BUT I’D RATHER STAY ON THE SOFA [184]

In his video review of the “Huge Screen ver. 2,” a cheap LCD game, Dr. Stuart Ashen wondered if he would have a good time playing it. “Yeah I know it’s not going to happen. Join me after the break.” The screen fades to black. A caption appears: “There are no advertisement breaks. This is the internet.” The previous shot fades back in: “Oh yeah, that was weird. Thought I was on television for a moment. Hmm, I’d probably know I was on television because I’d be being paid.”

This video was posted to YouTube on 25^th October 2010. Nine years and over 400,000 views later, I’m watching it on my television, preceded by an ad for the National Lottery. I only came across the “ashens” channel over a month ago – the first video I came across was the “Chicken in a Can,” a lunch / autopsy hybrid that included the bones and giblets. At that point, the channel had 774 videos available – diving into it is like deciding your next box set to watch will be “Coronation Street”.

I am beginning to think that “ashens” – subtitled “Comedy, Technology, Idiocy” - may well be the archetypal YouTube channel. It is almost as old as YouTube itself, and has evolved both with it and because of it – what must have started as a bit of fun became a career because the platform evolved to accommodate the more professional videos people have posted to it. YouTube is not social media, it is public access television, in the same way that Facebook and Twitter are really publishers.

Ashen’s first video on the channel was “The Truth About Open Source,” a skit made using action figures and computer effects, about why you should pay for licensed software. It is typical of the short, funny videos people first placed on YouTube, when people were testing it to see what worked there – not everyone can put up their day at the zoo. It was posted on 25^th February 2006, only two months after the platform officially launched, and nine months before it was bought by Google. Video resolution was only 320 x 240 pixels, and a ten-minute limit on video length was imposed to deter the pirated upload of TV shows, although you could post longer videos if you respected YouTube’s terms of service.

Widescreen was introduced in November 2008, prompting Ashen to post a video warning YouTube about the sides of the screen they were now exposing: “That’s where the monsters live... that one’s got a hat on.” By this point, the other type of videos he posted became more prominent, as they were elsewhere on the platform: show-and-tell reviews of products, mostly bad ones, framed against the stage of a brown sofa. His second video was the first of the “Pop Station” LCD game consoles, endlessly rehashing poor games with incoherently-translated instructions, but it would take two years for these occasional videos, co-existing with Noseybonk and other sketches, before it would gain the “Hello” opening title card they have used to this day.

I would not normally watch “unboxing” videos, but if you base these types of videos around obscure or poor technology, mundane or badly made “tat” from Poundland, and exotic or expired food and drink, there is much scope to apply dry wit and sarcasm to what you uncover. Because Ashen’s videos are usually unscripted, they usually also serve as their own “reaction” videos, a category of YouTube video that is also prevalent – I am aware that someone did a video reacting to the “chicken in a can” video, in the perfect example of media eating itself.

However, Ashen has continued to make space for comedy, adding an edge to the unscripted reviews. For example, a video that involved clearing a drawer of items to be reviewed contains a sketch about creating the dice that will determine the fate of the objects, loading their eventual destruction with great symbolism. One video was ended by sticking a cartoon frog into a corner while bizarre music played, because it can be done. One review, for a toy violin, was abandoned and re-recorded because Ashen broke down laughing at the poorly translated English on the box, explaining that master violin creators were “nicolas, Marty,” “Antonio Stella bottom tile,” and “ji plug pu – melon nai” – the two videos have a total of nearly two million views between them.

I am aware I haven’t mentioned the feature films yet – the science fiction fantasy comedy “Ashens and the Quest for the Game Child” (2013), and the upcoming “Ashens and the Polybius Heist”. You know you have done well when you can raise the money to make your own film, but when you can get Robert Llewellyn from “Red Dwarf,” and Warwick Davis from “Celebrity Squares,” you name must have some cachet. Oh, and the books: “Terrible Old Games You’ve Probably Never Heard Of,” and “Attack of the Flickering Skeletons: More Terrible Old Games You’ve Probably Never Heard Of.”

(...And how could I forget to mention “Chanticleer Hegemony,” a Pop Station LCD game that featured on a box, but not inside it, and was tracked down after five years, only to find it was literally a cockfighting game, because that was something someone made.)

