The Australian Broadcasting Tribunal has invited the Australian public to stand up and be counted on its television preferences.
Questionnaires will seek views on violence, sport, sanitary napkin advertisements and many other matters. The letters are already starting to flow!
Dear Tribunal: It’s not so much standing up and saying what’s on television but what’s standing in front of the set. We have this big hefty slob in our family and he’d make even the Incredible Hulk incredulous.
He is always sneering at me: “Do you want to watch Prisoner? We might soo some of your relatives.” And I told him: “Sit down you great oaf, you’re more restless than “The Restless Years”
I tell you I’d like to have him up in front of a tribunal that would give him plenty.
By the way, I’ve watched “Wonder Woman” and she’d die of fright at what I have to do in a day and I don’t whirl in a circle and come up wearing a fancy costume and showing my legs. I just wear the same old house frock and if Wonder Woman could get any more heat out of our stove or could persuade the butcher what a tender joint is or lug around what I have to get at the supermarket and then come home and persuade the great slob in front of the TV that, after all, you have to pay money to get goods, then I’d say Wonder Woman was a wonder and the wonder of it all is that I’m still sane. Yours faithfully….
Dear Tribunal: “I am writing as a young teenager and certainly I’m not all that crazy about babies’ bottoms or sanitary towels, but I’d like to draw attention to the dressing of some people watching TV, that would make any bare-bottomed baby scream with disgust.
I’m referring to what I describe loosely as the Thing from the Upper Bedroom and the slip-shod shortie pyjamas he wears
Inadequately shielded by an egg- stained dressing gown. Yuk and double yuk!
When he sprawls, his mouth full of crisps and his torn singlet obscenely winking from his talced chest I can’t persuade my boy-friends to stay. After all they were brought up on the genteel TV attitude of violence, bashing, frisking for gun, the late horror show and chasing chicks, and they get distracted looking at him and doubling up with laughter or, at other times, staring in sheer youthful disgust as he mugs a sandwich over his TV tray.
I think standards should be set for parents watching TV so that visiting teenagers can enjoy soccer violence, war films, car crashes and clothes-ripping without being distracted by corny remarks by a parent whose clothing wouldn’t even get a Mature rating if only you could see It. Yours faithfully…
Dear Tribunal: Bewdy. Have you clapped your eyes on that Lady Fogarty in “Onedin Line”? She shivers me timbers every time she comes cleaving through the plot. What a bow and stern? Away all boarders. And then there are those police sheilahs. I feel a right Charlie before those Angels. And I like that Denise who reads the ABC news. She can make even an ayatollah sound nice.
What are my complaints? Well they’re sitting all around me complaining like hell. Hang on, I have to stop writing now. One of the liberated women in my family has just, changed the channels and when I put down me glass and me crisps I’m going to show them who’s master in this TV room… See you, Denise Yours faithfully…
Max Fatchen