As viewers’ editor at Channel 4, it is part of my job to ensure that, when a programme we broadcast attracts a response from viewers, the appropriate people at the channel get to hear that feedback and, where appropriate, respond to it. Perhaps not surprisingly, our Alternative Christmas Message for 2008 – delivered by the President of Iran – was one such programme, generating a huge reaction from the public.
Now that the dust has settled on our Christmas Day broadcast, I’ve had a chance to trawl through all of that viewer reaction – from our viewer enquiry logs, the Channel 4 forums, and a host of debates happening across other forums and blogs across the internet – and draw some conclusions about how the alternative message was received.
As you may have read in December’s Rated/Slated post, the Alternative Christmas message prompted a total of 1235 contacts to our viewer enquiries department. Just over 1000 of these were critical, and over 200 were appreciative of the broadcast. Interestingly, of the critical comments, the majority (640) came to us ahead of transmission. These may have been triggered by some quite critical articles published on 24 December (for example the Guardian, The Times and The Spectator) and also from sites such as HonestReporting UK, which summarised several negative press articles and urged people to complain. Post-transmission, feedback to viewer enquiries was more balanced with just 364 complaints compared to 216 appreciative comments.
Elsewhere, comments on a pre-transmission Digital Spy debate tended to be quite balanced, while post-transmission, a number of critical blog posts were published. Many of these blogs linked to newspaper articles – such as Peter Tatchell in the Guardian or Damian Thompson in the Telegraph. Interestingly, comments posted in response to critical online articles were reasonably balanced. For some examples, take a look at the Pink Paper and The Daily Mail.
Closer to home, there are still a couple of debates about the Alternative Christmas Message active in The TV Show forum. Combined, these posts have attracted almost 2000 views to date, and around 80 comments, which again have been fairly mixed. A post-transmission discussion on DigitalSpy included a fair number of appreciative comments, as well as some surprise from viewers who felt that the broadcast was more moderate than they had expected.
In summary, I think it’s fair to say that the Alternative Christmas Message provoked a fairly balanced reaction from the public, particularly amongst genuine viewers who took the time to watch the broadcast on Christmas Day.
What did you think? If you’d like to add your voice to the feedback we’ve already received, please feel free to leave your comments below.
Commentsoldest first
I was upset when a scholar on the programme said the St. Paul was anti-semitic which he certainly wasn’t. He asked the hypothetical question, ‘Has God abandoned His people’ in which he replied, ‘Heaven forbid it’. He also told gentiles not to be above themselves because the roots (Jews) support the branches and not the other way around.
Dorothy Byrne’s assertion that this was an imperative broadcast on the grounds that it offered ‘an alternative world view’ was knowingly naïve and therefore condescending. President Ahmadinejad’s speech was predictable and uneventful and the idea that it might provide an insight into the true workings of his mind was an intellectual idyll. It was as insipid as a Blairite smile, similarly lacking in detail and authenticity. The neurotic press coverage leading up to the broadcast now all seems a little ironic, as it was anything but controversial. To quash any doubts surrounding Ahmadinejad’s tolerance and passivity, the producer might have insisted he wear a Father Christmas outfit. Intermittently and with grammatical aptness Western children would take it in turn to sit on the President’s knee and divulge their festive wish lists. At home the 400,000 Guardian readers watching would be kept warm by their gratuitous conceit, safe in the knowledge that it had been another politically correct Christmas. The only piece of information provided by this broadcast which might irresponsibly be referred to as useful was the confirmation that all world leaders, be they Christian or Islamic, are as deluded as one another. The belief that religion can solve the world’s problems is akin to the absurd idea that witches would float.
We will only understand each other better when the media behaves as Channel 4 has done with this broadcast.
I want to hear every viepoint before feeling where I stand on issues… being informed is so important.
Thank you for this glimpse into other views.
Greeting,
Thanks for the blogs.channel4.com forum. There seems to be a never ending supply of great information on the net. I love learning new stuff, and will be back to read forum posts regularly! Thanks again.
Cannot Find Track…Help please
Just an introduction. Glad to be here, I’m new. Saying hi to all you all.
SLK
Leave a comment
Sorry, but comments are closed for this page.