Minty Trash TV (The Mint)

Member Name: Zmugzy

Product:	The Mint
Date:	30/09/06 (780 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: None

Disadvantages: It might damage your brain as well as your pocket

At the end of times when the world is about to end and human beings walk the earth as zombies - all television shows will look like this - hour after hour of mindless phone in quiz shows. A multitude of poorly produced, bargain basement phone in quizzes have invaded our late evening schedules. You might arrive in late one evening looking for something interesting to watch, a nice film or little late night entertainment perhaps, but what do you find? The kind of morose, contemptible, low grade, trashy programming that you might expect to find on some obscure dodgy digital tv channel, but on ITV? What ever happened to what used to be one of our best terrestrial tv channels? Can tv get any dumber? For how much longer will this abysmal programming format continue to spread through the late night channels? They could be around for a while it seems.


The Mint appears at around midnight most weekdays on ITV. There are other variants such as Quizzmania. It is simply a phone in show with a solitary presenter who continually jumps about, smiles falsely and makes unfunny remarks for lengthy periods whilst trying to entice viewers to call in and... unfortunately... many of them do. The show can go on for 2 to 3 hours so sometimes presenters will be swapped around. On this show you will find a collection of the most irritating of all irritating tv presenters - subhuman hosts - either pompous fickwuts in fluorescent coloured shirts or spacehead bimbos. Their only task is to keep talking and breath in and out at the same time. Their artificial expressions and false grins are a form of visual torture. Even Noel Edmonds seems like an all round nice guy compared to these prancing ponces that somehow manage to get a job on this type of programme - where do they come from? Throw them into a bottomless pit for they are the spawn of the Devil!


The purpose of the programme is to get as many people calling in as possible. This is how the programme earns its revenue. I read somewhere recently that the sudden expansion of such programmes on our screens is due to the fact that they pull in more revenue by using phone-ins than they would do through advertising, especially at such off peak viewing times. When some one calls in they usually have to guess part of a well known catch phrase or expression. Or it might simply be necessary to guess a popular cartoon character or a celebrity for example. Sometimes the odd Z-list celebrity is said to drop in for a chat... how enthralling that must be.


ITV regards The Mint as being something revolutionary, something that will change the way people watch television forever... are they having a laugh??? In reality, the only people who will become minted from the show are ITV. In order to win The Mint's jackpot a caller must first successfully answer a question, then give the presenter a random four digit number. This reduces the chances of a caller winning the jackpot dramatically. Although obviously some people do win cash prizes, this trashy form of entertainment shouldn't be on one of the major tv channels.


The Mint and similar shows are deliberately designed so that it appears there are only a few people making calls. The host will from time to time let the whole thing grind to a halt as if s/he is waiting for somebody to phone in, when in reality the phone lines are full. As such, the monotony of the show combined with the presenter's 'hints' as to the answers to the questions, entices the viewer to ring in because it appears as though s/he will get straight through. Making a call and getting through however, is no guarantee that you'll get the chance to have a guess on air. Only a few out of the thousands who call will get through the programme. Every call costs 75p from BT landlines.


I struggle to find how this tv drivel can in anyway benefit civilization, or perhaps this is the end of civilization. This really is a new low in tv broadcasting and in my opinion it is abusing the television medium. This type of telly show is not fit for human consumption. And this is what a lot more tv will look like if they abandon the tv licence.


Come back Les Dennis and Family Fortunes - all is forgiven!

Summary: Minty TV presented by Morons for Morons