E! Entertainment (DStv 120) seems to think its audience and target market in South Africa are idiots -so much self-imposed censorship!, so much blurring!, so much blackout! - and ironically on the Kim K channel which has made the business of shameless self-promotion its business.
It's highly irritating to watch something like the weekday E! News or inserts on E! Entertainment and have multiple "news" bits blatantly bleeped, blubbed, flubbed and blurred out.
It's highly ironic, since what that blocked out news is - the name of a TV channel, or magazine, or starting date or cover date for a publication - is the news and popular culture titbits which viewers would presumably tune to E! Entertainment for in the first place. (South Africans on MultiChoice's DStv receive the UK feed from the American-based channel through Universal Networks International.)
E! News often carries what we in the biz call derivative news segments: so-and-so has talked to so-and-so (an outlet or media platform, like a magazine like Vanity Fair). Then when the new quote attribution happens - for instance an image of the new issue of Vanity Fair, or its name, or both, are blurred and bleeped out. Exactly as if South African viewers live in an isolationist pop culture bubble.
Further irony: It was channels such as E! Entertainment which helped to grow and sustain the obsession with American pop culture and making its popular culture the de facto global celebrity culture in the first place - pumping it to South Africa and around the world. Yet South African viewers it seems are only good enough for a half-baked, lobotomised version these days.
If E! Entertainment and Universal Networks International have ever heard of the word (shhh) ... internet ... they will know that when they blur out: "The second season of The X Factor will start on [censored] on [censored]" that viewers who tune to E! Entertainment in the first place, very likely already know the words "Monday" and "Fox" were blocked out. Why take it out if you know you're competing with information streams who are not shy about giving it all to viewers and readers?
While viewers with a high affinity and interest in these things and content are simply shaking their heads and laughing at E! Entertainment and the weird blurring / beeping / sound silence, its the channel itself which comes across as somewhat archaic and out of touch. And it wasn't always this way.
E! Entertainment launched in South Africa without blurring and without blackouts - which suddenly crept in much more and became much more pronounced since last year.
I don't Twitter - but please E! Entertainment, stop blurring out twitter handles for those viewers who care.
Stop taking out starting dates for the new shows for the new upcoming American fall season as if we don't know it exist. Stop completely botching the real little bit of actual journalism of quote attribution by refusing to show or let it be heard who and what the sources of stories are - the magazines, websites and names of people.
A new on-screen image for E! Entertainment - coming months later to South Africa after its roll-out in America and only one press release and nothing else to explain it - again makes the entertainment channel just seem way behind the times.
It's funny (and not the ha-ha kind) that in an era where a TV channel such as E! Entertainment has to fight stronger and harder than ever before to maintain a form of relevance and keep and grow audiences and audience share with the vast explosion of deep coverage of entertainment and entertainment news, that it making it offering seem at times, half-baked.
A new on-air image isn't what makes a TV channel better - its the content. Less blurring, less blotting, less "oh is something now wrong with the volume or sound on my TV?" is what will make E! Entertainment look and sound so much better.
