My Worstest Show on TV

OK, so I did my favourite show a few posts back, what's the one I hate the most?

I have to say it's BBC London News (or BBC LDN News as it was until someone realised no-one, repeat no-one, in London ever refers to the city as 'LDN' and the affectation was Very Stupid Indeed).

Now if you watch American local tv news, it tends to be done very well. OK, so the presenters all have superb teeth, hair full of product and sit ever-so-slightly too close to each other... but the news is a big rating thing over there, usually cut-throat competition between local channels, and is therefore well-produced, presented and full of wham-bam action. Indeed it's often called Action News. Or ActionNewsChannel7, from the KXYZNewsCenter with AccueForecast(TM) WeatherView. Now that sounds more exciting than taking the vowels out of our capital city's name, doesn't it?

BBC London News isn't exciting. Ever. It comes from a hilariously dull studio, a chair next to a red box with the programme name on it and a sheet of plastic blurring out the (probably sound asleep) journos behind it.

The journalistic content makes me scream at the telly. It's polictically correct to the point of absurdity, often leading on stories like the other night, some nice old lady in Hackney talking to gangs about not stabbing each other. Is that the most important thing to happen in the capital city of this nation? Really? My old boss Legendary Tabloid Editor used to say... well, say unrepeatable things about how crap the journalism was in British local tv, no ambition, laziness, dreadful priorities, liberal hand-wringing nicey-nicey... sure you get the gist. "This is THE most exciting and vibrant city in the whole fucking WORLD and that namby-pamby crap is supposed to be the news here? FUCK. OFF. Then come back and fuck off some more."

He dismissed the traditional view - that the national news filch all the big London stories anyway so the local boys have nothing to report - by paging through the Evening Standard and reading out snippets (in typical Gotcha! tabloidese) of things that sounded like great stories.

Mr Boss was also a born'n'bred Londonder and said that people in Brockley loved to hear of crime in, say, Canning Town, as London was such a mix of huge rivalries between the areas. I pointed out London was now populated more by people from all over the UK and the world, not the city itself, so the rivalries would eventually die out, and I was amazed when he agreed with me. I say agreed - "good point, boy... badly made, appallingly presented, but fair play, good point", he said, as he toddled off in search of someone else to monster.

Anyway, back to BBC London NoActionNews. Dull items, badly chosen, produced and edited... all hindered by horrible music, that Border-TV-from-the-70's style set and presenters who are barely adequate (one guy, Kurt Barley, is almost comedically Alan Partridge-ly bad) - even the fairly anemic London Tonight on ITV is better, even if it always seems to me that Alistair Stewart is looking down the dress of his usually much younger co-presenter lady.

But even worse than the 6:30 half-hour London news is the five-minuter after the ten o'clock news. They can't even be arsed to change anything, it's almost always the same non-news cut up smaller.

Tragic.