To the publisher of ‘What’s on TV’,
Would you please explain why, each week, my telly magazine is full of flyers and bogus bingo cards? I want to buy a guide to the week’s televisual delights, not a JML reject catalogue full of heated slippers and gnomes that glow in the dark.
I pluck ‘What’s on TV’ from the shelf and a plethora of pamphlets fall around my feet: Amazing Capsule for Partial Deafness; Getting a leg up just got a step easier with a Hippo Step Stool; Mop smarter, not harder with the Spin-Dry Mop System. Don’t you think there are enough adverts inside the pages without throwing in a handful of loose extras? Just this week, there were seventeen pages of advertisements. Seventeen! I can’t imagine why anyone would want to buy a fleece decorated with a wolf’s face but, if they did, why would a TV guide be their first port of call?
OK, OK, maybe I’m being harsh; I guess that you need the money that comes in from flogging fish pies and supersoft comfort trainers and life insurance vouched for by Michael Parkinson (I guess he’s missing that chat show salary). I’ll even concede that the regular income from the busty lovelies on page 86 probably comes in handy when discussing cash flow with the bank manager, but why, oh why, do you further sully your handily-cheap publication with disposable, fly-away tat?
Don’t you people know that we’re in the middle of a global climate crisis caused by increased carbon dioxide in the air? Do you know what creates these emissions? Factories and machines like the ones used to print the junk mail stowed away in your magazine! We’re all supposed to know and practice our three Rs these days, but how can I Reduce, Reuse and Recycle your shiny, foil-covered interlopers? It’s not like I can send them in to the Blue Peter appeal.
All those trees, wasted! Think of all the wonderful things that they could have been turned into: the next novel in the Twilight saga, perhaps, or entry forms for this year’s X Factor. What lost opportunities!
How many trees have been felled so that you can increase your advertising revenue selling plastic birdbaths and singing fish?
I suggest you ask yourself that very question before stuffing next week’s edition full of adverts for casual loafers and pull-on trousers.
Yours faithfully,
Lynne Thomas.
I like your complaint but fear that it is fundamentally incorrect insofar as, ‘TV OK’ are responsible for the magazine, NOT whatever may be inserted in it prior to sale.
They have no control over what goes in their magazine? I find that VERY hard to believe!
I love this letter, it’s brilliant. In reply to the comment above, the advertising sales team for TV OK are indeed responsible for what is inserted into the publication. If ever you are trying to place an insert into a magazine you have to send a sample of the literature for approval before they agree to charge you many thousands of pounds for the pointless privilege of doing so. There are lots of criteria that you have to fulfil, but, rather bizarely, not selling a total pile of junk is not one of them.
I agree wholeheartedly with the comments in this letter. I for one can attest to the terible nature of the incessant, unstoppable and mind numbing plethora of gadgets and gizmos that have as much use, point and place in my life as the TV itself.
Having said that I am, or rather have been, tempted and fascinated by some of the products advertised. Even now I feel sorely tempted by a “spin dry mop system”; not to mention the “Hippo Step Stool” as I do find my mirror rather hard to reach.
I wonder if they do a funny shaped blue hat?
I agree these adverts are a pain and pointless. A pain because I find the adverts, which have fallen out, weeks later under my sofa, in my bedroom, in my bathroom everywhere. They are pointless because who buys the things advertised? That may be an interesting research piece – explore the demographics of peeps who purchese.
Here Here, a very well written letter, I totally agree with what is said. I understand that to subsudise magazines they encourage advertisement but please, give us a break from all the rubbish thats in them at the moment.
Why anyone would want to purchase a fleece kact with the head of a wolf on is beyond me – how horrid.
can you please tell me why you put programs like midsomer murders on at 1600hrs when the children are home from school, i watched Fridays episode and counted six or more swear words.my six year old grandson was in the same room and asked what the words meant. surly you could beep these words out or not show it till later.
On saturday 30th june 2012 on bbc 1 my tv magazine says casualty is on at 9:10pm i went to switch my telly on and it said casualty was on at 9:20. When it became 9:20 it all changed so casualty wasnt on. Why do you put it on the telly book wen it isnt on? Also it is avertised in the tv book of saying someone is joining casualty i suggest that next time the write programs are on be for putting them into the tv guid books
yours faithfully
emily morris