Don't load the '30 minutes'

One more Sunday we had another 30 minutes very disappointing. Trump's mistresses, on the trad wives from the United States, it seemed like an interesting topic and it turned out to be an obvious and superficial report. Exactly the same thing happened with The last VenetiansIt is sad that a historic, emblematic and prestigious program like the 30 minutes reduced to a container of reports without any journalistic ambition. There was a time when TV3's Sunday evening slot was powerful and favoured a certain routine for the viewer, who knew they would find a good television slot to close the weekend. In recent years, the slot has deteriorated. Among the programming changes, one 30 minutes that appears and disappears, that they throw in the towel when Barça plays and that there is not even ambition when it comes to buying reports abroad, the poti-poti does not have much incentive. The last Venetians and The housewives ofTrump are French documentaries that tell us about Italy and North America. Perhaps it is a package deal of leftover French series. The last one 30 minutes powerful that we have seen was of The Direct and not of its own production. It gives the impression that they are letting the programme die in misery. In such a complex time as the one we are living in, it is a real shame that public television does not see the need to promote the programme, recover its prestige and take advantage of the professional legacy of the 30 minutes.

Shot and reverse shot of the release of hostages

On Saturday we witnessed yet another episode of the release of Israeli hostages held by Hamas. We already commented a few days ago, the entire media spectacle that the terrorist movement has deployed around this process. A stage decorated with Palestinian slogans where the hostages are taken, controlled by half a dozen armed and hooded soldiers. Another group of soldiers joins the scene, filming the whole process in an expeditious manner. Multiple cameras exerting pressure on the protagonists who will be subjected to the exchange of prisoners. The need to show this filming process seems more important than the resulting recordings themselves. The excess of cameras is a way of manufacturing transcendence.

Now, this Saturday, on La 1 and on the 24h channel, when they were broadcasting the events, they added a television component that was intended to balance the discourse. They split the screen, and while on the left side of the image we followed this Hamas staging live as a preliminary to the exchange, on the right side they showed us what was happening simultaneously on the other side. We saw the hostages' relatives, anguished, in front of the television screen, following the release. So, while on one side of the image we saw the hostages under pressure from Hamas, on the other we saw the relatives crying and fretting. It was the plan and the reverse plan of the conflict. A battle for images, a fight for the visual narrative. Action and emotion.