Re: How to strengthen Singapore’s public service broadcasting in digital age

It’s simple. Create better content.

I’ve not watched local TV for at least 5 years. The few times I watched it, the local dramas are cringe worthy, awards are self ball-lickingly congratulatory, and the news is always talking about how good the government is. Heck, even the agendas behind the dramas are painfully and awkwardly concealed.

That sponsored stunt about retirement planning would be a good example of a problem that plagues local content, ‘in laymen’s terms’.

The actors’ and actresses that are objectively good (those that I’ve not known before but I humbly determine to be good during that short viewing) tend not to be locals.

Our standards have not gone up with the increased accessibility to high quality content…. and when that has been criticised, the ‘loyalty’ card is played, saying (subtly) that we’re disloyal traitors with an inferiority complex who’d automatically dismiss local content in favour of overseas media simply because they’re ‘foreign’. Oh, and that haters will always hate.

Er. Yeaaaa. Why would we hate something that’s practically non-existent. If it helps you sleep at night I guess.

I mean, you don’t have to agree, but if you don’t want to listen, open your eyes and pay attention, then whatever, because honestly, you’ll not be missed. We’re already out of the well local media is stuck in.

Apart from collaboration, I’d dare say, just let the creatives do what they bloody hell want. You’re shooting yourselves in the foot if you want to create opportunities for content but then constantly censor everything they do. And then you talk about heritage, but we can’t even watch shows in dialect on TV! (Presumably, we should avoid offend our Chinese overlords, so I guess that’s understandable in some ways. Can’t expect mediacorpse to jiak chow right.)

Short of creating films that encourage evil (raping, murder, you know..) story writers should be allowed to create content on their own, without explicit instructions to weave governmental ball carrying into the story.