Saturday, October 10, 2009

Kent TV a last throw of the dice or indeed “What the Hells going on”*


In yet another attempt to make Kent TV work, it seems our county councils TV boffins have come up with the ultimate weapon in attempting to justify the least essential council services ever.

Its been said before that nobody has ever lost out, in under estimating the peoples intelligence and it seems that theory is being put to the test, in

a final attempt to justify Kent Council throwing our money down the drain toward the Kent TV experiment.

Those of us of a certain age might just recall a time when 70’s ITV drama Crossroads, was perceived as the ultimate in poor story lines, cheap production values and the frequent look of terror from startled actors who appeared shocked to be in front of a camera.

Why mention the above, well, its seems as part of an attempt to get an audience, KCC TV media experts, have come up with the tried and tested audience generator the Soap Opera “Hollywould”.

I strongly advise you take a gander at the trailer, a word of caution, Corrie it aint, but just taking a glance at the trailer might amuse and I feel could become a cult in a “What the hells going on” sort of way. I’d imagine that poor acting, plot will be combined with heavy, none to subtle, public service messages. God knows Kent council seems to full of clowns so the chances of a comedy classic are high.

Anyway honed under the exceptional circumstances of public indifference, failure to attract an audience and against a back drop of Kent Council cutting genuine services to the public, I think this mini soap opera could be so appallingly bad that it will be required viewing for our Youtube generation.

I reckon with a bit of luck not only will we Kent taxpayers be laughing at “Hollywould” but also Bob Geldoff’s execs might just salvage something from this which has so far failed to justify any of the money invested.

Its still my view that Kent TV is an outrageous waste of local Taxpayer money, and even in the world of public authority waste Kent TV has been so far a star, I’d just love to know how Kent top Conservative Paul Carter justifies this nonsense particularly if he attended the Tories conference last week, when Cameron was letting us know that how tough life is about to get in the public sector.

Although vaguely aware of this latest Kent TV tosh I’d much like to thank the journalist, who flagged it up for me.

* A line from KCC’s Kent TV drama “classic”

6 comments:

  1. It'd have to get an amazing rate of hits to be cost effective. millions not thousands as a minimum.

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  2. KCC tries to justify the millions it has spent on Kent TV by claiming that it has saved a million on publicity and that it is supporting media jobs. The FOI that KCC sent you Tony was a bit of an insult to the intelegence. It did not demonstrate that Kent TV specifically was responsible for any fall in the publicty spend. It could have been due to deveopment of KCC's own web site, all the local media web sites or the very good tourism site that are Kent specific. And has the spend on self promotion fallen? No figures where provided.
    The second claim is that Kent TV has created jobs. Now I would rather have jobs saved in front line services rather than support a few media jobs at Ten Alps.
    With funds from central govenment soon to be reduced they cannot continue to fund this luxury.
    Only yesterday KM reported that the childrens centres program was to be review. This program had already been agreed with 10 millions of government money and 7 of us Kent tax payers money. Are they trying to save on this project or is it a bit of tit for tat because of the critism that KCC has a poor record with its failing schools record?

    One things for sure when the cuts come KCC will have someone to blame.

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  3. It's always good to try something new and yes it will sometimes cost money, but if it doesn't work then throwing money at it isn't the solution. Sometimes you have to accept limitations, or reassess the situation.

    We've spoken before about how the could've been done much cheaper and an example is a site I've put together for work: http://ccsu.co.uk/cctv

    All the videos are hosted externally meaning very little space/bandwidth is used and it also also run on Wordpress which is free.

    We haven't utilised the site much at the moment but this coming year we will be getting more students involved, promoting the site, and adding a lot more useful content.

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  4. But Adem, isn't one of those films on your 'cheap' site from Kent TV?

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  5. Yes it is. But they are the people hosting it and therefor I am not paying for it. It could easily be hosted on Youtube as I'm just using the embed code to put it on the site. They could host on Youtube and save a lot of wonga instead of having it streamed from their site.

    ReplyDelete