19th June 2007

Television programme schedulers.

I wonder if there's a NZQA course for these strange creatures. I guess, given the number of TV stations is small, there can't be too many of them on the ground, but one does wonder what thought processes go through their minds to reach some of the weird programming decisions they make. The moans and groans from TV critics about quality documentaries and drama being buried late at night or 11am on a Sunday morning are legendary and as nothing ever changes you may as well conclude that the schedulers have cloth ears and rhinocerous hides.

A phenomenon of late is to blanket the whole evening with the same theme which is the approach Channel One has taken on Monday nights for the last few weeks.
Mondays is devoted to human psychology starting with "Why We Buy" at 7.30pm.
Straight after that is "Exposed" which is also a documentary on human behaviour and then bringing up the rear before we retire to bed to worry how stupid the human race is, we get a half hour of Derren Brown who plays tricks of the mind on various people.

I'd just love to know the thinking behind such scheduling. Is it that they think if a person watches the first programme they will stay watching all three because they are all clones of each other? Do these schedulers ever put themselves in the place of the viewer and think to themselves, would I like to watch Psychology 101 all evening?

Perhaps programme schedulers take the same approach as newspapers used to (and maybe still do) with the daily horoscope. In the days of hot metal, the newspaper I worked for had a big cardboard box full of complete horoscopes cast in metal ready to be slotted into the page. The stonehand would give the box a shake and pick one out. Once the page was cast and printed, the horoscope would go back into the box ready to take it's turn again under the law of chance.

It could explain a lot of things..............