Elton John reiterates that Saturday Night’s All Right (For Fightin’). The person(s) responsible for the minute-by-minute presentations on Radju Malta think differently.

I am right to insist on a phonetic script for all newscasters and presenters- Tanja Cilia

So as not to cause conflict, they allow dead air, repetitions of the news signature tunes, and no apologies from the newscaster when the bulletin does eventually go on air. And to show us that this was not a mistake, another glitch happened on Monday, also at around 6 p.m.

Then, also on Monday, the self-same Solidarjetà programme as the week before was broadcast, again without apology.

But this was later recognised as an error – because when Ġorġ Peresso’s reading on Monday afternoon was recognised as a repeat, we got an apology… perhaps because we were destined to hear the same reading for the fourth time in the evening.

But this is not as annoying as when people with surnames like Putin – that is, two syllables or more – stand for elections, and places like Ohio feature in news about the American electoral campaign. We are then treated to different pronunciations of the proper noun – sometimes by the same person reading the same paragraph.

This, and the inability of certain newscasters on different radio and television stations to say numbers in Maltese when they are written in digits, is yet another indication that I am right to insist on a phonetic script for all newscasters and presenters – whether they profess to need it or not.

It is even worse when the news bulletin is repeated by the same person, with the same mistakes, later on in the day – a sure sign that no one monitored the broadcast.

Not too many newscasters bothered to look up the word ‘scaffolding’ in the sundry dictionaries for the vernacular available – the most basic would have been armar, but there also exist ponteġġ and impalkatura, seeing that no one appears to have heard of maqfas.

One thing is sure, however. We can always know the latest musical artist to have died – because the airwaves are inundated with his music to the extent that we may easily believe disc jockeys on different radio stations are borrowing one another’s CDs and notes… or plagiarising them from the same sources.

• Here is this month’s all-inclusive cookery lesson: butter is fat: use margarine for making pastry. I am a professional, so I can shove a wooden spoon inside the liquidiser goblet when it is switched on; you, of course, will not do it, because it goes against health and safety rules. Oh, and just for today, I will squeeze some lemon juice onto the foil before I put the fish in the oven…

• Last Wednesday, TVM launched high definition (HD) trial broadcasts exclusively on Melita. The channel is available to HD and Entertainment Pack subscribers on channel 110.

Initially the channel is airing around two to three hours of original HD programming every day; eventually, PBS intends to broadcast solely in HD.

Meanwhile it would seem that the gossip-mongers got it right again – Natalie Bonnici was appointed junior manager at TVM2, answering directly to Anton Attard, CEO of PBS.

I am told there are many noses out of joint, because certain people expected first refusal or conditions to that effect.

We are reliably informed that there will be free football content on TVM 2. Melita has signed an agreement with TVM to broadcast selected games from the UEFA Champions League and the UEFA Europa League on the newly-launched station.

Until the finals of this season, there will be a game every Wednesday from the Champions League and a match every Thursday from the Europa League. It is pertinent to note that other sporting disciplines, besides the usual ones, will be given airtime.

The remit of the station will also include broadcasting current affairs, newsworthy events and educational and cultural programmes. I gather the main idea is to make TVM2 comprehensively live up to the ‘Education Channel’ moniker, unlike the original.

Many times, I had complained about how ridiculous it was for TVM to broadcast a ‘small’ news bulletin for people with hearing impairments, immediately followed by a main bulletin. It seemed as if someone was arbitrarily hand-picking items and leaving out others for untold reasons.

The same thing is done, on a different level, when it comes to the précis of sports news on radio and television – which are immediately followed by full sports programmes, sometimes presented by the self-same people using the self-same notes and clichés.

I am pleased to see that PBS is actuating one of my suggestions: a full bulletin of signed news for people with hearing difficulties. However, I cannot understand why this is not on TVM, the main station – having it on TVM2 still smacks of discrimination.

I wonder whether there will be government departments and entities, and shops that will actually tune in to TVM2 instead of foreign stations showing similar programming.

Seeing how abysmally lacking in general knowledge and culture awareness we are as a nation, the ‘menu’ of TVM appears to be just the ticket – and much better than the boring cookery sessions and repetitive magazine programmes we are wont to encounter instead, wherever we go. Off-duty media people could do worse than tune in sometimes, too, for obvious reasons.

It would be a good idea for those places that have captive audiences (like banks and clinics) to give TVM2 a trial run too. Banks have this habit of either tuning in to a station without sound or to play music rather than keep the volume low, forgetting that not everyone can lip-read newscasters and programme presenters.

Annual major cultural events and annual festivals such as carnival, Għanafest, the Malta Jazz Festival, Notte Bianca and the Malta Arts Festival have all been shunted to TVM2.

television@timesofmalta.com