This week the news has been covering Endemol’s latest production (no, I don’t mean Big Brother which, sadly, is due to start again this evening), in which donors compete to win a kidney. The show, being broadcast in the Netherlands, will give people, desperate for a kidney transplant, the chance to win one from a terminally ill donor.
Endemol, claim that the show will highlight the severe lack of donors available but instead it is likely to make them come across as a media organisation looking to profit from suffering. References to the botched handling of the race-row at the last Big Brother show have already been made and you can’t help but wonder if the organisation behind are just stirring up more anger and resentment.
So have the media gone too far this time? Personally I think they have. We can’t have a situation where ratings are obtained at any cost but when media organisations are trampling all over ethics to get to the top surely things have gone too far. Endemol’s spokespeople have been keeping their heads down during this and don’t seem to be offering comment – maybe they are too busy looking for some training on how to handle the media in a crisis!
Read the BBC’s view here…
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/6699847.stm
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Nigel Kneale’s science fiction story/play ‘Year of the Sex Olympics’ is a stark warning to the way in which a future society’s entertainment could develop. It was made and broadcasted in 1968 on BBC 2.
PLOT.
“In a distant future, society is divided between 'low-drives' that equate with the laboured classes and 'hi-drives' who control the government and media. The low-drives are controlled by a constant broadcast of pornography that the hi-drives are convinced will pacify them, though one hi-drive, Nat Mender (Tony Vogel), believes that the media should be used to educate the low-drives. After the accidental death of a protester during the Sex Olympics gets a massive audience response the Co-ordinator Ugo Priest (Leonard Rossiter) decides to commission a new programme. In The Live Life Show Nat Mender, his partner Deanie (Suzanne Neve) and their daughter Keten (Lesley Roach) are stranded on a remote Scottish island while the low-drive audience watches. Mender's former colleague, Lasar Opie (Brian Cox), realising that “something got to happen”, decides to spice up the show by introducing a psychopath, Grels (George Murcell), to the island. When Grels goes on a murderous rampage, Ugo Priest is horrified when the audience reacts with laughter to the slaughter and The Live Life Show is deemed a triumphant success.”
Maybe I shouldn't have posted this, Endemol might get ideas.....
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