After censoring clip, PBS axes satirical show outright

VIPXow made headlines recently when a clip from one of the episodes was censored on January 3. ZOO TV has since been informed that the entire programme will now be discontinued, after a decision taken by the PBS editorial board between 5 and 9 January.

Another programme has already been selected to take its place.

Producer and presenter Chrysander Agiustold MaltaToday that his company is currently preparing to take legal action against PBS.

“We have a piece of paper called the ‘preliminary contract’, since contracts are never signed on time at TVM – and now we understand the reason why this is done – which states that VIPXow is to keep going till June 2011,” he said. “We intend to abide by that. However TVM won't comply, and ZOO will be seeking judicial action… Our lawyer has already written to PBS objecting to the suspension of the programme, and requesting a meeting with the board.” 

Ironically, VIPXow had originally come about specifically because TVM approached ZOO TV for a regular comedy production.

“We complied by submitting ‘VIPXow’, together with a demo showing exactly what the programme will be about,” Agius said. “After just two weeks on air, although the programme was doing well, TVM were coming up with all sort of excuses to mine it.”

Among other things, TVM objected to the fact that ZOO TV was simultaneously producing another programme, ‘Telepoplu’, on the Labour Party-owned ONE TV.

“They wanted us to drop the second show, which we refused since we had warned them about it way back, before we even thought of accepting to have ‘VIPXow’ on TVM.”

This took place before the censorship incident of January 3, when a clip featuring Arnold Cassolawas simply blacked out of the episode without explanation.

The censored clip showed the former AD chairman winning a mock quiz show by knocking over a picture of President George Abela, alongside PM Lawrence Gonzi and Opposition leader Joseph Muscat, with a shoe.

PBS head of news Natalino Fenech afterwards defended the censorship on the grounds that ridiculing the President of the Republic was illegal.

However, the law as stipulated by the Press Act (Chapter 248, Laws of Malta) is restricted only to “incit(ing) others to take away the life or liberty of the President”… “imput(ing) ulterior motives to the acts of the President…” and anything that may “insult, revile or bring into hatred or contempt or excite disaffection against the person of the President.”

Nowhere is there any ban on satirical representation.

Nonetheless, ZOO TV was subsequently informed that the editorial board had taken a decision to stop airing VIP Xow altogether.

“We come back from our mini shutdown to find emails which not only informed us of their decision (to axe the programme), but informed us immediately that another programme would be replacing VIPXow.”

The decision entails financial implications for the production company.

“Zoo has planned their budgets with this programme on TVM till the end of JUNE 2011. However, with VIPoff the schedule, the company is looking at a substantial loss.”

No satire, please

The upshot of the editorial board’s decision is that the national station currently offers nothing in the way of political satire: reinforcing the popular notion that politicians somehow constitute a class of ‘untouchables’.

Political satire is in fact severely frowned upon in 21^st century Malta, as can be attested by laws against Carnival costumes/floats poking fun at individual politicians, as well as a number of libel cases instituted over political cartoons.

Satirical publications such as In-Niggieza, Il-Hmara or Il-Banana, so plentiful in the past, are practically non-existent today. And despite individual calls for an overhaul of Malta’s stringent anti-satire laws – among others, by parliamentary secretary for the elderly Mario Galea and Opposition MP Owen Bonnici – no effort has been made to change the status quo.

Paradoxically, the situation was markedly different in the 1980s, when political criticism often elicited violent reactions, and TVM (then known as ‘Xandir Malta’) was boycotted by the Nationalist Opposition because of the extreme bias of its political reporting.

Political satire was similarly absent from the national station until 1986 – the year of the Tal-Barrani incident and the murder of Raymond Caruana  – when a group of relatively unknown actors produced the satirical programme, Ahn’Ahna Jew M’Ahniex.

That series is today widely regarded as a classic, but its legacy would not be long-lived.  In 2011, political satire once again appears to be a no-go area on TVM, as it was before the advent of Ic-Cukkaj and his cronies.