BBC Cliffhanger promo

The point is, it wasn't

The point is, you specifically said "How can anyone justify complaining about a piece of dramatic art". The clear, unambiguous statement you were making is that nobody has any justification for complaining about dramatic art - so I provided a hypothetical example to test your theory.

anyone could see that the people on the sofa represented the people watching a drama on the BBC from the comfort of their own home. There was nothing upsetting about it

Classic self-centred view - "The intention was obvious to *me*, and *I* didn't find it upsetting, therefore it is inconceivable that anybody else would".

Sorry mate, but there are 55,000,000 other people in this country, and you can't assume that any of them will share the same opinions and attitudes as you.

And since when have we been supposed to accept dramatic art without question?

I never said that we had to do that

To repeat - you said "How can anyone justify complaining about a piece of dramatic art".

So what precisely were you saying? If, in your opinion, we can't justify complaining about dramatic art, what are we supposed to do? Accept it without question?

Those people, quite frankly, need to get out more. You see worse things on other TV programmes. Why is it that shows like 'When Good Times Go Bad' or something, people never bat an eyelid yet it is real-life

You have to understand the difference between potentially upsetting elements in programmes, and potentially upsetting elements in promos.

Viewers have access to a lot of information about programmes. They know what time they're coming on, they probably know what to expect in terms of content. The name of the programme, the title sequence, whatever the announcer might have said while introducing it - they all prepare the viewer for the kind of programme they are about to experience, and a conscious choice can be made about whether or not to watch it.

Viewers have time to make a judgement about whether it's the kind of programme they want to watch and can switch off before they see anything that might upset them or that they might consider inappropriate for other members of their family (i.e. young children).

Promos, on the other hand, come out of thin air. They are unannounced, they just happen, and viewers may end up seeing something that is inappropriate or that upsets them or others in the room, *without* having had a chance to switch over or take some other action to ameliorate the upset.

The ITC is very hot on this. They *always* take the position that viewers make a conscious choice to watch programmes and normally exercise some kind of control over the programmes their children watch, but they cannot choose or exercise control over promos, because of their random and unannounced nature.

Hence, there are many things that can quite legally be included in a programme but which, if also included in the *promo* for that programme, would cause that promo to be a prima facie breach of ITC regulations.

I think this emphasises that different people have different levels of critical faculties.

Those of us who are used to looking for profound "underlying meaning" in things probably "got" the promo on the first view and found it quite funny.

Those of us who take a more literalist approach would have found it offensive and distressing.

Both entirely valid methods in their own way, but whoever thought up the promo was evidently working under the presumption that EVERYONE thinks in the former way, which they don't. The same goes for a great many adverts on television.

This isn't anything to do with intelligence, by the way, it's to do with a different way of approaching critical analysis.

I can understand why some people would have taken offence, then, but I would have thought it would have been OK post-watershed. The lack of a warning before it may be a red herring, since you can switch channel at anytime and "accidentally" see something distressing without expecting it which may have had a warning before it began, which you didn't see... this is all part of watching television.

The lack of a warning before it may be a red herring since you can switch channel at anytime and "accidentally" see something distressing without expecting it

That is an entirely different matter. Switching channels and just happening to fall upon (say) a close-up shot of open-heart surgery is *not* the same thing as watching a promo from the beginning, being drawn into its storyline, and only realising too late that you're being led down a path that you may not like.

I can understand why people who do not work in broadcasting have little conception of the subtleties of these sorts of distinctions, but distinctions they are, and they are enormously important.

Oh I love these sites, they're hours of hilarious reading pleasure, especially when bored. It's hard to imagine these complain-o-matic people actually exist, but there's the proof.

Another site you may wish to visit is the BBC IT Help Message Board, with people who are supposed to be over 16; yet post gems such as "wot is a virus scanna" and "y is microsoft publisher the best program 4 making webpages wif" God help them when they recieve their exam results.

I think that it was the portrayal of the couple on the sofa that many people found offensive.

As there was implied interaction between the couple and the "victim", it was also a poor advert . Surely showing the couple trying to save the "victim" would have been better, implying that the program really got the viewer involved in the story.

Just my 2 eurocents worth

Stuart