Carpet Burns
If you like all things colourful, intricately woven, flat and underfoot, the carpet channel is just for you. Yes, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, carpets. Not, you may think, a channel full of interesting cultural documentaries about their history and the exotic places from which they come, or of the communities who dedicate their lives through choice or circumstance to be the creators of such desirable masterpieces. No, in fact it’s just one of the many exciting programs to be found on the many TV channels broadcast to the Italian population. This one merely displays rugs hung in a badly lit studio with a cheesy salesman, sorry I mean show host and auctioneer, doing his best to increase the monetary figure that appears all fuzzy at the bottom of the TV screen in an early 1970s font.
Fascinating don’t you think? Should have huge ratings, can’t imagine why they haven’t exported it further a field.
Whenever I have the irresistible urge to pause there during the endless tuning and flicking through the huge choice of class entertainment that’s on offer, even if only for a few seconds (honestly), what I find intriguing is that it’s always the same cheesy guy in the same cheesy suit and indeed what seems to be in fact the same cheesy carpet hanging behind him, and the fuzzy price doesn’t seem to have increased at all. It may well be a well-worn repeat (the carpet too) but I’m not sad enough to watch it for long enough to see the credits roll. If I did it would be one of those rare occasions of welcome relief and excitement to see the adverts, and I’d probably decide to wait for part two before rushing off to the kitchen to put the kettle on. Mind you, these would more than likely be well placed ad campaigns selling vacuum cleaners and good old Shake’n’Vac, not to mention the marketing-savy Rugs-R-Us buying time to demonstrate their new range of toupees.
Who watches this crap is anyone’s guess, so I’m going to do just that. I guess its people who really get-off on floor furniture, so much so that it gets on the walls too. They probably like gambling but have never done so and are too lazy (or rich) to be bothered with going down to Carpet-U-Like like the rest of us to feel, first hand, the fine quality of that imported nylon-polyester-static-electricity machined wall to wall foam-backed fabric. They are missing out on that rubbery new carpet smell too! They probably also daydream about hanging carpets on their walls, so that other rug lovers can gloat over how much they must have cost, and of the day they strike it lucky, and rich, by buying an old rag which turns out to be the one Aladdin used to get about on.
Alternatively, maybe they’re just like me, found themselves with time on their hands and so bored that they easily get hooked on remote control surfing. Actually I’m an even worse case scenario because my communal kitchen’s TV is, not surprisingly, a late 70s portable model requiring the old fashioned method of changing channel by leaving ones seat to adjust the aerial.
I can’t help but wonder at how they make money to run a station like that or indeed whether they do in fact sell these rugs, I mean that rug, and who is buying? I’d say the most lucrative time slot would be the post-pub night shift, (pre soft porn show) where the alcohol has a way of convincing even the scrooges amongst us that its time to whip out the plastic, even though come morning you’ll know you did something you regret and will feel somewhat burnt.
Rugs aren’t the only ones to get their own TV show, there is also a 24 hour show about loosing weight using electronic pads slapped on all over. This one has slightly higher production values than Carpet Channel since it uses three people and an extra couple of lights. There is still a cheesy show host but this time he’s wearing a white lab coat and his two assistants are sat behind him grinning inanely in trunks and bikinis with fake tans and rubber suckers placed in the wobbly regions. Maybe it's not about weight loss at all but a home movie of a recent visit to the local sanatorium.
Now there’s an opening for a new show which I know would just pull the ratings, if only they'd combine the two shows, they’d have it all ... A scantily clad couple on shag pile rug demonstrating a new rubber antistatic weight loss programme workout, shaking ‘n’ vac’ing… Actually I think it probably does already exists and comes on in the wee hours post sobering up but pre hangover.
"Rug Lovers" - Introducing balding men to the new (old) way to get a head…
Another thing that is immensely annoying when it comes to watching any of the available three hundred and eighty-four plus television stations, is the way they return to the programme following the commercial break but then immediately say "see you next week, thanks for watching" and roll the credits. Then you have to sit through the commercial break all over again by which time you’ve whittled away the best part of twenty minutes.
God bless the BBC.
