Lame TV programmes versus the World Cup

Published on July 10, 2014

Lifestyle

De­spite TV chan­nels scoring record audiences by broad­cast­ing the FIFA 2014 Brazil World Cup, other view­ers are not that fond of soc­cer. What could be the al­ter­na­tive to sat­isfy view­ers wit­ness­ing the in­va­sion of  football matches longer than 90 minutes and com­ments on their favourite chan­nels? Tak­ing a tour of TV pro­grammes around Eu­rope is a nec­es­sary evil to un­der­stand the mat­ter. 

In France, sev­eral matches were broad­cast in the evening, the peak time for TV audiences. Let’s look at the first match of France versus Hon­du­ras, airing at 9 p.m. on the French chan­nel TF1. Hon­estly, there was enough to com­plain about for a fe­male au­di­ence es­pe­cially when France 2, the sec­ond-ranking French chan­nel record­ing the high­est au­di­ence fig­ures, screened Bride Wars, the sil­li­est movie in Amer­i­can film his­tory. Of course, the title sounded as ridicu­lous as the movie. Was that a ref­er­ence to women? More a rude one. It’s easy to fore­see the cat­e­gory of pro­grammes sched­uled by France 2 as a 'girly' al­ter­na­tive to football matches, wrongly guess­ing women, like men watch­ing a football match, would gather to watch two brides-to-be hav­ing a cat fight. To top it all off, France 2 didn’t allow view­ers to watch the orig­i­nal ver­sion of that work-of-art with sub­ti­tles: view­ers — that is, fe­male view­ers — were doomed.  

Bride Wars Trailer

Te­le­cinco chan­nel, part of Mé­dia­set group (with Sil­vio Ber­lus­coni as main share­holder), was granted the rights to broad­cast the World Cup through­out Spain. That was a won­der­ful op­por­tu­nity for the chan­nel which saw a major rise of au­di­ence fig­ures in June. As proof, the match where Spain played against Chile, broad­cast on June 18, gath­ered 13.2 mil­lion view­ers. But what was main com­peti­tor An­tena 3 propos­ing at the same time slot? It broad­cast gen­eral pub­lic show Me re­sbala hosted by the fa­mous co­me­dian Ar­thuro Valls, an equal to Gra­ham Nor­ton Show on BBC. The theme: celebri­ties have to win chal­lenges in comical sit­u­a­tions (view­ers should have a great sense of hu­mour to watch it). 

“Me re­sbala” video clip

As for Ger­many, the coun­try didn’t seem versed in al­ter­na­tives for the 'general public'. When Na­tio­nal­mann­schaft faced Al­ge­ria on June 30 at 10 p.m., the most viewed Ger­man pub­lic chan­nel ARD de­cided to broad­cast a doc­u­men­tary re­lated to metham­phe­ta­mine, fo­cused on cus­toms cross­ing at the Ger­man-Czech bor­der. The title, how­ever, was as crys­tal-clear as it was catchy: “Crys­tal Meth Hor­ror Drug”. No won­der sec­ond ranking nGer­man pub­lic chan­nel ZDF broke a his­tor­i­cal 85.1 % record of au­di­ence share, the best score ever in East­ern Eu­rope. 

In Ita­ly, all the matches were broad­cast at 6 p.m., not the right time for prime time. More­over, there wasn’t any real change in TV pro­grammes on main com­pet­ing chan­nels RAI1, RAI2 and chan­nel 7. Two po­lice dra­mas were aired: 'In­spec­tor Rex' or the love link­ing a Ger­man shep­herd to his de­tec­tive-owner, and 'Mid­somer Mur­ders'. The best mark goes to Ca­nale 5, one of the chan­nels owned by Ber­lus­coni, which didn’t broad­cast the await­ing episodes of 'Il Se­greto' (The se­cret), fear­ing the sen­ti­men­tal TV se­ries fans would lend to­wards the na­tional team. It in­stead showed a spe­cial pro­gramme fo­cused on TV se­ries 'As­pet­tando il sì' (Await­ing Wishes), a sum­mary gath­er­ing the best of pre­vi­ous episodes lead­ing to the two main char­ac­ters’ wed­ding, Pepa and Tris­tan. 

George Clar­ke's Ama­zing Spaces - Intro

Last but not least, on June 19 at 8 p. m. when the United-King­dom faced Uruguay, there was prime time pro­gramme on ITV. The al­ter­na­tive was suc­cess­ful. Chan­nel 4 and BBC 4 showed two doc­u­men­taries re­lated to ar­chi­tec­ture: that night, classy George Clarke who turns nar­row rooms into cosy spaces with life for free, paid a visit to Ollie, a biker who wished to con­vert a dou­ble decker into a mov­able hotel. In the last episode of 'The Ships That Made the Com­mon­wealth', you could also ad­mire the mag­nif­i­cence of a Royal Navy bat­tle­ship, the Great HMS Hood in Glas­gow.

In con­clu­sion: you can de­cently miss any pro­gramme but the World Cup, that couldn’t make football lovers any hap­pier. The oth­ers should start lov­ing football as well. 

Translated from L'alternative au mondial : canaux empoisonnés