I won’t go into specifics again here - just follow the link and read the original post, Jonathan’s reply, and my rebuttal of his points.
My main beef about Maitland’s response boils down to a few simple things:
- He’s obviously quite clearly got no sense of ITV history, if he’s willing to dismiss every factual programme made before his arrival.
- To open his comment with “Calm down dear, it’s only a TV show” not only shows that he’s about a year behind everyone else in the I-can’t-believe-you’re-still-using-that-catchphrase stakes, but that he clearly has no pride in his own work. He may complain about the phrase ‘dumbing down’, but he’s not exactly providing a very good counter-argument.
- He also seems to think that if I don’t like his style of presenting (I was going to say journalism, but that would be stretching the definition a little too far), I obviously hate TV — which anyone who regularly reads this blog, or who knows me in real life, will be all too well aware is as far from the truth as is possible.
If anything, the antics of Maitland and his production team last year, and his belated comment now, irritate me precisely because I love TV. If I really hated it, as he suggests, I wouldn’t care what dross ITV puts out in the name of current affairs.
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