If you live
in the UK, you can’t avoid knowing about its morning magazine shows. Like most
countries they are filled with nonsense and are designed to be light-hearted
entertainment. They provide the usual including brief run downs of the day’s news,
phone ins and guests and different segments usually on a yearly rotation.
So, you get
the gist, it’s mainly background noise, and these types of programs are
inoffensive which is fine, they have to put something on in the mornings, but
why the hell can’t they work a full week. Every Friday they have to get guest
presenters. For absolutely no reason other then they can. One program (called
Lorraine) is on for one hour the other program (This Morning) is on for two and
a half hours. So why can’t they cope doing a full week. Yes, I know they have
production meetings etc. to go to and work outside of the broadcast, but I can’t
see it being the same as putting in eight days on an oil rig. Plus, they get all
school holidays off. Is it too much to ask that they do a five-day week, after
all it is their job that’s what they are paid to do and paid fairly decently. If
they want to do other presenting jobs, then fine but why should the audience
get stuck with the B team every Friday. I mean no offence to the B team but there’s
reasons why they are haven’t got the gig fulltime. It can be completely random sometimes
who you get. Sometimes you get grinning morons who laugh at everything and have
zero authenticity.
I know where
not working Fridays came from. Many years ago a top breakfast DJ at the time
had a hit program which aired live on Friday evenings and due to his popularity
and power was able to get a contract which stated he didn’t have to work on his
radio show on Fridays, so he could work on his TV program. It was continued
with other presenters because they also had other jobs at the weekend, but if
your job is to present a daily magazine show you have to be expected to turn up
for all five days. If you want to do other jobs, then you should be expected to
fit them in in your own time. If I was stacking selves at Tesco’s I couldn’t
say to the manager “I need Fridays off to go work for ASDA, but you still need
to pay me for Fridays”.
If you don’t
want to do the five days then don’t apply for the job, there’s no presenter at
the moment who can wield that kind of power (that would do morning TV) or who
can guarantee such high ratings, we are talking about morning TV after all. So
please can the TV companies stop pandering to these demands. Being a TV
presenter is a privileged job that few get the opportunity to do and is rewarded
lucratively. Asking to do a full week shouldn’t be such a hardship.
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