perfidy

God bless the lowly search function. I knew that, at some time in the past, Minister Johno had admitted his admiration for the Mexican soap opera.

Due to my advancing years, it helps, of course, that said admission happened within the last three months, but never mind that. I remembered.

And while it wasn't the key point of his missive, or even anything other than a footnote, the second of many such footnotes, it caused me to stop and pay attention to a story in today's Wall Street Journal, entitled "With Sexy Story Lines, Low Budgets, News Corp. Will Launch MyNetworkTV" (sadly, unless I get lucky by linking to the "print" page, subscription required).

Now, my entire exposure to the Mexican soap opera can be found in old episodes of "Whose Line Is It Anyway?", when Ryan Stiles was called upon to do improvisations on such things, and always made his point by using his hands to simulate having big, bouncy, heaving sweater puppets. So I, perhaps more than the average normal reader, was taken by the phrasing used by Brooks Barnes in describing the upcoming offering from News Corp. To wit:

Every time News Corp. launches a new television business, it turns to programming that entrenched players decry as schlocky and culturally debasing. Then, in many cases, the company starts printing money.

What? This sounds like fun, even for a guy who's got perhaps two TV shows he watches with any regularity. The article continues:

On Tuesday, Roger Ailes, chairman of News Corp.'s Fox Television Stations, will flip the switch on MyNetworkTV, a new broadcast network that will feature a novel format for mainstream U.S. television: Super-sexy -- and super-cheap -- prime-time soap operas that air six nights a week for limited runs.

It's an over-the-top format borrowed from Spanish-language broadcasters. While story lines on American soaps can drag on for years, Spanish soaps, or telenovelas, deliver immediate gratification. They wrap everything up after 13 weeks, offer a cliffhanger in each episode and culminate with shocking finales that can rack up Super Bowl-size ratings -- just the formula that MyNetwork hopes to duplicate.

U.S. viewers may be jolted by the style and content of the two shows MyNetwork is rolling out next week -- "Desire" and "Fashion House." But "Fox has a way of turning unsophisticated, simplistic programming into a success," says Laura Caraccioli-Davis, an executive vice president at ad-buying firm Starcom Entertainment. She adds: "And this is definitely unsophisticated."

(emphasis, of course, mine)

I'm not sure if they're trying to up the sophistication, or to provide full employment for second-tier talent in Hollywood (neither of which would offend me, nor would they improve my quality of life), but their approach might provide something to help waste more of Johno's increasingly limited free time:

MyNetwork has largely hired actors with limited experience. And in another bid to save money, it is buying telenovela scripts from Mexico, Cuba and other Spanish-speaking countries and translating them into English. It employs a staff of writers to smooth out the story lines and winnow the shows down to 65 episodes from 120, and taping is done on union soundstages well outside the Hollywood infrastructure in San Diego.

Schlock TV, but now in English, with "smoother" story lines, and shorter runs. What more could we ask for in mindless entertainment?

And it's not that I have a problem with mindless TV. Perhaps I'm the only guy who remembers a feature that used to be on (the Comedy Channel? - heck, it might still be on for all I know), called Short Attention Span Theater. Reading the plot development for one episode, SAST was the first thing that came to mind, minus the alleged comedy:

The plot points are rapid-fire. "Desire" is the tale of two brothers who are on the run from the Mafia and happen to be in love with the same woman; one brother sleeps with two different women, dodges a spray of bullets and escapes from an exploding building -- and that's just in the opening 10 minutes of the first episode.

For those rare cases when I'm in the mood to watch crap (and of course, sometimes I am), I prefer that it be really efficiently delivered crap, so that I can either watch twice as much in the allotted time, or spend half as much time watching it.

News Corp to the rescue, it would seem. And I'm rather looking forward to seeing just how bad this stuff can possibly be.

[wik] This all reminds me - I really miss MST3K. Is it still shown anywhere on cable?

[alsø wik] I was surprised to preview this story and see the phrase "...fuck, it might still be on for all I know", and came back here to the entry to find out if I had suffered Tourette's Syndrome. Nope - I typed "h e c k". Honest. Blogging software is amazing, no?