On Channel 5's 'Greatest Blockbusters' talking about 'Fellowship of the Ring'.
I missed it, thanks to the way TV programmes are made for next to no money these days. My appearance was filmed late last year and I was told that it would be broadcast in April and that the TV company, Diverse Productions, would email me to give me a transmission date.
Of course they didn't, which kind of puts the icing on the cake of a rather negative experience. I lost a day's pay to help them with the programme which was filmed here at home, which was OK because I thought it would be a fun experience, and the folks making the programme seemed nice. Alas, I didn't get the 'usual' £50 token fee and assumed when I heard nothing back that the programme had falled into a great black hole somewhere.
I have no idea what was actually transmitted from the footage that was shot. The screenshot above comes courtesy of a chap on one of the Microsoft forums I frequent who recognised me from Microsoft's PDC event last year.
In some ways I guess I'm glad I missed it. The questions asked caused much hilarity from friends (and rightly so - very, very dumbed down) and I kept being asked to 'say something in Elvish' which I refused several times before eventually giving in to pressure and delivering a very weak couple of words (please God, tell me that WASN'T broadcast!)
Anyway this morning I sent a rather stroppy email off to the contact who'd arranged the interview and had promised to tell me when the show would be broadcast. I got back an email saying she'd left the company and to try two other people. So I tried them and got emails back from them saying they'd left the company too.
All symptomatic of our multi-channel, no money TV network these days, I guess. Anybody else hanker for the old days when we just had four channels that everyone watched?
3 comments:
Well I got hold of someone at Diverse Productions today and they're sending me a DVD of the programme so I'm feeling less miffed now than I was this morning.
Thanks for the kind words about my selections having some basis to them. I suspect many might disagree (I am, after all, the only man on the planet who thinks all the Star Wars films - even the originals - are crap!) If I had my own show it wouldn't last a week. We live in a world of mindless yoof culture and reality TV. (Have you seen Charlotte Church's 'chat' show?! Yikes!) Even the godfather of chat shows, Parkinson, has to resort to interviewing the patronising, arrogant and stupid Trinnie and Susannah at peak viewing time on a Saturday night, such is the power of 'the cult of Z-list celebrities'.
Sorry to read your experience... It speaks so badly of an industry that I still think of myself as belonging to...
Mind you, having had so many bad experiences myself, I am, sadly, not surpirsed...
I could mention my famous interview on a BBC5 programme about 'The Magic Roundabout' which I did for £0.00 - even paying my own fares, because they said they really didn't have any money WHATSOVER - and which was then recycled and re-shown on BBC2 and BBC1 and repeated several times but always without anyone ever telling me it was even being screened...
Your condemnation of today's TV is totally justified; that said when you get the DVD -- supposing you ever GET the DVD -- we'll bring the pizzas and come round for a screening!!
The DVD arrived but it's not worth viewing. Aside from the quality drop in being squeezed onto a single disc, which looks REALLY bad on a 50" plasma, it's about 2 minutes (if that) on LOTR and doesn't really say anything or go anywhere.
You are of course welcome to come over to watch a movie some time. There's quite a backlog of them building up :( I'm back in long work days mode at the moment and I have a horrid suspicion I'm going to have to work on Saturday to make sure I meet our launch date, otherwise I'd say if you're free let's make it Saturday.
Hopefully things will ease up a bit in the not too distant future.
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