Every so often, I like to compile the comments I receive in e-mails and snail mail post, and add my own.

Many of the remarks crop up again and again – especially the ones about how the language is being abused, and how some programme presenters have no business presenting.

One correspondent last week said that he took the proverbial bull by the horns and placed personal calls to the respective CEOs of TVM and One, about the notorious word ‘ġewwa’ when it is used to mean ‘on’, ‘in’, ‘inside’, ‘at’, ‘toward’ and more. This person was rightly irritated not only because it was used repetitively, but because you cannot really be ‘inside’ a landing strip, or worse, a desert.

It would seem that both gentlemen took this remark to the usual suspects, and they complied. However, I would add that they did so only inasmuch as news script writing was involved. When it comes to adlib reporting, and discussion and magazine programmes, the ‘ġewwa’ is still very much in evidence. So, for that matter, are ‘familjari’ and literal translations such as ‘I appreciate’.

The clumsy use of language is more evident on certain radio programmes – perhaps because some presenters there think they can be more laidback there since no one can see them grimace and use sign language to express their opinion of callers.

One particular correspondent described the general atmosphere prevalent at a couple of stations as akin to ‘il-ħanut ta’ Sidor’. It is not only I who suspects that news culled off foreign sites is regurgitated into Maltese via an automatic translation service.

When I had complained about the poor English of an advertisement in a print magazine, the editor told me he could not change it, because the company would not allow it. I found this hard to believe, because no one goes into business to become a laughing stock.

It would seem that nobody ever bothers to point this out to the hotel that offers ‘kwantità ta’ varjetà’ (a quantity of variety), or to the person offering piano lessons because parents do not want their children ‘inqas lura minn ta’ ħaddieħor’ (less backward than other people’s).

This could have something to do with the fact that some people work for exposure and/or pitiful wages, or because they are friends of station owners doing them a favour. But this was not the idea behind the liberalisation of the airwaves.

• Purée is going from strength to strength; so much so that the second series will now be primetime viewing from Thursday.

It will be a cabaret-style show, with an audience dining while watching; an original format. I hope they would have drunk their coffee by game-over time – especially if the contestant loses.

It is evident that there has been considerable investment made in the programme.

• The indefatigable David Agius has continued with his fight to remove all the problems associated with the distribution of premium sports content, in order that football aficionados be served well by local pay-television service providers.

Agius, like thousands of others, thinks that there are regulatory, economic, technical and operational justifications for the introduction of a must-offer system.

Of course, the wide gamut of sports available throughout the year and others as a one-off makes it well-nigh impossible for all of it to be included in one channel; and there lies the rub.

Any company with the right to distribute sports content to different channels has leverage, and it is immature to expect it not to use it.

However, it is also delusional of the said companies to think that clients would pay for services from it, and also from any other company that has exclusive rights to other games that people would want to watch, without raising a ruckus.

This situation has gone on for far too long, and football fans do not want lengthy explanations about the politics of economy or the economy of politics – they just want to be allowed to watch their favourite teams in action without being made to pay through the nose of it.

Hopefully, through Agius’s hard work , all this will come to pass without another round of squabbles about this, that and the other. Theoretically, “the rights for the top three sports properties (could be) shared among three operators”.

• Without any doubt, one of the smartest decisions Bryn Manning ever took was divesting himself of the comatose cult figure, Brian-ta’-Xarabank persona, and establishing himself as a broadcaster/producer.

His latest series is Quadro (Net television, Tuesdays at 9.35 p.m.), began last October. It focuses on issues of social importance, with a special emphasis on human interest stories. As from April 5 the programme will air at 9 p.m.

This is done with panache and a great deal of assiduous research, as is evident by the layout of the programme and the way the interviews about eating disorders, domestic violence, paedophilia, divorce and other social ills are handled,

• Last Tuesday was part one of a two-art programme focusing on physical disabilities. The key guest was the brilliant Epiphanio Vella, who has lost his eyesight. Vella would never dream of letting this ‘detail’ deter him from living life to the full.

I wish the ‘authorities’ would heed what Vella said about how being given accesses to a mobile telephone would help people who are visually impaired or blind connect more with the world.

Perhaps a service provider could jump on this wagon and use it as the next donation campaign.

television@timesofmalta.com