July 27, 2006

C4 goes down the gurgler

Oh dear, c'mon C4 - you're too easy to knock!
My case is simply this: Quality TV for your audience.

I was directed to watch C4's "Insert Video Here" where Dai Henwood was "hittin da streetz" asking people a range of cheese-infused questions "What's your favourite cheese", "Who is your favourite cheesy actor", trying cheesy pick up lines etc. I couldn't manage to discern which way Dai's humour was intended. Sorry, it wasn't funny. In between these segments, the music videos were allegedly the 'cheesiest videos'.

C4 is thick with bad grammar, Dai is not the only one introducing bleeped expletives and arrogance to the network - the major flaw (aside from the David Hasselhoff song) is that nearly every "cheesy" video played on this show was a former NZ #1 hit. Yes, some looked quite dated, but you cannot dispute that many of them shaped the music industry of the time, and the roll on effects are still echoed today.

Here are the clips I caught:
U Can't Touch This, When Will I Be Famous, Ice Ice Baby, The Way You Make Me Feel, Living On A Prayer, Faith, Centrefold...

Arrggghhhh the ignorance!

C4 were off base tonight. Perhaps to connect with your audience, why not work inside a time period they know something about.... say the last ten years?

Research may have had us eyeballing Aqua, Backstreet Boys, Rednex, Spice Girls, S Club 7, True Bliss, Las Ketchup or hell, even Crazy Frog again. Yes, they all reached number 1 (somehow), but at least C4's music vs audience positioning would have been accurate. Maybe I would have changed the channel much quicker, with an understanding of why I did so.

Thank god for intelligence at Sky's JuiceTV and J2. By all indicators, MTV is gonna bury C4 come August 18th.

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