The Ultimate Experiment

It is often said that ETV will surprise us and Friday's night-show was a fine example of this.

They have done 'specials' before. All 'specials' have a purpose. Jaya's birthday performance on 1st December last was a 'special'. The first day in the gym (the first 90 or so minutes) was a 'special' as was the 'first night in the forest' and the opening night in the 'classic studio'.

What differed this last Friday to the previous two mentioned was that for the first four hours the whole thing appeared to be done without the aid of a safety net. That net being the availabilty of calls - no headsets, etc.

So in a nutshell, here appeared to be a grand experiment to see if a 'special' could be financed in a different way. Oh yes, there were calls etc when the program returned to norm but could that itself pay for the earlier extravegance ?

But, as I wrote elsewhere, calls were available. All it took was to dial the right number and a girl answered. So while the performance went on, the other girls were in the other studio waiting. Maybe I was the only one mad enough to find out and if that was the case the call was approx 01:40. Yes, my dear (name withheld ETV girl), I was that strange guy on the other end of the line -))

But there was more. And this is the really clever bit. I'm sure you were all concentrating on the performances of Lolita (welcome back if only it was for one day), Randa (in rule-busting mode. Well we all know by now that it is allowed when they want it to be allowed. And as this could be defined as 'art' it could well be allowed), and the others) you would not have paid that much attention to the moving plasmas. At times they also showed 'art' as in paintings but quite often the picture was changed to an SMS message. Now normally such displays are reserved for VIPs. But, unless I am very mistaken, these displays were not normal VIPs. And my reasoning for this was that these messages did not appear in the normal notification area in the lower screen. So these were a 'special' form of VIP. Probably some form of bulk posting for a set fee. A type of sponsorship.

The acid test will be when they count up the total income for that evening and compare it with the average return for a more normal program. Only then will they know if it is financially viable to repeat the experiment.

Personally, I hope that they can. To be just a little critical, that 'performance' just went on a little too long - two hours would have been the ideal length. Not everyone would wish to sit through a complete 'Faust' as I saw shades of that on Friday.

thats right

Well, to me it was ridiculous, what they performed. Tiffanny looked besides Eskander the most stupid. Lolita was the only sexy thing, but even that looked strange to me. It did not look erotic what they were doing. It looked quite bizarre live on television.

@HvB:

You're not the only viewer of Arte, Phoenix and 3Sat. And I have to say, that I found "le sacre de printemps" being performed by a naked ballerina on Arte much more sexy than anything etv ever presented me with.

I agree with DB. Most of the personal announcemenets seemed to be to much of an announcement to be really personal, which makes me also believe that we have seen a new and different way of financing.

The show itself: I really liked it and enjoyed a nice, but to long evening (my other activities were so kind to take a black out on that evening so I could concentrate on the show). But with me being most probably the single viewer that arte, 3SAT, Phoenix, Classica and the ZDF Theaterkanal have to share,  I'm sure not a member of the focus group etv is normally aiming at.

Most of those sms looked like personal announcements, just a couple were referred to the show.

to quote a song from another generation 10 c.c (not George Harrison)

Friday night  was                   art for arts sake .....

Saturday night was               money for God's sake .....

after Julia's overlong, slo mo, overkill (typical ETV) theatrical indulgence,

The grand finale of moving props, plasmas up and down, plastic foil curtains to and fro, quick cut to Tiffany in daylight. WTF ??
 
The programmers and participants should  take time out to consider,

what works live on stage, does not necessarily transfer well to TV, And or watch some normal TV to see how these things work,

settingup cameras once in a while would be beneficial.

Professional it is not