Write Angles

I do not normally watch television in the morning - but last Thursday was an exception since I was awaiting delivery of an appliance and had time on my hands. I was delightfully surprised by the new PBS programme Tini 5 (loosely Gimmie Five), which is produced by Dee Media, the same house that gave us OK and Ok Sajf.

Viewers will probably have recognised the programmes of the old Owkej series that have been going on air of late, as being about four years old (at least).

I never cease to wonder how it is that a new series is not commissioned by PBS pronto, since this is one of the very few children's programmes where the presenters do not think they are talking to the furniture.

This programme goes on air from 10 to 11 a.m., when children are hopefully inside, doing something other than idly tapping away at computer keypads or pushing games console joysticks unenthusiastically because there is "nothing better to do".

I usually go for books as the idea alternative to the aforementioned - but here I make an exception... as a break from the books and magazines, obviously.

The Scots have the street with the multicoloured doors on Balamory, where the residents are multi-cultural and multi-ethnic.

The Maltese have Triq l-Ambjent, where the presenters are people with different occupations who just happen to work in this stretch of road. This place is something between Voyager and Blue Peter, with a typically Maltese twist (and that's a compliment).

Perhaps inevitably, there is a confectionery, but only because the owner is 'sweet'; the stationery and the Information Centre. Street furniture allows clients to sit down for a chat over the equivalent of a cappuccino at Cara's, about anything and everything under the sun.

There is more than meets the eye behind the façade of the Stationer's, however; it is the 'in' place for craftwork, experiments and model building - and in homage to the name of the street everything is done using the motto Reduce, Reuse, Recycle - one very dear to my heart.

The Information Centre, besides being the Mecca for IT (Klutzes like me are welcome), the lair of Xummiemu, also lives up to its name by providing replies to those tiny queries so dear to quiz masters.

Children will be pleased to note that they will receive replies to their e-mails from this hub, and also that it is - with one exception, unless you count the puppets and guests - presented by their peers, chosen after auditions.

I found the part about nutrition especially interesting. According to Vicky Rideout of the Kaiser Family Foundation, food companies are now combining "advergames" and "webisodes" for computers with television advertisements to involve children more deeply, and for longer periods, with brand recognition... at a time when childhood obesity has become an epidemic.

The study was not intended to determine this type of marketing is 'good' or 'bad' for children, but merely to help government and the industry regulate it.

One recalls that last year the American Institute of Medicine has stopped just this side of placing the onus of overweight children on television advertising, indicating that the evidence of a direct link was so undeniable that only healthy foods should be marketed to kids.

A nod to the times comes accompanied by the programme's regularly updated Website: www.freewebs.com/tini5.

Truth is indeed stranger than fiction. Across the Channel, the Court of Appeal, in a ruling by Lord Justice David Neuberger, referred the case to the Queen's Bench Commercial Division of the High Court.

The Commercial Court Judge has to watch "about 400 hours" of trash TV - also known as The Jerry Springer Show - to decide whether it is "too racy" for the British public.

Some episodes, apparently, had caused a falling-out between the distributors, who said they were par for the course, and Flextech Television, which provides 10 channels of programming for British cable operator NTL Inc., with the latter claiming that "the vast majority" of episodes violated British broadcasting rules and did not comply with the Independent Television Code.

It is interesting to note that, in Malta, none of this could ever happen, since this type of programme is wrapped inside a package deal. Here we have only a minor infringement of the broadcasting regulations - the one about close-ups, for instance, is repeatedly blatantly broken, when it makes for a good tug at the heartstrings.

I don't usually have egg on my face - I am told the yolk does wonders for dry and sensitive skin, but I'm not chancing it. However, I was wrong when last week I conjectured that in this lifetime I wouldn't be receiving another compliment about the contents of this column.

This week it was an e-mail: "Being in this field of work I have become an avid reader of your weekly TV write-up because I feel you manage to capture the production on another level as an outsider.

I believe that your feedback and comments are always very constructive and have always helped us in the past programmes to fix and better our productions." And this, from someone about whose work I was not always complimentary; so it gets me double Brownie Points.

Just for the record(!), The Alan Parsons Project was not something prepared or commissioned by a single person. It was the British progressive rock and pop group active between 1975 and 1987, and was founded by the eponymous Alan Parsons and Eric Woolfson. I wish people would research their platter chatter, or at least get someone who is competent in these matters to do it for them.