Incendiary Device TV: The Currency of The Modern Media
How media companies play to your desire and fear to the structural detriment of our society
Richard Branson’s Virgin Media network has launched a new series here in Ireland, and along the predictive lines of contemporary TV show formatting, it is controversial.
In the “thought-provoking” series, producers pit people from extreme ends of a given social divide against each other across the dinner table to “discuss” their differences.
Hmmm…
A priest and a drag queen, a polygamist and a monogamist, a Trump supporter (yes, believe it or not, we have those here too) and a sane person, a white skinned contemporary Irish nationalist racist and a black immigrant from Nigeria.
They say it’s a social experiment and have enlisted the expertise of clinical psychologist Dr. Malie Coyne, and Psychotherapist and Richard Hogan.
Jesus Christ…where do I even begin with this one.
Quite obviously, the extreme pairings are selected not as the show blurb suggests, “to get people talking”, but to inflame the passions of viewers, increase viewership, and therefore bump the bottom line.
