Teasers and spoilers

I am no great sports fan. Certainly I like to watch Formula One when I get a chance, and maybe occasionally tennis, athletics and other bits and pieces but I'm not into football and indeed most team games. This means I find it slightly amusing when you get announcements on television like:

"Look away now if you don't want to see the result of the Chelsea versus Arsenal game that will be on Match of the Day after the news"

Yes, I find it amusing and I don't entirely understand it, but I do respect the interest of others in not knowing the score. So what's the problem? It's that broadcasters don't seem to realise that the same enjoyment of suspense can exist for types of programme other than sport.

An obvious recent example (though I would suggest a minor one in many ways) was the way that Peter Capaldi was unveiled as the new Doctor Who with great pomp in August, when his first episode will not air until Christmas. While it could easily be argued that this didn't deserve a programme of its own (which incidentally I didn't watch), and in the (distant) past the first one would know of a new actor in the role would be when the character "regenerated", I don't think the name of the actor is really that important to the series, but rather how he takes on the part and we won't really know that until he is well under-way. The real suspense in this case is in the new episodes, not the actor himself.

No, there are much more serious crimes of spoiling going on every day, whether it's for drama series or for documentaries.
Of course there needs to be a campaign of trailers for a new drama series to publicise it and whet our appetites so that as many viewers as possible tune in. But does the trailer have to show us such a great proportion of the cliff-hangers before they happen? I would suggest not, and doing so is as likely to turn people off, "Well, I've seen it all now", than on.

Even more serious in my view is the way teasers and spoilers are handled for documentaries and other factual programmes. Not only do we get to see all the cliff hangers in the trailer (should there really be so many cliff-hangers in a documentary, or are they over-sensationalised as well as allegedly dumbed-down these days?), but the old adage of "Tell 'em what you'll tell 'em, tell 'em, then tell 'em what you told 'em" is just taken too far. It means, explain where you're going, go into the detail, and summarise, not show all the "good" bits, go into detail and show all the "good" bits again. It even goes further. On BBC channels in the UK there are no adverts but we are still subjected to summaries and teasers within BBC programmes, presumably in preparation for their airing on BBC World and their sale to foreign channels.

May I make a radical suggestion. Since I've been watching documentaries (early 70s), the duration of most has risen from 30 minutes (maybe even slightly less) to 60 minutes. Is there more content? Absolutely not. It goes something like this:

 - 1 minute - Opening titles
 - 1 minute - Opening words (often repeated identically for every episode in the series!) *
 - 10 minutes - Content (Hurray)
 - 2 minutes - Getting ready for (an often imaginary) commercial break *
 - 2 minutes - Returning from the (imaginary) commercial break *
 - repeat last 14 minutes (OK, different content) until...
 - 2 minutes summary (that's fine)
 - 3 minutes showing the highlights of what you've seen *
 - 1 minute - Closing titles

Why not just cut out the sections marked with an asterisk? That would leave room for 26 minutes' content in a 30 minute programme! ...and 56 minutes in a 1 hour programme (minus a few 2 minute ad breaks on commercial television). Just think of the excellent, in-depth documentaries we could have.

What's more, and it does happen occasionally, how about an introductory level documentary on BBC2 followed by something more in-depth or a discussion, on BBC 4?

By the way, while I'm here, my favourite documentary presenter at the moment is Mary Beard. There are other excellent ones but her informal approach coupled with real, exciting but not sensational, content is the attraction. She's not entirely free from the repeated "opening words" syndrome but I can just about forgive that - especially with the fast-forward button on the PVR.

Computer graphics and dramatisation certainly have their place in documentaries but Mary's approach (or that of her producers) to eliminate them is really refreshing.