"Martin Rowley" wrote in
message ...
The following are extracted from an article in today's (Friday)
"Daily
Mail": ..... I thought it might strike a chord with some here -
as it
did me. The full article was written by Barry Norman, on the
modern-day
television scene. The problem is, does anyone take any notice, or
are
we all to be lumped together as 'boring old fa**s' who have seen
better
days? I hope not.

" I regard myself .... as a fairly bright bloke and when I
embarked on a
career in TV ... I decided to treat my audience as if it were as
bright

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
(see
below)

as me. It was a philosophy that seemed to work for nigh on 30
years ..."

" Increasingly, and alarmingly, television dumbs down and talks
down.
There was a time, and you don't have to be very old to remember
this,
when programmes on specialist subjects were presented by people
who knew
something about them. Now they tend to be presented by people
whose
knowledge consists of what the 18-year old researcher has told
them and
who are there simply because they bounce about, grin a lot and
look good
on TV. "
snip

Couldn't agree more. And I'm, erm, fortunate (I guess) that
I am able to say that to one or two of those TV executives
face to face. But if they don't listen to Barry Norman they
certainly won't listen to me.

I'm doubtful about the subjunctive "as if it were" in the above
sentence (he does say he's "bright" so he should expect to
have his grammar queried), and in any case, an audience can't
really be collectively bright, certainly not in a way that it could
be compared to an individual (i.e. Mr.Norman), so "as if they
were ..." would, in my opinion, be better.

Philip Eden