Fly on the Wall – or in the ointment
Is Jon alone in wondering what harm is done to towns and cities by these fly on the wall documentaries?
I caught one the other evening about the great city of Lincoln, a place packed with history and a fabulous location for either midweek or weekend coach tours, and according to this programme – also a centre for late night binge drinking, fighting, and civil disobedience.
If you were in the process of planning to go on a coaching holiday, would this put you off?
In my case the answer has to be yes. I don’t wish to go to a place that has its reputation blemished by such behaviour, so I had better include the other towns and cities that have been featured in similar programmes. Bad news for Southend, Nottingham, Manchester, Newquay and even Torquay.
I may be old(ish), but I am not naive, and appreciate that this kind of behaviour goes on in almost every town and city to a greater or lesser extent, but they haven’t got a film crew following the Police, Paramedics, or Fire Fighters as they go about their business. Nor do I accept this is something new, as it happened in the past with mods and rockers, skinheads, et al, but in those halcyon days it wasn’t reported unless it was something serious.
It doesn’t stop there of course, as any documentary or fly on the wall programme can have any subject as its central theme, and could even end up showing a minority of something in our home town we were not only unaware of, but now we know – ashamed of too. This maybe by association, but it would be difficult to ignore.
When there were only the terrestrial television channels it was bad enough, but now there are programme makers all over the place looking for some ‘new angle’, or some ‘story’, and will then take a one hour programme to tell us what could be told in five minutes, wasn’t very interesting in any case, and even worse make it into a series. A good example was the recent series on Eddie Stobbart’s operation – which was interesting for one programme, but a series?
Some of you may have seen the series featuring the Central Motorway Police Group which covers the M5 in Worcestershire, the M50, the M54, the remainder of the M42, the M6, the M40 and the A45/46 corridor in Warwickshire in addition to 630 miles of carriageway. Parts of this series were very interesting – but much was repeated time after time and was (and still is as it is repeated on other satellite channels) in danger of making minor celebrities of some of the officers involved. There men and women aren’t celebrities, they are police officers doing their job. What was of interest to me was how they went about it, what was targeted, and the results of the following court cases – some of which had me shouting at my TV or shaking my head in disbelief. None of this put me off wanting to visit any particular place in The Midlands, but as most of these motorways are well known to regular road users it was interesting to view.
There appears to be a big difference forming between what might be seen as interesting to most, interesting to some, and damaging to some reputations.
No harm was done to the reputation of The Police or Eddie Stobbart, but some local tourist officials (those that are left) and local councillors must wonder what they now have to do to rectify their town’s reputation as a tourist destination. With the leisure pound so limited at the moment, folk are rightly choosey where it is spent, and for any town to feature a drunken brawl has to raise as many questions as it tries to answer.
Before anyone states that there is no such thing as bed advertising – ask Townsend Thoreson how they did after the Herald of Free Enterprise disaster. Mud sticks.
Those of us that work in the tourist sector know that Lincoln, and Southend etc are far more than is portrayed on these programmes, but the general public could be misled to thinking that this was the norm for the area.
I offer no cure for this problem, as I don’t think that there is one. I simply feel we need to be aware of the consequences of some television programmes that can act against us. Many of course do the opposite as many towns have benefited from being featured in a programme or being the backdrop to a programme, and coach operators weren’t slow in planning tours to the areas of Last of the Summer Wine, Heartbeat, Jane Austen Country, and no doubt Downton Abbey will follow. I suppose we have to take it on the chin and accept it as just the way things are – or can you offer any suggestions? Is there a brain out there that can come up with a solution?
Added to this has to be the question that has to come to someone in the future – what if a production company approaches your coach company to be featured in a future programme or series? The wonderful Mountain Goat came out very well in the series about The Lake District, but what would the public make of a series showing the good and bad of a coach company? If it were based on one of the good companies, or those offering a premier service option I would see it as a positive step, but should it be based on the cheaper end of the market would it not be portraying coach holidays as they were forty years ago, and possibly as the majority of the public wrongly imagine them to be today? This is of course wrong, and we know better, as the industry is segmented into differing standards - but clearly most would hope that it is the modern, luxury end that would be featured.
I doubt if things have changed since a company I worked for was featured on ITV’s Wish You Were Here, when a Scottish coach tour was featured over two weeks of programmes. Yes, it gave great coverage, but the company had no production control and we waited with baited breath to see if we came out well or not. As it happens we did, and every company who operated Scottish tours benefited from the coverage.
I am sure most will have watched The Coach Trip on Channel 4 at some time or other, as it is now in its sixth series, and now it’s time for ‘celebrities’ to take part. However, the programme only shows 14 passengers of different social/economic/mental backgrounds, and not the 48 main stream ‘normal’ clients that your tours carry. Not even 14 are on the celebrity version, so I presume the extra seats are required for their ego’s.
I wonder how Brendon would cope with a normal crowd? Very well I would think, but even he rightly points out that this is a game to see who stays onboard the longest, and it isn’t a normal international coach tour. Yet it has a strong and loyal following, but I doubt if it is the fact it is a coach tour that attracts them. It is I would suggest the mixture of a competition, travel documentary and odd passenger which attracts viewers.
So how do you sit with all of this? Would you be in favour of this happening to your company – with no editorial control? Not an easy decision is it?
Meanwhile, I suspect those councillors and local tourist experts are still wondering how to remedy their towns reputations.....
