Ratings in a tele-democracy
If our political life had not transformed itself in recent years into a kind of tele-democracy, with politicians feeling and behaving as if they were a rung below television celebrities; if as private individuals rather than as citizens we had not made the television set the center of our personal, family and social life; if we had not become so imprisoned by exhaustion and listlessness in our glass worlds that we travel the country only via travel documentaries; if we had not lodged our complaints with the television stations instead of the state and political parties, then no AGB viewer ratings would be of any great significance, whether accurate or faked. Whatever is faked creates fakes of its own; it undertakes to distort and deceive. We are not only talking about the distribution of the advertising pie, but above all the adulteration of value systems and the imposition of prototypes approved by allegedly «undisputed» figures. This lust for numbers and allowing AGB to have the sole right to grade people’s taste in all its various forms of expression, in fact to direct it, had been subjected to harsh ideological criticism by those (only a few, it is true) who do not accept the rule of percentages and dubious associations of the kind «of the 5,000 set-top boxes, 4,000 were switched to such and such a television program, so out of 5 million Greeks, 4 million must be watching it.» As if people are made of glass and electrons. It is of little interest that accusations are now being launched against the ratings firm by those who worshipped its pronouncements more than the Judeans did the Ten Commandments, since after all they profited considerably by the controversial findings. Their sufferings are as pure as the ratings.
