It occurs to me to wonder about New Zealand National Television again this year. I wonder about them every third year or so when, over the Christmas/New Year break, their goodwill towards all seems to be in short supply. In what way, you may ask? Take this year. We had movies, :2012 (Mayan Prophecy comes true and wrecks Earth – How fortunate that all the doomsayers were wrong on this one.) Apocalypto( strange goings on by the Maya). Titanic (Icebergs? What icebergs? Lifeboats for ALL the passengers? Why?) Armagedden( the less said the better although I do enjoy it.) And an extremely prompt documentary on Hurricane Sandy entitled Superstorm:Hell or High Water – which turned out to be very interesting.
But every 2-4 years when TV has a solid number of disaster movies and/or documentaries, I’m left to wonder why they pick this time of the year to run them? What is it about Christmas, New Year, and our summer holidays that makes TV programmers feel the public would appreciate a multitude of disasters to watch? This year it was bad enough that there was the (very remote) chance of a real worldwide disaster; without sitting down to watch it all over again on TV. Or did the programmers assume that if it hadn’t happened we’d all be delighted to watch it as fiction? I have no idea, but as this has been a pattern for a decade or so, I confidently expect to see a lot more disaster around 2016 if only on the TV.