The ultimate 'we're f****d and we know we are' advert
Running on various commercial channels at the moment is this ad for TV advertising. With this we are, I think, deep into the realm of pathos. The correct thing to have done with ITV would have been a forced merger, probably around the time of the ludicrous franchise auction of the 1990 Broadcasting Act. It is the traditional 'we cannot allow British companies to merge, we must keep them separate so we can have faux competition, it doesn't matter that they are owned by overseas companies as long as they are owned by different overseas companies' theory again. The obvious counter-arguments are i) this would have just allowed them to have achieved a bigger and better cock-up, probably American .com related. The average British manager of that era was not very bright and easily taken in (things have, I think, improved, if only because camel-hair-coat-manager's generation has retired by now) ii) Those fine British aggregations BL and ICL
I am with Charlie Brooker on this one, TV has had a nervous breakdown and is sitting in the corner shaking. The only things I can face, more or less, are police procedurals and the news. You know where you are with police or $police$ procedurals, you just know that anything higher concept is going to be a big disappointment.