Which reminds me, and since I’ve mentioned the 70’s several times, a kids show that used to really annoy me when I was knee-high to a grasshopper was called "Why don't you?" It was an understandably shortened name for "Why don't you switch off the television set and go and do something less boring instead?" A phrase with which they always began the programme by shouting out loud. So why didn’t I do just that, why did I continue to watch it until the end? How did a programme survive when it was effectively telling its audience that they were stupid to stay watching something that even the presenters had said was boring? Never worked that one out. Later, in the evenings, however there was a programme that succeeded in getting kids to switch off, it was called "John Craven's Newsround", you knew then it was time for tea.
Fascinating don’t you think? Should have huge ratings, can’t imagine why they haven’t exported it further a field.
Whenever I have the irresistible urge to pause there during the endless tuning and flicking through the huge choice of class entertainment that’s on offer, even if only for a few seconds (honestly), what I find intriguing is that it’s always the same cheesy guy in the same cheesy suit and indeed what seems to be in fact the same cheesy carpet hanging behind him, and the fuzzy price doesn’t seem to have increased at all. It may well be a well-worn repeat (the carpet too) but I’m not sad enough to watch it for long enough to see the credits roll. If I did it would be one of those rare occasions of welcome relief and excitement to see the adverts, and I’d probably decide to wait for part two before rushing off to the kitchen to put the kettle on. Mind you, these would more than likely be well placed ad campaigns selling vacuum cleaners and good old Shake’n’Vac, not to mention the marketing-savy Rugs-R-Us buying time to demonstrate their new range of toupees.
Who watches this crap is anyone’s guess, so I’m going to do just that. I guess its people who really get-off on floor furniture, so much so that it gets on the walls too. They probably like gambling but have never done so and are too lazy (or rich) to be bothered with going down to Carpet-U-Like like the rest of us to feel, first hand, the fine quality of that imported nylon-polyester-static-electricity machined wall to wall foam-backed fabric. They are missing out on that rubbery new carpet smell too! They probably also daydream about hanging carpets on their walls, so that other rug lovers can gloat over how much they must have cost, and of the day they strike it lucky, and rich, by buying an old rag which turns out to be the one Aladdin used to get about on.
Alternatively, maybe they’re just like me, found themselves with time on their hands and so bored that they easily get hooked on remote control surfing. Actually I’m an even worse case scenario because my communal kitchen’s TV is, not surprisingly, a late 70s portable model requiring the old fashioned method of changing channel by leaving ones seat to adjust the aerial.
I can’t help but wonder at how they make money to run a station like that or indeed whether they do in fact sell these rugs, I mean that rug, and who is buying? I’d say the most lucrative time slot would be the post-pub night shift, (pre soft porn show) where the alcohol has a way of convincing even the scrooges amongst us that its time to whip out the plastic, even though come morning you’ll know you did something you regret and will feel somewhat burnt.
Rugs aren’t the only ones to get their own TV show, there is also a 24 hour show about loosing weight using electronic pads slapped on all over. This one has slightly higher production values than Carpet Channel since it uses three people and an extra couple of lights. There is still a cheesy show host but this time he’s wearing a white lab coat and his two assistants are sat behind him grinning inanely in trunks and bikinis with fake tans and rubber suckers placed in the wobbly regions. Maybe it's not about weight loss at all but a home movie of a recent visit to the local sanatorium.
Now there’s an opening for a new show which I know would just pull the ratings, if only they'd combine the two shows, they’d have it all ... A scantily clad couple on shag pile rug demonstrating a new rubber antistatic weight loss programme workout, shaking ‘n’ vac’ing… Actually I think it probably does already exists and comes on in the wee hours post sobering up but pre hangover.
"Rug Lovers" - Introducing balding men to the new (old) way to get a head…
Another thing that is immensely annoying when it comes to watching any of the available three hundred and eighty-four plus television stations, is the way they return to the programme following the commercial break but then immediately say "see you next week, thanks for watching" and roll the credits. Then you have to sit through the commercial break all over again by which time you’ve whittled away the best part of twenty minutes.
God bless the BBC.
Which reminds me, and since I’ve mentioned the 70’s several times, a kids show that used to really annoy me when I was knee-high to a grasshopper was called "Why don't you?" It was an understandably shortened name for "Why don't you switch off the television set and go and do something less boring instead?" A phrase with which they always began the programme by shouting out loud. So why didn’t I do just that, why did I continue to watch it until the end? How did a programme survive when it was effectively telling its audience that they were stupid to stay watching something that even the presenters had said was boring? Never worked that one out. Later, in the evenings, however there was a programme that succeeded in getting kids to switch off, it was called "John Craven's Newsround", you knew then it was time for tea.
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