Media: Too much knowledge is a dangerous thing

People are cottoning on to media producers' sharp tricks and won't play the game anymore.

THE MEDIA has made itself a monster: a population so media literate that producers are finding ordinary people as hard to control as Frankenstein's fiendish creation.

There are some who will say that broadcasters only have themselves to blame - you cannot sprinkle stardust in the eyes of "ordinary people" and expect them to behave like meek camera fodder.

Witness this week's news that those at the Adelphi Hotel in Liverpool, which stars in the BBC docu-soap Hotel, are no longer happy to be placidly taped, edited and packaged into engaging televisual nuggets for the entertainment of the viewing public.

Negotiations on a second series had been ongoing since the start of the year but, according to the trade magazine Broadcast, these have now foundered on the hotel owners' insistence on some level of editorial control.

The producers have walked away. Jeremy Mills, executive producer of the programme, said: "We spent some time talking to them, and would have liked to have done a second series, but they decided they wanted some control and no broadcaster is going to give them that."

The demise of such a successful series in this way is emblematic of the difficulties broadcasters face as the black arts of programme-making have been increasingly revealed to an eager public.

Radio producers, for example, are being out-foxed by media-literate listeners who know how to win radio competitions every time.

Sly punters have learnt that a producer likes to put a few amusing wrong answers on the air before the winning entrant. Hence, it is not uncommon now to have callers give the producer a silly, off-the-wall answer in order to get on air. When live, they surprise the producer by delivering the correct answer, leaving the presenter with no choice but to give them the prize.

Matt Hall, editor of afternoon programmes at BBC GLR 94.9 FM, used to run a four-part Connection Challenge quiz programme. "We would try to spin it out. Put someone hopelessly wrong on the air first, then after another record someone who had the first part of the answer only, then the next two bits, and eventually the whole connection."

"Sometimes the first person on air will have known the answer all the time, and you have lost your feature for the next 20 minutes," he says.

Similar tricks are being used to get round TV producers. In Superstore, a BBC2 docu-soap about a supermarket that was transmitted earlier this year, the manager is said to have deliberately worn a different tie every day to avoid separate interviews being cross-cut at the editing stage, and the possibility of his being quoted out of context.

Other stories include people insisting on smoking cigarettes throughout interviews to cause continuity problems for editors wanting to link the first bit of one answer with the second bit of another delivered later in the interview.

"These days, even your mother knows what a cutaway is," says Paul Woolwich, executive producer of Channel 5's What's the Story?, referring to the technique directors would use for such a link if the differing lengths of cigarette did not make it impossible to do seamlessly.

"And `noddies', and `establishers'; people are much more aware of the whole thing. They know that the way to get on a docu-soap is to be a `character', because producers do not just want ordinary people doing ordinary things," he says.

The problem of people acting up to the cameras in these situations has led some producers to abandon south-east England, where it is worst. Kathy O'Neil, at Independent ZKK, says: "It makes a huge difference where you are in the country. We made a film in Wakefield last year and they were completely natural; even the kids did not play up to the cameras."

The problem is that even if your subjects, like those in Hotel, start natural, they soon learn the game. Which is why some docu-soap "stars" are now embarking on full-blown media careers complete with publicity photographs and agents.

The head of factual programmes at Channel 4, Steve Hewlett, says: "People are starting to realise that they can turn a trick in those circumstances. If you are going to be on prime-time BBC1, in front of 12 million people for eight weeks, there is some potential in personal marketing."

Amanda Thompson, one of the main characters in the BBC's Blackpool Pleasure Beach docu-soap, got a press agent before the show went out, to capitalise on the exposure. She has since been in Hello! magazine and done other TV. Driving School's Maureen Rees is also keeping nicely busy.

Such a development is not always welcome: "You do not really want to be making stars of these people. That defeats the point. The recent Radio Times cover that featured docu-soap stars sits uneasily. This is a big issue and it is going to get bigger," says one independent producer.

That looks assured now, as the Broadcasting Standards Commission is considering a research report on the subject of informed consent, looking at the whole question of how the general public gets involved in television, and what issues arise.

The question of final editorial control is likely to be one issue. The researchers could also conclude, however, as some TV airtime specialists have, that instead of worrying about how they appear, subjects might be better advised to get on with cashing in.

According to this analysis, the Adelphi Hotel should have embraced its celebrity role and adapted its sales strategy accordingly, positioning itself as a minor, Disney-style attraction offering guests the thrill of possible stardom. Merchandising deals could have been struck on a range of Liverpool Adelphi hand towels and bath robes, and lucrative sponsorship deals could have been secured with suppliers scrambling to have their goods on air. "Got the T-shirt, seen the film, stayed in the hotel."

Test your knowledge: are you a media-literate punter? What do the following TV directors' short-hand expressions refer to? Answers below.

Cutaway; two-shot; noddy; establisher; eye-line; jump cut; crossing the line.

Cutaway: a shot of something near to a subject which is used as a link between two different shots of the subject that are inconsistent in some way.

Two-shot: a shot with two people in it.

Noddy: a cutaway of the interviewee's face.

Establisher: a general view of a location used to start a sequence Eye- line: the direction a person is facing on screen - left or right.

Jump cut: a cut between two shots of the same thing at different times in a way that breaks continuity.

Crossing the line: editing shots so that the flow of action across the screen switches direction and confuses viewers.