I have finally sussed it.
The reason for downmarket TV programmes on downmarket TV channels.
It's to laugh hysterically at people.
Particularly the smug self-satisfied 'I'm significantly richer than you are' small-minded middle Englanders.
Package Holiday Undercover. A couple, late forties to early fifties, booked a holiday to some tropical resort. To their horror they discovered they were right in the flight path to the airport. As soon as I saw it, I said "That's the one Joseph found on the plane-spotters photography website. And it soon proved to be correct. It was indeed St. Maarten - or St. Martin, as ITV called it.
Mr and Mrs Smug clearly felt that the objective of a holiday was to sit on the balcony of their all-exclusive bland hotel run by Global Capitalists. So they didn't bother checking their guide book; they didn't do their homework. They never bothered to venture out of their hotel. And they stated that this hotel was only suitable for the deaf or for plane-spotters. I bet you a pound to a penny that a Rough Guide or Lonely Planet would have said it was a mecca for plane-spotting photographers, and why. But Mr and Mrs "I'm smugger and richer than you are" knew better.
Ya boo sucks. I laugh at them.
The other side to this programme is nasty. A resort, don't know where, but I'm guessing Spain or a Spanish-speaking country. Go to three down-market ice-cream outlets and take samples, to be tested in the lab. The lab results come back - surprise surprise 55% of samples are riddled with unpleasant-nasty-lethal bacteria.
Sub-text - it's those nasty dirty foreigners taking our money and poisoning us. Without considering that, almost without a doubt, at least 55% of ice-cream samples taken from downmarket outlets in this country would also contain said bacteria. So ITV's target demographic would conclude that all 'foreign' is 'foreign muck' and not to be trusted, without giving a second thought to the British-American fast food crap with which they force feed their precious brats.
The 'reporter' returned to these outlets to report the findings. Rather than speaking in Spanish, or in plain, well-enunciated English, he put on a stupid accent and decided to chop random words out of his sentences. Because foreigners understand pidgin-English so much better than grammatically and syntactically correct English, right?
What an arsehole!
But I suppose ITV's intelligence-challenged demographic lap it all up and increase their ignorant, ill-informed, unconsidered xenophobia to the detriment of all.
