Copyright Ben S Pollock 2007
I was looking for The Charlie Rose Show. Honest. It was a little after 11, and I was bored with Dave and Jay. It was pledge week for the state’s PBS conduit, AETN (Arkansas Educational Television Network), though so I realized Rose might be delayed or pre-empted.
Most pledge drives in the country are counter-common sense. If an organization is raising money, it should show what it does typically but in the best light or at its peak. You make detergent then you jigger the chemicals around, claim it’s improved for higher sales. For the two sweeps months every year, commercial TV networks show the best episodes of their series — or at least avoid showing reruns.
The Podunk Broadcasting Service, however, puts 48-minute oddball specials in 90-minute slots so every 12 minutes they can stop for six minutes of showing people-just-like-you manning a bank of phones. They’re taking calls from viewers promising checks will be in the mail. In front of the volunteers is a public TV executive or other talent, often with the celebrity who’s in the overall program. The star talks up the attributes of PBS and also hawks his or her self-help book or CD.
You know this. I don’t send checks to AETN because I want to support Charlie and Frontline and Mystery but not The Rockabilly Legends and My Music: Movie Songs. You see similar programs at 2 a.m. when they’re called infomercials. Cable TV in its explosion broadcasts everything that PBS did well and did adequately. Channel 13 is redundant.
Until last night. Last night instead of Rose’s Round Table, a yoga class was broadcast. At first I thought it was Fayetteville’s own Andrea Fournet, whose programs run on AETN and area cable channels. But that wasn’t her front-and-center but another attractive woman. Her moves were yoga-ish.
And mesmerizing. It looked like Middle Eastern dance combined with yoga stretches, and so it was: Bellydance Fitness Fusion Yoga, reads the newspaper log. What denomination of Islam does belly dancing represent, and why aren’t our troops fighting for them?
This was soft-core p**n at both the softest, meaning G-rated, and p**niest, because it was hot hot hot. The “students” all were curvy women. Their parts that should be covered were, with tight-fitting knit that molded to the skin. Of course the bellies and cleavage were exposed. These were not costumes but efficient exercise wear for the students to efficiently strengthen their bellies and pelvises. For many, pubis bones grow less flexible with age. Public television thinks it can help, even if cooking shows and exercise regimens left for other channels years ago.
I put the remote down when the static stretches moved to various belly rolls; I wasn’t changing the channel anytime soon. For instructional purposes all angles — front and side, and wide-angle and close-up — were shown. (My Beloved if you must know was in the other room studying.) I quit breathing when the practitioners, all sitting on the floor with legs spread wide, alternated lifting their cheeks, with the camera showing various bottoms slapping the ground right left right left right left right left.
The show did cut to pledge breaks, but the teacher, in another fetching outfit, was in the Conway studio asking the folks at home to call in their pledges and buy her DVDs. This dream was right here in Arkansas, live. Did I pick up the phone because finally AETN had a pledge week show of sufficient interest?
No.
I don’t pay for stuff like that.
Instead of Charlie Rose tonight, we are being offered The South Beach Heart Program. Another public service. I expect — hope — Dr. Arthur Agatston will wear a suit or a white lab coat. -30-
