Putting it on camera where radio loses the message

Press, 2 March 1981, Page 14

Putting it on camera where radio loses the message

F Review

Doug McKenzie

A general build-up for some weeks on an enthusiastic scale about a new TV “season” can only give rise to enthusiastic expectations, and' the flowering must now expect to be judged on its own terms.' Among the much-publi-cised prospective delights has emerged a -news programme for the deaf ■ — or as the corporation calls it, the “hearing-impaired.” Two’s Saturday “News Review” (for the deaf) is . a copy, of course, .of someone else’s idea — in this- case, an , idea from United King don'.television. '' The ,idea is one thing, but the proof of the aural'pudding is in-how it is served up.. Who exactly is the programme aimed at? Is it aimed at the deaf who haven’t thought of reading a newspaper which is. after all, the perfect medium for the deaf — and. who. therefore, almost and: who, therefore, almost by definition, are not only hearing-impaired but also brain-impaired; or is it

aimed at tho.e who have the perfectly natural inclination to see moving pictures with their news? If (as seems more likely) it is for the latter, then, since it is a “review” —■ which is, ip the nature of it, something presented some time after the events portrayed — can. it not be assumed that the viewers, even the deaf ones, have already picked up the general idea about the items screened? The choice of words for the sub-titles on : the news visuals (one only hopes that one has got the technical terms right) are therefore everything in this programme.- - When the Prince and Lady Diana were shown walking in the garden was tit. conceivable that there was anyone in New Zealand who didn’t know, at a glance, who they were and what news events , had brought them on camera together If this is the case why did so much “space” have to be wasted giving their names

and their new relationship and what it was all going to lead to, as though nobody could have guessed. How much better (as a suggestion) to add something around the ' news, something, perhaps interesting, that we didn’t already know. “Lady Diana always looks from under her thatch of hair like that,”, or “Any day now Lady Diana is going to stop looking from under her thatch of hair like that.” Or the commentary could have touched on the monthly average registered number of girlfriends the Prince had had in the five years preceding his engagement. The deaf would hardly have believed their ears. The programme dealt with the dispute at Auckland Airport. “The arrests,” said the sub-titles, "were in full view of the public.” Then the camera panned from arrests being made of picketers to a balcony of people who could well have been members of the public and who were, indeed,

watching the arrests being made. Frankly, we wouldn’t have believed it. "Picketers go in the bus,” said the valuable words on the screen a little later. A bus passed the camera. In it were some men — some smiling and waving, one giving a manual sign of some ambiguity, one looking terribly serious.. Were these the picketers, arid was t..is a bus? It was impossible to know without advice — or so the programme compilers considered. This was a- presentation not so much for the hearing impaired as the sight-defec-tive.