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ANALYSIS
Travel
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December 31, 2005
TWELVE MONTHS ago, news editors were busily budget-crunching, newsroom secretaries were hurriedly booking air tickets and reporters were staggering from dinner tables heaving with dismembered turkeys and empty wine bottles to find their passports, laptops, satellite phones and pack clean underwear.
Flights from Europe and the US to anywhere around the Indian Ocean were being filled with reporters and TV crews rushing to cover the devastation caused by the Boxing Day tsunami.
This year, the reporters' festive indulgence has not been disturbed. A few lucky correspondents were treated to early December visits to inspect what had been achieved in about 11 months, but they were probably home in time for the mince pies and mulled wine, leaving their editors to the relative comfort of compiling the 'look back' assessments.
But, while editors could use many, many pages to cover the unfolding devastation of events in 2004, not quite so much space could be given to the reviews. So, newspapers reverted to post-Christmas type - reviewing everything and anything else that has happened during the year.
That said, with hurricanes in the United States, earthquakes in Pakistan, bird flu in the Far East, general elections in the UK and Germany, suburban rioting around Paris, the picture editors could almost be forgiven for forgetting the Gleneagles G8 summit, Live 8 and their targets - debt-relief, poverty and Aids in Africa. Even The Queen overlooked the wedding of Prince Charles and Camilla Parker-Bowles in her Christmas address.
Devastation may make good copy, but perhaps it might be better for the health of the world if 2006 is not quite so catastrophic.
CHRISTMAS AFTERNOONS are, so folklore would now have UK TV audiences believe, for re-runs of The Great Escape or Sound of Music, with Chitty Chitty Bang Bang running a close third, providing an accompaniment to snoring in many homes after The Queen has had her seven minutes telling the Commonwealth how horrible the last year has been.
Movies seem to have dominated the schedules for the two-week holiday over Christmas and the New Year with, it seems, may be one or two original shows per channel per day, other than the soaps.
David Tennant's debut as Doctor Who may have pulled in millions for BBC1 on Christmas night, but otherwise it seemed that the schedulers were deliberately driving anyone who isn't a devotee of EastEnders, Emmerdale or Coronation Street quickly towards DVD sales or rentals.
The days of live broadcasts of Santa Clauses arriving at hospitals to hand out presents to ill children, carol services from candlelit cathedrals and Noel Edmonds' extravaganzas may long have gone, to be replaced by a dearth of creativity.
If Christmas means gastronomic over-indulgence, then for broadcasters it seems to be a time of under-indulgence, with any treats being spread as thinly and widely as possible.
Anyway, another few days, and it will all be over for another year. The rolling news channels will be able to go back to everlasting two-ways outside Number 10, rather than speculating endlessly about the year to come or dissecting the year past and, hey, there may be some original programming other than the next series of Doctor Who.
Somehow, with commercial television in the UK settling into its 51st year as 2006 opens, the future for quality 'product' seems dimmer than it was quarter of a century ago. Perhaps, progress isn't all it's cracked up to be after all?
IT'S HARD NOW to remember exactly what irritated the petty-minded courtiers who surround The Queen, but their decision to take away production of Her Majesty's annual Christmas address to the Commonwealth from the BBC must be one of the most stupid ever made.
The petulance not only made such officials look trivia-obsessed, it did nothing for the Institution either.
If The Queen is supposed to be above petty politics, then those advising her should be too.
It never mattered who had been producing the short broadcast, or who does now. What is still significant is the way the decision was taken and why.
What such officials cannot change is the memory - and the reminder when the broadcast appears each December - of just how such actions can make otherwise apparently sensible individuals look like childishly spiteful prima donnas.
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Adam Christie is editor of AsPerceived. The views expressed here are personal.
E-mail media_week@asperceived.com with any comments, please.
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