Troy Kelly

This is increasingly becoming something that is really starting to piss me off. Why is it that I am seeing more and more on TV “Recorded Live”, and “Exclusive”.
Let us first start with “Recorded Live” – what does this phrase mean? To me – it is completely null and void. Everything on TV that is “Live Motion” is recorded live. Actors on a set are “Recorded Live” a tanker exploding in a suburban street, as a news piece is “Recorded Live”. We all know that what we are seeing was recorded as it happened, it can’t have been recorded after it happened! My only thinking here is that they are preparing us for when images that are so completely real and life like can be rendered and it would be too hard for the normal viewing public to tell the difference between something rendered on a computer, and something “Recorded Live”. I think in actuality that by stamping news pieces etc with “Recorded Live” – it lends even more realism to it, “it could be happening now!”, or “it really did happen!”.
Now, on to my other favourite, “Exclusive”. Unlike the above phrase – things can be exclusive. I am not going to argue that. My problem is that more and more TV is becoming “Exclusive”. The last thing that I can remember seeing that really ticked me off were two advertisements one after the other advertising “Exclusive” interviews with the same leading Hollywood actor. Of course they are both exclusive, the host of that show can only be the host of that show, nobody else can – so they have exclusive rights at that time to be that person interviewing the other person. Before you get completely lost, let me explain.
Oprah was interviewing Tom Cruise. It was an exclusive. The advertisement immediately after the one for Oprah, was for Australian 60 Minutes interviewing Tom Cruise, also an exclusive. Obviously Tom Cruise does not do exclusive interviews, in my opinion he is a bit of a media whore, but that is not the point of this rant. So what was exclusive about both of those interviews? As far as I can tell, Oprah’s was exclusive because it was Oprah interviewing Tom, on Oprah’s show at that time – which you could say is exclusive; and likewise for 60 Minutes – it was a host of 60 Minutes, interviewing Tom, on 60 Minutes.