As Ashen explained on the BBC’s “Newsnight” in 2015, when the word “unboxing” made it into the Oxford English Dictionary, the ultimate reason for doing these videos is because people want to watch them:

“I think when, in the past, when you wanted to buy a new product, you would be very led by advertising, the only things you could see would be in adverts, or perhaps in a very controlled environment, like a shop, whereas people like the raw honesty of just, here is a box, and here inside is what you will get if you buy it, and if we can make that entertaining while we show people it, it’s all good.”

This is the point where YouTube became a professional platform, as in people could begin earning a living from their work. The partner program that began in May 2007 currently pays revenue to channels with more than a thousand subscribers, and more than four thousand hours of time spent watching their videos within 12 months – the latter requirement was added in 2018, a consequence of both the increased number of channels with multiple subscribers, but also the increasing professional standard of the videos posted, as watching online video eats away at traditional television – any video scoring over 100,000 views within a week is already beating most television audiences on satellite and cable television in the UK, and anything over a million views is approaching BBC Two and Channel 4 primetime figures.

I am glad that the YouTube algorithm somehow suggested “ashens” to me, as I haven’t laughed so much in a long time – that can be put down mostly to the toy violin. What it has taught me is that if you think you have a video something that people find funny, put it out there, and make sure they know about it. I should try it myself - if a comic monologue can be wrenched from jelly beans, I could make a video explaining how Quorn could be made in more interesting shapes, then present a blue pyramid of the stuff.

However, to start a career on YouTube, I would need to start by posting at least ten videos, of ten minutes in length, that would get at least 2,400 views each year, with everyone watching to the end, with nearly half of them deciding to subscribe for future content – that is the minimum before I even see a penny from YouTube, unless I get sponsorship. Perhaps, I should make something for fun first.

I DON’T WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT [128]

Last week, the “Radio Times” published an article by former TV talk show host Sir Michael Parkinson, calling for UK television to have a US-style chat show for five nights a week. According to him, the only time it was tried was when Channel 5 launched with “The Jack Docherty Show” in 1997. However, research digs up Channel 4’s “V Graham Norton” (2002-03), Norton having first presented a chat show by standing in for Docherty; BBC Three’s “Johnny Vaughan Tonight” (2003), and most recently ITV’s “The Nightly Show” (2017), before you count shows from Paul O’Grady, Alan Titchmarsh and Richard & Judy during daytime hours. Parkinson then suggested Piers Morgan as host, someone who already had his own chat show, on CNN, which was cancelled in 2014 following declining ratings.

Television isn’t exactly bereft of different ways to have one person interviewing someone else, but the reason I am not a fan of it when presented to me as a chat show is because there is something that feels insincere about them. Rarely would anyone turn up on a chat show because they fancy a chat, and even less if they like the host – it is more likely there is something to tell, or sell, about themselves, or something that involves them. News and current affairs programmes, in search of truth, are more likely to probing of their interviewees than when they are sat on the sofas of Graham Norton and Jonathan Ross’s shows, because they are set up to be more entertaining, which can also be read as less demanding – the one late-night interview show we have in the UK is “Newsnight,” which originally began in 1980 instead of giving more nights to Parkinson’s show. While his article talks of combining showbiz, politics, popular culture and sport in one show, Parkinson could have easily become a presenter of “Newsnight” instead.

Reading the “Radio Times” article, I don’t get why the effort of putting on a US-style chat show in the UK is being demanded by Parkinson – there is something about it being an important and entertaining fixture, and if it works in the US, it should work here, but the implication is that our own shows don’t work – Parkinson has often criticised other chat show presenters, including Terry Wogan, Graham Norton, Davina McCall and Lily Allen, both for the quality of their shows and the rigour of their interviewing skills, especially with the remark in 2016, “I wouldn't ever say that Terry Wogan's claim to fame was as an interviewer. Not at all.”

I should say that I do watch chat shows from the US on a regular basis, as they upload clips to YouTube, but when I do, they are usually from the first half of the hour, before the guests have come out. The US tradition is to begin with the host’s monologue about the day’s events, supplanting the nightly news bulletin, and follow it with another feature, sketch or a game – Stephen Colbert has built his current reputation on the quality of his monologues about Donald Trump, while James Corden and Jimmy Fallon’s interactions with guests are more memorable when they are framed within rap battles and “Carpool Karaoke.” Add in a musical performance at the end of the show, and US chat shows don’t have a lot to do with chat.

