AUDIENCE SUSPENSE AND THE SCENE BEHIND A TENSE TV PRESENTER

Television is a visual medium. The audience can be glued to their seat, if the content is gripping. The uninteresting broadcast can make mouths to yawn and fingers itch and reach for the remote. And due to delivery pressures, a TV presenter can be on the hot seat. But if she's on the edge of her seat, either she's tense or the audience is missing the suspense.

You see, a lot can be going on behind the scene, that the audience is not aware of.

But the 'scene behind' the presenter's seat, in the above studio set, has got this particular member of the audience spell bound.

Research that mainly features regular checks on this morning show, has revealed that sections of the screen left seat, unusually remained disconnected from the 'usual occupier'.

In what can suffice as the control experiment, it has been observed that another occupier of the same seat manages to fill up the 'scene behind' quite sufficiently.

Furthermore, when the said 'usual occupier' occasionally moves to the screen right seat, there are no neglected sections, in the 'scene behind.'

A number of questions thus arise:

- Just what is it about the screen left seat and the chosen posture of the 'usual occupier'?

- What inspires the 'usual occupier' to constantly assume the edge of the seat approach, when sitting screen left?

- Is it natural? Is it comfortable?

- How is it possible for the 'usual occupier' to exhibit different engagements with the screen left and screen right seats?

- Why my unusual concern with the 'usual occupier' and the screen left seat?

- If actors are told to make use of the whole stage in a theatre production, shouldn't presenters fully occupy the 'scene behind' a seat in a TV production?

- Why?

Well, this member of the audience is always tense...there could be a studio mishap... of the falling type...and the suspense is barely bearable. #Occupythescenebehind

IMPERSONATOR IN STUDIO: MEDIA NEEDS A DOSE OF ITS OWN DUE DILIGENCE GOSPEL

The Kenyan media never seem to tire, in advising members of their audience to carry out due diligence, before parting with money or committing to something. But do the media houses partake of their own wise counsel? So, one moment you are all excited about hosting someone in your studios, then days later, it turns out the same person is a suspected criminal.

Should those charged with sourcing guests for TV programmes, e.g., be required to do a thorough background check, before clearing potential guests?

It certainly looks bad for a TV channel to host somebody in their studio, only for it to later emerge that the same person could be behind a heinous impersonation scheme, which also targets staff members of the same station.

So, before a host got all mesmerised (on behalf of the audience), marvelling at the 'magical' cards skills of the studio guest, it perhaps would have been useful to ensure there is nothing sinister up the sleeves of the 'trickster', beyond the visual deception or sleight of hand.

Again, if the 'hacker was hacked' to possibly reveal the person behind the elaborate yet devilish prank, does it imply the same news channel condemns and condones hacking in the same breath?

As somebody has pointed it out already, the local media does seem to be abdicating its moral compass responsibilities, going by how a person, who recently failed to pay a private debt, ended up being given so much public prominence.

Next time, don't act so surprised, if you see the same ills that the local media highlights, flourishing in the very same media houses!

SCORING EDITORIAL OWN GOALS AGAINST MEDIA TEAMWORK

It's amazing how many Kenyan media outlets just never seem to permanently want to deal with quality issues. Revise editors, sub-editors, news editors and any other similarly titled newsroom 'officers' tasked with cleaning up print or broadcast stories, need to 'grammar up' their gate keeping. Failure to do so amounts to scoring editorial own goals against their media teamwork.

So, if the publisher of the above 'starring paper' is to be believed, when Southampton scored eight goals against Sunderland in the English Premier League, one of the goals was called 'Wanyama.'

In other words, the captain of the Kenyan football team was not among the goalscorers of Southampton, because in the land of the semantically challenged, he was instead one of the eight goals.

Such carelessness raises credibility doubts because, if a newspaper or TV station mistreats the manner of transmitting or displaying information to the audience, then who knows if factual elements are also ill-treated?

Take for example, this 'gallant' attempt by a Kenyan TV station, to give rare prominence to news events happening elsewhere in Africa. Apart from the Nairobi studio analysis, there was also a live signal from Pretoria.

However, there was one glaring eye-sore of a mistake, during this particular duration of the live coverage. The name of the main subject in the story was spelt wrongly.

This court case had been attracting copious global media attention and yet a respectable local media house has the guts to get the spelling of 'Pistorius' wrong on air for so long!

But such shortcomings have become a frequent sighting in the local press. And, as captured by my colleague, some errors are too comical to be considered tragic.

But whether it was a slip or the editor was asleep, it remains awfully sloppy