM, courtesy of the above, struck anyone else?

It's just like listening to one of those magazine-programme experts telling a caller, who suffers from stomach acidity reflux, several times over, to Aqta' l-Coca, sinjura... thereby, perhaps, giving her permission to switch to Pepsi.

The record shows that independent producers say that Lm0.5 million is too little for top quality PBS programmes; they forget that with determination, elbow grease, a shoestring and other odds and ends, some people can create miracles. It reminds me of the joke where a teacher set a class essay entitled "What I would do with a million" - and one of the students complained that for her project, she had to have half as much again.

The other day I met an old (ever-young, actually) teacher, who asked me why I had not given a piece of my mind about the woman who assumed that the only thing for a pregnant teenage girl to do was to procure an abortion if her O-levels were approaching.

There is only one reason for that - I only comment on what I would have heard and seen with my own ears and eyes; I have discovered that people who make much ado about letting you in on a secret, usually have their own hidden agendas about wanting something to appear in print under someone else's name (i.e. not their own).

I did, however, watch bits and bobs of the two Xarabanks on abuse: about the only sensible statement was made by Carmen Galea, viz.: It is the perpetrator who ought to be removed from the home, rather than the child. Just a tiny reminder is in order: in several countries, "Wanted"-style posters are affixed to trees, walls, and public notice boards, indicating the name of a person, his photograph, and the fact that he is a "known sex offender who has recently moved to this area".

Here, we hear the excuse that names are being withheld to protect children - and this may mean that the abuse restarts with another batch of kids, 'at a later date', if an offender manages to keep his sordid past, and therefore his identity, hidden.

That is why my wish list for this week includes the following: Lilian Maistre ought to stop telling everyone (or at least more than one person) to call her 'right after the programme'; and Gorg Peresso must forthwith remove the clip with the little child's mispronunciation of nitfa in the introduction to his programme, because it never was cute. How's this for circumlocution and terrible syntax? Rather than telling us that Phil Collins's mara kienet Kanadiza, she said ...il-mara tieghu, li kienet gejja mill-Kanada.

Recently, the Customs Department managed to seize yet another load of counterfeit goods. This time it was sport shoes, with the feat being boasted about, and rightly so, on most radio and TV stations. One young lady, however, decided that there must have been some mistake in her news script; she duly informed us that 134 pairs of shoes had been found... and another bulletin went out, with the same mistake, before it was rectified.

I would humbly suggest that each station has a "live@..." e-mail address, so that listeners or viewers may point out this type of thing, rather than solely request records or pass prosit tal-programm comments, and perhaps a grammar book, which would come in handy if one had to check what a nom mimmat is... oh, yes, and a dictionary.

But we simply cannot thrash local television - rumour has it that RAI and Mediaset have people monitoring it in order to filch ideas. There's Il Treno dei Desideri, which simply copies Tista' Tkun Int and uses the Italian expression as a sorry excuse for a pun... and therefore actually has a train in the studio. And there's Grande Fratello: because they couldn't get a pouting Russian girl who ostensibly cannot understand Maltese, however, they had to settle for a grinning Japanese girl who does not understand Italian. Then there is the "Sit Show" (a cross between a show and a sit-com) called Suonare Stella, which is, of course, a rehashed One-Star Hotel. As they say, to steal one idea is plagiarism; to steal four is research.

It's incredible - in last Saturday night's PBS review of all Maltese Eurovision song festival entries, the programme was aborted abruptly when probably the best song of all time - Angel - had only just started playing. Considering the dead air that is plugged up with inane music, this was an insult to all of us. Unless, of course, a live mike is assumed to be dead and the presenter is heard saying qtajtha ta' l-ewwel ta' Frar... skuzani... skuzani... And James Blunt huwa British Musician. Probably shab socjali, too.

I am all for candid television and radio; provided the victims give their written permission for the skits to be broadcast. I wonder, however, whether the person with a noticeable speech impediment, who was led up the garden path... where he sang in the hope of winning a stereo with full extras, wanted his name broadcast all over the republic. This particular clip was in very, very, bad taste (and yet I wonder how come people do not cotton on soon after the initial shock). However, it was no ruder than the presenter who referred to his colleague as a kelba, albeit jokingly.

Do make time for Minn Fuq l-Ixkaffa, on Mondays at 2.30 p.m., with a repeat on Tuesday at 7.30 p.m., on Campus FM, in which Sergio Grech and Trevor Zahra talk about foreign authors.

If you are feeling particularly avaricious, don't forget that it's Jackpot time with Mhux bic-Cajt this evening.