Carnivalesque

What did I spend my time doing this weekend?

I went to the fun fair and tried to find ANN 7 (Africa News Network) bloopers on YouTube. Besides both being highly entertaining, these two activities may or may not be related (I'm still exploring the parallels). Anyway, when I thought of writing a blog post the two seemed to fit together nicely. So anyway, here is my weekend round-up.

I was super excited to ride the carousel and attempt to capture the carnivalesque and the colour with my camera. The great thing about being at a fun fair and having a kid is, that you can get away with sitting on a carousel, laughing your head off and no one gives you funny looks.

Back to ANN 7 then. I haven't owned a TV since 2009 and haven't missed it at all, until about two weeks ago when ANN 7 launched. This has been the first time that I have felt deprived of entertainment, probably because I couldn't catch up on the hype by googling it as the sneaky buggers from the Gupta/Zuma empire have been paying a lot of money to have it removed off YouTube on the grounds of copyright breech. What I did manage to find was highly entertaining as well as informative, as I learned a lot about live broadcasting because you get to see all the things that can go wrong.

For those who haven't had the pleasure yet, ANN 7 was launched as a new South African 24 hour news channel. The full effect of the stumbling incompetence is beyond my reach as a writer and as linking to YouTube would be futile, I shall link to the brilliant spoof on The Gatsby which captures in print exactly what you see on screen. I highly recommend giving it a read.

And once you've stopped laughing, maybe it's worth considering that the ANN 7 models/news anchors are in fact highly trained actors working for a deeply satirical show that most of us just don't "get". This is the new news: unrehearsed, unplanned, untrained, unscripted, unexpected. Over the top? Definitely.

After two disastrous weeks, my advice to salvage the channel would be to keep it up. They've found a new, very entertaining niche. But then again, what do I know about TV?