Thursday 26 April 2007

The ABC responds to Dikkii

Here's the response I got back from the ABC:

Dear Dikkii

Thank you for your email regarding Psychic Investigators. I apologise for the delay in responding to you.

The ABC regrets that you are unhappy about the decision to broadcast this series. Psychic Investigators is a series in which police involved in investigating crimes, in the absence of evidence indicating the guilt of a particular perpetrator, have called upon the services of psychics as a possible way of achieving a breakthrough in a case. These are actual documented police investigations and the police involved are interviewed in the series, along with the psychic employed. Many of the police involved state that they were initially sceptical that a psychic would be of any help and that they were astounded by the information they learned. The cases covered in the series took place in the UK and North America and cover a range of crimes.

As the national broadcaster, the ABC has an obligation to appeal to a diverse range of tastes. Nonetheless, your comments about this series are noted and have been conveyed to ABC Television.

I have noted and forwarded your comments about the way that people are attributed on Catalyst programs. I noticed in the transcripts for Catalyst programs that people appear to be referred to by first name then surname. If they are a Doctor, they are referred to as Dr. first name then surname.

Thank you for taking the time to contact the ABC.

Yours sincerely

Laura Whelan
ABC Audience and Consumer Affairs


As far as I'm concerned, Whelan didn't give me a good reason to not complain to the Minister. All of this reads as PR from the programme with none of it factual. However, I notice that they're not showing this programme at the moment, so I'll hold off complaining.

Regarding the other part, it's now been a while since I received this response, and I still have no response from the Catalyst production team as to why they persist with this elitist claptrap, so it looks like I'll be escalating this one. Back to the ABC it will go.

And if I get nothing then, it'll be on to Media Watch.

3 comments:

The Rev. Jenner J. Hull said...

I don't know much about ABC in Oz, because I've never heard of "Catalyst." I have heard of "Psychic Investigators," or shows like it, since they're all the same (they're mostly shown on Court TV, SciFi, and Discovery during the day, here in the states).

Discovery's "A Haunting" (or whatever the fuck it's called) is particularly disturbing because, aside from that BS "show," (and some other random woo-woo eps) almost everything else is copacetic.

The ABC drone's reply is typical... "Many of the police involved state that they were initially sceptical that a psychic would be of any help and that they were astounded by the information they learned."

You'd think that Ms. Whelan would've heard about Randi by now.

Dikkii said...

It's a shame you've never heard of Catalyst, Jenner. It's a particularly good science show on the ABC.

Which is why it's all the more confusing that they showed this idiotic trash.

Whelan is quoting from some prepared response, which as far as I'm concerned, simply wasn't good enough.

Thanks for popping by, Jenner.

Dikkii said...

It's a bit disappointing that Discovery Channel is showing such rubbish.

When I had pay-TV, Discovery was where you went if you wanted a decent science, nature or travel documentary. Obviously not anymore.