Thursday, July 01, 2004

Bintang RTM, Who Will Win, Malaysian Idol, Audition, Akademi Fantasia... anymore to add?

Excuse me kind sir, madame, do you happen to know why these shows are bamboozling our TV channels - all at the same time - as if that's all Malaysians with handphones with talents for SMSing live for?

Blast the goat, nowadays it's hard to flick through channels without bumping into at least one blurb of these "talent-search plus reality-tv with a twist of personal communications mobile technology" concoction.

Moshi mosh, does anyone still understand the meaning of terms like "redundancy", "pushing it", "overkill", and "bloody boring, typical and unimaginative" anymore?

What baffled me most is that all these shows rely on the viewers to spend money and send SMS to vote for their favourite contestant (favourite, schmavourite indeed!). Otherwise the show loses its element of interactivity with the "real market of listeners and music buyers".

I don't know about y'all out there, but I'm not gonna waste even se amah* on such thing! Why should I? (I hear Huzir Sulaiman whispers, "Because they would be grateful!")

Yet some people would - vote via SMS I mean - why? There must be something in these shows that zombied people into participating in all these SMS-voting frenzy!

Is it the need to a part of the decision-making process? Are we talking about self-empowerment here?

Like, sure, it's just an SMS, just one vote - but one vote still does makes a difference, yes? That's it then - everybody's voting because everyone thinks his/her vote is needed to cancel out some other idiot's vote. Right?

What, no? Cause contestant number 156 is your second cousin's boyfriend's schoolmate in Form Three... I seeee...

Ugh, to think I gotta come up with a feature article reporting on this particular phenomenon. Can I be kind?


* Bukan kadar caj SMS sebenar.

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