Amp I never had a hollywood celebrity as a surrogate parent when I was growing up. Didn’t watch enough TV I guess. I knew a girl who spoke with a strange half-yankee accent she’d developed from the television. She never knew a real American in the real world. In the physical world. I said ‘the real world’ as if television’s not real.
Interviewer It’s not, though.
Amp If the TV teaches people to speak then it’s real. These creatures on television have real effects in our lives. It’s just we can’t affect them. We can’t go into their world and change the way they live.
Interviewer What would you change on the television?
Amp Not sure. Maybe I’d randomise the programming, so any show could appear on any channel at any time. Or maybe I’d do something with ad breaks.
Interviewer Like what?
Amp Okay, how about this. You’ve been sent a six-part miniseries from the BBC. It’s about... journalists from a London newspaper uncovering corruption in the Halls of Parliament. Lots of shots of gritty sidewalks and dead prostitutes and guys with their ties half undone arguing over coffee. Six hour long episodes, each episode gets three ad breaks, which breaks it into four pieces. That’s twenty four segments of British miniseries, numbered chronologically from one to twenty four. Now say you tell your viewers – you can choose six of these twenty four segments and put them wherever you like. The rest will be random. You might choose to put the first six segments of the show in order at the beginning and then hope you’ll be able to figure it out after that. You might want to fix the last two segments in order at the end so it doesn’t spoil the ending for you. Or maybe you want to put segment twenty four in the first bracket, get it out of the way. I’d do that for every show.
