TV Shock Sensation - Show Goes Entirely To Plan

 I have commented recently about crap clickbait headlines in local online "newspapers", such as this one about a non-existent Big Cat Peril. We have come to expect this sort of lazy, regurgitated journalism on such sites. But surely the national press have higher standards? Perhaps not the tabloids but the heavyweights that pride themselves on their ethics and principles? 

Wrong again. Here is a story in The Independent about a certain well-known TV show. For those who have recently immigrated from Tharg,  the Great British Bake-Off is a sequence of knockout competitions in which 12 amateur bakers are eliminated, one a week, until three remain to contest the final. Let me repeat this simple format. They are regularly eliminated. Now look at the press snippet

I glanced over the body of the story. I thought, yes, well, maybe out of the five million or so who watched, perhaps a goodly portion - say one million, had swamped the Channel 4 switchboard to register their contumely and demand the reinstatement of the wronged cake maestro. Of course, that the show was filmed several months ago, and the outcome long since determined, does not need to be brought into account.  Alas, the hoped-for images of crowds thronging the streets around the studios, holding flaming torches, waving pitchforks and demanding the exile of the Head of Creativity (yes, her again) were strangely absent. So too were any details of the numbers of these stunned viewers. In fact, it seems reasonable to infer that absolutely nobody at all was "stunned" that a TV show based on weekly eliminations eliminated a contestant. Upset at the premature departure of a favourite, certainly. Perhaps irritated at the show's format which bases the ejections on the performance of the week and does not take into account past successes. But this has been how it has worked since the first series. Nobody, except our Thargian friends, could possibly be left aghast, struggling for breath, weeping with frustration and shock, rushing to social media to set up a support group and begin crowd-funding a legal campaign.

Had the Independent gone with "GBBO - some viewers unhappy with this week's elimination but most shrugged it off", I would have had no quibble at the accuracy of their reporting. As it is, I feel cheated because I took the time ( a few moments out of my busy lifestyle, as one might say who knew nothing about me) to glance down the article before realising the vapidity of the content and then reaching for my trusty keyboard to hammer out this piece. And that is as far as I wish to take it.