Drivel and Anniversaries - Cuban Television is a Wreck

Drivel and Anniversaries: Cuban Television is a Wreck / 14ymedio, Yoani
Sanchez
Posted on July 29, 2015

14ymedio, Yoani Sanchez, Havana, 29 July 2015 — Twenty minutes after the
start of the news, the only things they had announced were the
anniversaries of historic events and obituaries. As if nothing has
happened in the country now. For the evening prime time news, the world
stopped fifty years ago and remains only something to remember and
honor. Even the weather has mothballs. A "good night" concludes the
broadcast and we viewers hold out unfounded hope for what could be the
best part of the line-up. But nothing.

Cuban television is experiencing one of its worst moments. Programming
oscillates between the stiffness of ideology and American programming
taken without any regard for copyright. So, we go from a tearful
documentary about the birth of Hugo Chavez, to the intrigue of the
series Castle, where a murderer manages to escape at the last second.
One channel re-broadcasts Machado Ventura's soporific 26th of July
speech, and on another some kids learn to cook recipes that could never
be made in Cuba because of the lack of ingredients.

Bleeding-heart vampires alternate with martyrs fallen in who knows what
battle. Soap operas of more than 100 episodes made in Brazil, Mexico or
Colombia try to recover an audience that for the most part already knows
that the bad guy married the good girl, because they already watched the
series through the illegal "weekly packet." Audience participation
programs try to transmit freshness from a studio where even the applause
is recorded and the dubbed music kills all the charm of a live performance.

Without any concept or order, TV is shaped by whatever comes to hand,
what can be stolen from some foreign channel, and the stagnation of
domestic productions

The comedy shows are not spared either, with the exception of the
popular Vivir del Cuento (Surviving by Your Wits), the others range from
vulgar to easy. Jokes copied from outside sources are the most abundant,
given the impossibility of broadcasting on the small screen what really
makes us laugh. Can you imagine a comic in front of the camera saying,
"It happened once in hell that there were the presidents of the United
States, Russia and Cuba…"? No, no you can't. The humor we see on TV has
become as boring as the news.

Without any concept or order, TV is shaped by whatever comes to hand,
what can be stolen from some foreign channel, and the stagnation of
domestic productions. The worst part comes when the domestic scripts try
to compete with Hollywood, the Discovery Channel or History. That's when
they come out with these messes like "On the Trail," where the police
are always so right, honest and effective that you end up wondering how
there can be so much crime in a country with such perfect police forces.

Nor are we saved by the sports broadcasts. You have to listen to the
commentators who, for long minutes, assure you that the medal was stolen
from some Cuban athlete "who did so well, but the referee favored the
challenger," while avoiding offering even one compliment to the hosts of
some sporting event taking place abroad. The chauvinism takes the form
of the pole, the ball, the bat or the hammer. The athletes become the
spearhead of politics.

It's been an hour since the end of the news broadcast and channel
surfing confirms that Cuban television is a wreck. How many people,
right now, are looking at one of the broadcasts on the national
channels? I suspect very few.

Source: Drivel and Anniversaries: Cuban Television is a Wreck /
14ymedio, Yoani Sanchez | Translating Cuba -
http://translatingcuba.com/drivel-and-anniversaries-cuban-television-is-a-wreck-14ymedio-yoani-sanchez/