Saturday, September 29, 2007

Jeremy Kyle Show was funded by the taxpayer

The other day I reported a judicial hoofing of the Jeremy Kyle Show. Things have moved on since then.

First, I inspired Tampon Teabag (I know, I know) to write a much longer post dissecting the awful spectacle.

Second, according to the BBC:

The government-backed sponsors of The Jeremy Kyle Show have cancelled their £500,000-a-year deal over concerns about its content.

Ufi, which runs the Learndirect adult learning service, said continuing the deal would not "protect and enhance" its reputation.

The report goes on to say:

A spokesperson for the government's communications body, the Central Office of Information (COI), said: "The criticism of the show - sparked by Judge Alan Berg's remarks earlier this week - means that both Ufi and the COI consider it no longer appropriate for Learndirect to be associated with the programme."
But why was public money being used to sponsor crap like this in the first place? It was never appropriate. It didn't suddenly become inappropriate when a case originating out of the show came before a judge and he said what is obvious to anyone who has watched it.

2 comments:

Larry Teabag said...

There is a legal requirement to state that you "know" after writing the name of my blog - glad to see you're sticking to it.

Cheers for the link anyhow. Do you reckon we can build a hugse cross-spectrum alliance against this bastard, à la Usmanov?

Andy said...

> But why was public money being used to sponsor crap like this in the first place?

Because the whole purpose of learndirect is to ensnare people who lack basic literacy / numeracy skills into signing up to learn them.

In other words, television produced by, for and about morons is the perfect place to advertise a service that exists to make them slightly less moronic.

Learndirect's boss should be making this case, albeit using a slightly more polite form of words, instead of reacting as a business would if it had advertised purely from the point of view of brand building.