Modern Technology Breaks Down: Newsroom South East, Weather and BBC1 Junction, 1989

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After the regular news, of course, is the local news, and in this case that means Newsroom South East, hosted by Stephanie McNair dressed as an Everton mint. After the mutliated compass logo grandly departs, the actual news gets off to a grim start, because a young woman got murdered in Dagenham. The subsequent report is delivered by a nigh-fetal Martin Bashir and includes a soundbite from an alarmingly deadpan neighbour. Also: the Underground is going on strike again, plus ca change, plus la derpity doo and so forth. And: dogs! No, wait, back to the trains. No, back to the dogs. Dogs in church, being very well-behaved and sitting patiently while their humans stand in rows and make strange noises. Also starring some horses, a kestrel and a ruddy great python. And now the weather with Michael's Fish. The bank holiday weather has been uncharacteristically nice, but the rain is on its way. Must have got held up. Did you notice how your eyes were immediately drawn to whatever bit of the map covers you, or did in 1989 perhaps? Then there's another trailer, a big full-evening type of trailer of the sort that seems to be making some kind of a comeback - I saw one the other day before the rugby that almost exactly followed the mid-nineties format. Which is nice. Anyway, this is for Tuesday, ie tomorrow, and there's the swimming pool motif again. Since it's a "full evening's entertainment", we're treated to some driving Shepherd's Bush funk on the soundtrack. Skipping Tomorrow's World, because who cares apparently, we start with Eastenders, then only on twice a week and featuring such hard-hitting storylines as "Nick Berry has car trouble, about which he complains to a particularly masculine, medallion-man Frank Butcher, in scenes which seem to be going for chiaroscuro but don't make it". After that, Alan Whicker in the twilight of his reign - he retired about four years later - is in Australia to talk to some ex-pats who've gone all Steve Irwin. Next AAAAAH SHE CAN SEE US. Anne Robinson's reign of terror over Points of View is just beginning, and here she leans out of the trailer itself to invite us over, disparaging Whicker's World (which is pretty rich from the host of The Weakest Link) and then implying that if we don't enjoy POV, we're to blame for it. Then the news is on, of course, although the trailer naturally skips over it altogether. It's on at ten now; the ratings war would become increasingly cut-throat as the landscape of television mutated through the nineties and oughties, until the Nine O'Clock News was effectively a massive hole being punched right in the middle of prime time. First, however (and completely unremarked upon in the trailer for obvious reasons), a Partly Political Broadcast on behalf of someone or other for some reason or other. Since this is the vicinity of Surrey, it can't have anything to do with that by-election we heard about earlier, because that's in Wales (and besides, it would be called a Partly Election Broadcast). Maybe it's Thatcher self-congratulating on ten glorious years. Either way it pushes everything forward five minutes to no net gain. After the news, Take Me Home, as trailed earlier. An hour later, Barry Normal arrives with Film 89. Like Anne Robinson, he has the power to see through the fourth wall, but he's less confrontational about it. Finally: Network. Not the movie, but some sort of self-reflective exercise possibly intended to placate the seething Conservative Party. This week: are the likes of Crimewatch actually useful in preventing crime, or are they just cheap sensationalism for which the BBC should be severely reprimanded? And then back to the swimming pool for the menu, as a set of Grecian urns sheepishly ducks out of view for no obvious reason. In three-quarters of an hour, Gloria Gaynor live in Birmingham. I'm betting "I Will Survive" is on the set-list. Now "on One", Miami Vice, featuring Sheena Easton. In this episode she's a singer that Crockett and Tubbs have to protect. By the end of the episode she's Crockett's wife. About six or seven weeks later she gets blown up to set up the season finale. Should have stuck with the guy with the nice nine-to-five job.