My Mornings with STV

I always watch Today on STV when getting ready for work in the mornings. It has become an essential part of my morning routines, the same way I used to get ready to The Today Show all those years ago (Wow! How time flies. Well, that's a topic for another day).

I was happy to see Today on STV increased by thirty minutes from one hour. I always thought that one hour was much too short. And I always felt that the show really needs to start from 6AM.

One thing that has always struck me is the quality of guests they have on. While some have an obvious reason to be there (knowledgeable about a subject and have relevant contributions to make to the ongoing discussion, promoting an album, film or event); some patently do not.

It's very painful to listen to a guest talk a whole lot without saying much. It's perhaps even worse to hear them start a sentence only to leave the rest hanging in the air - maybe in the vain hope that viewers will pick-up their message by extra sensory perception? The guests spouting fake Americana and Britico accents (the former tends to be more common) are possibly the worst of the lot. Hmmm, no, on second thoughts perhaps that honour would go to those guests who obviously don't know what they are talking about, which begs the question .... Well, why are you here?

I often wonder how the presenters manage to keep a straight face when faced with one of these types of guests. I guess that's where the professionalism of the interviewer comes in.

This morning, I watched a segment with a guest whose inability to articulate himself left me feeling quite irritated (and this was in both English and in Pidgin). That interview did not last very long and I wondered at the end of it what the point was.