A couple of weeks back I had a satellite dish and digibox installed, unwillingly but with a sense of having to bow to the inevitable.
(You know, isn't it weird how people complain about having to pay £112 per year for a TV licence to receive TV programmes, yet nobody seems to complain about the compulsion to pay at least £150 a year to receive digital TV.)
I knew already that there was endless amounts of drivel dressed up as entertainment: decorate you house this way - it's the key to happiness; look into the life of this 'celebrity' and yearn for their glamour; do this diet, dress this way, have this lifestyle. It's all bollocks, but if the sheeple want to fall for it, that's alright by me.
Since getting the satellite package, it has been mainly used for a clearer picture on terrestrial TV. A few episodes of the Simpsons , and two football matches - Manchester United and England. On Saturday night we saw My Big Fat Greek Wedding via Sky Box Office, but also watched LA Confidential on BBC1.
I have subscribed to the Arts Channel, and wish I had more time to watch it properly. Some other channels have their moments of brilliance, although I am puzzled why the only history worth covering seems to be WWII ad nauseam.
But amongst the brilliant, the good, the mediocre, and the dross, one channel stands out supreme:
I will freely admit to never having been a fan of Classic FM on the radio, whilst I also acknowledge that if it didn't exist someone would have to invent it.
It's probably me being a total snob.
I can't stand a certain demographic Above all else, they're aspirational. But not in any positive sense. They are economically in a higher social class than their parents were, but they forgot to get the education to go with it. Naturally, they live in faceless identikit suburban estates, because the city or the country is too eclectic or bohemian and requires one to be an individual. They will generally read the Daily Mail, not especially for its politics, but for its aspirational lifestyle. If they vote, which they probably only do at general elections, they will vote for the party they perceive as being the winner. They think they are above going on holiday to a Spanish Costa, so might go to Cuba, but only to an all-inclusive in Varadero, and it never crosses their mind that it isn't the real Cuba. In a sense it doesn't matter where they go, because wherever it is, the parallels with other abroad places will always be highlighted. After all, abroad is abroad, and can be all lumped together in a not-England way (because, obviously, once you've spent a week in Portugal, you're bound to know the customs of a Greek island...) They drink Chardonnay.
They're comfortable with Classic FM. By listening to it they can comfort themselves that they are cultured. And yet they don't have to think too much, it can be nicely spoon-fed to them, and they can buy the Classic FM compilation albums, safe in a hermetic bubble, not running the risk of anything challenging or atonal, or some of those ghastly operas with their stories of carnal lust, incest, revenge and murder, or long passages of narrative or recitative where not a lot happens, or the boredom of actually sitting through a whole symphony, which have whole movements that haven't been used in adverts.
I have a ghastly CD in front of me now which uses the phrase 'made famous' entirely inappropriately, as in:
Dvorak New World Symphony - Largo (excerpt) - made famous by the Hovis TV commercial
Grieg Morning (Peer Gynt) - made famous by the Nescafe TV commercial
Rachmaninov Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini (Variation 18) - made famous by the movie Groundhog Day
Verdi Anvil Chorus (Il Trovatore) - made famous by the Wranglers TV commercial.
I could go on, but won't; suffice to say that every single one of them was extremely famous long before TV advertising, or indeed, TV. This stupidity is aimed specifically at Classic FMers - too lazy, too stupid to look beyond a spoon-fed nice tune. And when I say ghastly, I mean the presentation and packaging, not the actual music.
Classic FM TV is close to being car-crash TV - so bad you have to watch. It's an endless loop of videos interspersed with adverts.
But remember, born from a radio station for the stupid, this is television for the stupid. Rather than having footage of an orchestra, bought from, say, the archives of Czech or Latvian State TV, they have videos. I think these are specially filmed, either for Classic FMTV, or as general promotional videos.
Having had my bath, we were channel flicking, and I suggested Classic FMTV. I explained to Jimmy that if he hung around for half an hour he would see a violinist with long hair done up to look sexy, a video containing some drama with no connection to the music, and Bryn Terfel.
The first that came on was some piano music, I don't know what, I was entirely distracted by the shots of the long-haired tarted up pianist interspersed with shots of her, or a similar looking woman, climbing a staircase.
Then there was the absolutely dreadful video of Lara St John and Goldberg 2. Trust me, it's a sexed up violinist, with a bit of, oh, I don't know, some sort of irrelevancy in the background. Truly horribilised. You can read an account here but it fails to capture the sheer stupidity of the orange pieces of silk material, and the dimly lit men with rippling torsos.
Next up was Bryn Terfel singing Shenandoah. Now, don't get me wrong - I have nothing against Bryn Terfel, but I think this is a dull song sung in a rather dull manner. I love the collection of Handel Arias I have in my collection. It's just that I think that Classic Fm, and, especially its TV channel is so celebrity driven, that maybe they think we will turn off if we don't get Bryn every half an hour. I didn't stick around for the compulsory Kennedy, Vanessa-Mae and Joshua Bell.