In fact, there is already a show on UK television, in prime time, that has guests from Hollywood and the West End, that have as much factual content and musical performances as the US shows do, and it is “The One Show,” which is just as close to “Blue Peter” – famously, in 2011, presenter Matt Baker asked David Cameron, when he was Prime Minister, “how on Earth do you sleep at night,” because he genuinely, innocently, wanted to know.

WHAT’S SO FUNNY ‘BOUT PEACE, LOVE AND UNDERSTANDING? [40]

[John Birt, with Mick Jagger, for "World in Action"]

Once upon a time, in a United Kingdom riven with economic and social problems, and questions over our future relationship with Europe, people began looking at how the news was not informing us in the way we needed, to help us understand and solve our problems.

I could be talking about Brexit, “fake news” and “alternative facts,” but the year is actually 1975, marked in Britain by high inflation, social unrest and voting to remain in the Common Market. Like now, it was people within the news companies themselves talking about how to properly reflect what was happening.

The key arguments were published in a series of articles in “The Times” in 1975-76, co-written by its Economics Editor, Peter Jay, with John Birt, the Head of Current Affairs for London Weekend Television. Birt was also responsible for LWT’s political discussion show “Weekend World,” which was presented by Jay. If you can find these articles, you will be rewarded with passionate polemic sent out by two people who must have loved working out what they would propose, as manifestoes come about when there is a moment to be seized.

The extremely short version of their findings was that television journalism, an uneasy mix of newspaper-style reporting and film-style documentary storytelling, had a “bias against understanding,” caused by providing too little time in news bulletins to provide enough context and focus to events happening on the surface, not providing enough of a link to what they highlight and the wider issue it illustrated, and focussing too much on stories, rather than issues. Failing to inform the public could even be considered as anti-social.

Their solution would be to create one central news unit, encompassing numerous disparate news and current affairs programme teams, in order to work together. The main focus would be one hour-long programme every night, covering the main five or six stories of the day in great detail, not unlike later shows like “Newsnight” or “Channel 4 News,” complemented by weekly reviews, monthly investigations of the main issues of the times, and feature programmes that answered questions as they came up.

If this proposal sounded like fewer people would watch, the argument was that the public reaction to the new style of stories would be more “oh, I see,” than “oh, my god!” Likewise, mixing of fact and comment already happens, as choosing what to include in a report is already making a value judgement. Any concerns on integrating teams into a big bureaucracy would be countered by the opportunities provided by working together.

Did anything ever come of this? What didn’t help is that 1970s television was slower in general, the first news bulletins of any type not appearing until lunchtime, making an end-of-day wrap-up easier to implement. However, as 24-hour news cycles were replaced by constant streams, from the introduction of CNN in 1980, through to online sites and social media, it is too easy to be simply be given all available information, then to make of it what you will, all by yourself, or with those that agree with you.

While “Newsnight” and “Channel 4 News” have more time to go into detail, did John Birt and Peter Jay get the chance to make their proposals work? After writing the articles, Jay had a term as UK Ambassador to the United States, and Birt produced David Frost’s interviews with Richard Nixon, in which the former president ultimately admitted to letting the American people down. Jay would then be asked by Frost to become chairman of breakfast television station TV-am, where its “mission to explain” stuck to the “Times” articles closely, but petered out after a few weeks, due to a lack of viewers, infighting at the station that resulted in Jay leaving, and the simple fact that heavyweight analysis doesn’t work at six o’clock in the bloody morning.

At the BBC, John Birt, who was hired as Deputy Director-General, before getting the top job, enacted the proposals as far as he could. News and current affairs departments, based in different parts of London, were merged into one, and “Editors” were employed to inject context straight into bulletins – Peter Jay became Economics Editor in 1990.

If there is a moment to be seized, you have to make a persuasive argument. If it has been made before, then it has to be clear why it is worth making the case again. Change never came easy, as Birt and Jay made clear:

“There is no easy path to understanding. The conscientious journalist, having climbed the mountain, should of course make it easier for those who follow. But we should be suspicious of those who offer a low and painless road to the top. For it seldom, if ever, exists.”