Television and the 90 percent rule on 'stupidity'

Patrick Guntensperger, Jakarta

Television is a vast wasteland. Everyone knows this. That's why it's hard to understand why there has recently been so much discussion about the mind-numbing stupidity of the great majority of television product broadcast on Indonesian channels.

More than most businesses, television is aimed at the lowest common denominator. That's not just a catch-phrase, that's an absolute, literal truth. The more idiotic, cretinous, obtuse and dull-witted the program, the more likely it is to be given a chance in front of an audience. If you combine stupidity of content with a low production budget, you have a virtual guarantee that your proposed show will get some airtime.

So combine an appeal to imbeciles with a very limited cash requirement and what do have in terms of television? A reality show. Put a complete dearth of creativity together with a minimum budget and what do you have? A "talent" search show. Why are we surprised that those are the dominant forces in television entertainment?

"Reality" shows gained popularity among television executives because of their negligible budget. The whole idea is to garner sufficient ratings to charge your advertisers top Rupiah for advertising their product during the breaks in your show. If you can pull in a big audience with a show that involves the minimal expense of sending a camera jockey around with a local police team for a few days, why on earth would you chase the same numbers by spending billions on writers, actors, directors, sets, wardrobe and studios in order to produce a serious and critically respectable drama?

If you could hire a few washed-up has-beens to be your judges for little more than meals and recognition, and then hold open auditions so that every no-talent wannabe in the country can be humiliated on camera, why would you choose instead to pay for recognized talent and put a great deal money and effort into production value in order to broadcast quality entertainment? These questions are actually meant to be taken seriously. There is no motivation for a television producer to produce quality when the people will watch crap just as eagerly.

The Patrick Principle (90 percent of everything is crap) applies to television perhaps more evidently than to any other area of human interest; nonetheless that leaves ten percent. There is nothing we can really do about the 90 percent of television that is insulting to our intelligence and demeaning to its audience; moreover, there is nothing we should do about it.

Just as people get the government they deserve, people get the television they deserve. In a way, really awful television is a way of checking on our freedoms. Because Indonesian airwaves are relatively free from censorship (political, that is; not moral), we are inundated with witless drivel. What we need to do in order to ensure that the remaining ten percent has any quality at all is actually watch it.

If we as an audience put as much thought into our television watching as we do even to choosing a newspaper, we would have some impact on the quality of the product that is broadcast. Unfortunately, television has been so banal for so long that it has become like wallpaper...we hardly notice it, even when it's in the room with us.

Only a small percentage of the people in a country with Indonesia's population is needed to convince the producers that there is a market for quality television. If, as viewers, we turned off the television when there was only drivel on and watched it selectively when there was quality programming, our habits would become part of the demographic analysis that the advertisers make when selecting which shows to get behind.

We need to stop beating ourselves up over the generally poor quality of our television. It's bad all over the world. Indonesia has bad television all right, but some of the unbelievable garbage that's broadcast in Europe and the U.S. is infinitely worse. As long as we can see that the people are getting the programming they want, we know that there is some freedom in our choices. The fact that we as viewers choose badly doesn't mean we shouldn't be allowed to choose.

We need to support our better quality news and news analysis shows; we need to encourage current affairs broadcasts and other bastions of a free press. We do that by watching them. We do that by writing in and commenting. When the producers slip up and let a well produced drama or comedy make it to the air, write in and tell them you look forward to more like it. The more the producers are aware of our presence, the more of those types of shows they will put on the air for us.

But ignore the 90 percent that is crap; don't worry about it. Let people watch some poor acne victim trying to hit three consecutive correct notes; no one will go to hell for bad taste.

The writer, social and political commentator, can be reached at ttpguntensperger@hotmail.com