Pirate TV needs a facelift By Luke Murray D rake’s Pirate TV provides a primary source for news around Drake. It’s aired every Wednesday, entertaining students and faculty alike while giving details and dates to future events and sign up opportunities for programs. The production of PTV has traveled back and forth between ComAcad and ASB, this year ending up in the hands of ASB. The show has become an eyesore, and focuses on humor and skits instead of conveying information. PTV has gone downhill exponentially since last year when ComAcad produced it. Last year, PTV entertained while still covering important parts in a memorable way. Episodes had structure, containing different segments for different parts that were well filmed, and edited down to a refined final product. This year, PTV has become an unfunny cesspool of memes and trends, targeting people. a This “informational” program undermined entirely by an interruption of a forced joke or a cutaway to a meme every five or so seconds, ruining the appeal, flow, and most importantly, the authenticity of the program. PTV needs to stop with the abhorrent amount of forced humor, memes, “comedic” zoom-ins, and cutaways to irrelevant material, confirming my own distaste for the lack of quality content. Apart from the glaring issue of PTV’s humor being subjective, distracting, and unprofessional, the lack of diversity among characters stands out. Nothing’s objectively wrong featured in PTV with having the same host of a show, however a problem arises when there’s hardly any representation of other student’s voices. The lack of diversity in hosts is appalling; it’s always centered around the same small groups of people. The hosts and the sports news team stay the same, whilst very narrow grwoup of is PTV has gone downhill exponentially since last year never introducing newcomers. PTV is directed at the student body, and the underrepresentation of students’ voices and opinions makes every episode seem controlled. The overall setting of the show hardly changes location. The hosts are always in the same building while the sports team is on the field. While it’s fitting that the sports team would be posted on the field, the lack of diversity in location really shows, making every sports news segment feel the same as its predecessor. After the intro, the show seems unscripted, the hosts and actors speaking lines inconsistently, portraying themselves as being unprepared, consequently spewing out clumsy, unpaced ad libs. Is there a solution to fixing PTV? Yes. A rebuild of the show from the ground up paired with lessons on professionalism would be a nice start, but unfortunately that seems unlikely to happen this far into the year. Another potential solution could be to go back to ComAcad. The academy teaches students the art of professional filmmaking on a daily basis, and has access to better, more professional filming equipment. On top of all that, ComAcad has many students that are willing to work on this project, bringing their original ideas to the table and perhaps reviving the tainted corpse that PTV has become. PTV has the potential to be resurrected by ASB, but the path to redemption will be long and arduous. Hopefully PTV will seek better management next year in the hands of a new production staff, or better yet, in the hands of ComAcad. 18
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