And while the good doctor, the better doctor, and the one who allegedly would have liked to doctor the evidence try to venture into pastures new, life goes on as usual for the rest of the media – apart from those who are trying to shed light on and milk different situations.

The ether was buzzing all this week with grumbles and mumbles about how and why the Station of the Year award was confirmed as belonging to One Productions.

For those who nonetheless do not know what happened, the situation may be summed up thus: someone, somewhere, made a mistake when listing the nominations for the awards. This error was not spotted, and so when the results were totted up at the end of the awards ceremony, the eponymous award went to One, by a hair’s breadth.

The nominations had been screened in a Powerpoint presentation during a nominations night on February 12 at Heat, where, apparently (and conceivably) representatives of the different media were not ticking off their contributors’ achievements. The fact that the two programmes upon which the aforementioned decision hinged happened to be two presented by Joyce Grech and John Demanuele – both of which appeared on TVM and had a repeat on E22, and that no print-out was distributed, meant the discrepancy went unnoticed.

In other words, had the mistake occurred with programmes such as Bla Agenda or Bondiplus, people would have sat up.

Zoom to the Vodafone Malta Television Awards night, when PBS pointed out what had happened. This event was well after the Heat gathering. And there, as it has been said on other occasions, lies the crunch.

The judgement took this into account, and neatly fielded the formal complaint because of prescription, citing “An ‘error and omissions’ period of seven days shall be allowed after all nominations have been announced.”

So in effect, we have the opposite of the historic “guilty with extenuating circumstances” decision – in this case it may be termed “winner by default”, and PBS finds itself in the uncomfortable, unenviable position of bearing the brunt of a mistake made by someone along the line.

This when the individual PBS trophies had been won across the board, rather than as a cluster, and no awards were given to two actors on PBS drama, despite being the only nominees in their category.

Of course, this is not an indication that they ought to win; but they were never told, at any point, that this happened because “they were not good enough”.

PBS filed five complaints; yet decisions were only taken about two of them, namely the one about The Malta International TV Short Film Festival, awarded the Best Cultural Programme award, and Lura fil-Klassi, which won the Best Educational/Informative Programme.

PBS insisted, and indeed still does, that “… there was a gross misapplication of the regulations”.

On May 18, a ‘who’s who’ from PBS, E22, and Mermaid Media Entertainment Ltd, and, inexplicably, One, met to thrash things out. It was pointed out that the list of nominations was freely available on the Mermaid Media Entertainment Ltd website, and at their offices, had anyone wanted to check it out; but no one filed a complaint then, either.

One good thing that did come out of all this was that in future, regulations are to be overhauled and all loopholes sealed.

• And just when you thought it was safe to listen to the other Rumanż on Radju Malta, it is time to think again. I have lost count of the number of times Twanny Scalpello had referred to ‘id-din Mawmettan’ when everyone knows this phrase is an insult to Muslims.

We have had the argument about editing works of literature several times; and yet this is not a question of political correctness. It is ethical, and much more.

• Last week I mentioned the word-jumble caused by Valentino Rossi’s injury. Last week Joseph Muscat unwittingly caused a similar ruckus. Rather than reporting that he had ‘lewa’ siequ u xaqqaq l-għadma’, we were told that he had broken his legs (again, the word saqajh was used); or that he sprained his leg(s); or nothing at all.

An even worse headline was ‘Raġel f’periklu tal-mewt jinqabad f’post fejn kien jaħdem’; unless it was his precarious state of health that made him unable to leave the building, this makes no sense.

• It would seem that the major television stations have decided that drama is what attracts viewers. This, perhaps, indicates that many of the other programmes are run-of-the-mill, regurgitations of past series. But then, aren’t some dramas equally so, too?

However, there is a lot of untapped talent out there, which is sometimes harnessed by the right people for the right part. What I cannot stand is that producers appear to think they are doing these newcomers a favour by casting them in roles that require a lot of commitment, and then not paying them ‘because this is a labour of love and if you don’t like it, you know where the door is’. Similarly, when adult actors are paid, I do not see why child actors are not, if it’s the same serial.

• I am under the impression that some advertising departments are giving package deals for advertisements – buy 10, get 12, or something of the sort. One bumph which gets on my nerves is the one for barbecue food. It is in Maltese, but the woman nudges her partner to hie off and purchase sausages, rather than zalzett, perhaps to indicate that she wants frankfurters. She does not even pronounce ‘sausages’ properly.

television@timesofmalta.com