Studio’s off air; on air there must be titles/theme music
playing out the old show, playing in the new. By now the new team is seated…..and
Action: short intro from minimal make-up woman; cut to a split screen of
talking heads.
Heads are cut off, never get to talk. It all goes dark; not even fade
to black. At the flick of a switch, what was On has now been taken Off.
Was it ever that simple? The Greek government’s decision
to pull the plug on its own state broadcaster prompted scenes reminiscent of
Britain in the 1970s: mass mobilisations and long, lazy sit-ins; banners,
beards and hours of waiting for something to happen.
During the day employees gathered inside ERT headquarters in
Athens – a modernist, corporatist structure which looks like it belongs in
Brussels. That afternoon – Athens in the middle of June – it rained. Clusters
of TV people stood at the windows looking through raindrops at anti-government protesters
getting soaked outside (among those inside and out, the relative absence of
mobile phones adds to the impression of an earlier era). Some worked all-out to
re-start and maintain programming on the Internet. Others paced the corridors
or sat on the floor looking up at all those suspended ceiling tiles, all that
strip lighting.
Were they waiting for Carl/Dustin Bernstein/Hoffman and
Bob/Robert Woodward/Redford to walk in and get the real story? Nail it. Get to
the bottom of it. Sort it out. Had they meant to keep the offices of the Greek
state broadcaster looking like the Hollywood film set for All The President’s Men? Was
it all a cunning plan to make the 1970s live forever?
But 2013 is the end of the
movie. That’s All, Folks. No, it won’t all happen at the flick of a switch. But
the waiting, the hanging around, the sitting on the stairs, even the sound of a
noisy demonstration outside – it ain’t going to swing it. Sorry this sounds
harsh, but it don’t mean anything much.
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