Review of the "50 Years of Television" exhibition

I was under the impression that this exhibition would be as its name suggests i.e. a look into the history of TV for the past 50 years. However, it was rather disappointing on several counts and I did feel misled by its title and what it suggested would be covered.

First of all, the scale of the exhibition was considerably small especially when you are talking about 50 years of content to be covered. It took me slightly less than 15 minutes to cover the whole area even though I thought I had been taking my own sweet time taking photos and looking at the displayed items. Of course, considering that 50 years is a long time, it is impossible to expect that everything can be covered but I would have liked the scale of the exhibition to be bigger and more inclusive.

Secondly, the title of the exhibition was rather misleading because the afterthought of viewing this was that, did I just look at the history of MediaCorp only? Isn't the title of the exhibition "50 Years of TV"? The "convenient" omission of MediaCorp's competitors such as the now-defunct Mediaworks and entry and proliferation of cable TV were so obvious that I think the title needs to be changed to "50 Years of MediaCorp".

Thirdly, the selection criteria of items or content to be featured was bewildering, if not inconsistent. The emphasis of the TV programmes highlighted were mostly Chinese dramas thus there was little mention of variety programmes which I think deserved quite a bit of attention too. Channel 5 had its fair share of hits too but only "Phua Chu Kang" was featured. Where does that put "Under One Roof" or "Growing Up" then? I think it would have been better to feature different zones for various content i.e. one for Chinese dramas and one for variety shows, one for Channel 5 dramas or sitcoms, one for the development of TV  over the years in the lives of Singaporeans, one for changes in the equipment or technology used to produce TV programmes etc. Information displayed in the form of trivia e.g.which TV drama was the top-rated in the 80s, 90s and 2000s would be quite interesting to see. More effort also needs to be put into the writeup for each of the displays because I think they are quite bland to read. And if this exhibition is meant to be for all to enjoy, surely you need to have the content translated in the four official languages? I saw a lot of elderly people at the exhibition and I'm sure the English content didn't help them in understanding the displays better. Even in the small number of Chinese words used in the writeups, I could spot at least one mistake i.e. the name of Yang Guo which I think reflects badly on whoever should be responsible for the exhibition because of this lack of QC.

The biggest problem with this exhibition is, it tried to do everything and made a mess out of it by not having a focus theme. In the end, I didn't really gain much new knowledge on top of what I already know and it was such a pity.

*Side note: I wrote this review last night but surprisingly, an article appeared in the evening news today with the same criticism as what I have mentioned above. So I guess I'm not the only one who has issues with this exhibition? ^__^

If I have to name the two highlights of this exhibition, they are actually not so related to it in a sense. First of all, the feature of magazine covers from I Weekly and 8 Days on the wall was a welcome walk into history as you see some of the more notable cover pictures of stars, some as far back as 20 over years ago. I would have preferred to see more of the covers though but given the scale of the exhibition, it would have been difficult to ask for more. The problem is, this section felt pretty much standalone and it would have been better to weave it into the central theme e.g. saying which cover was for which TV production and offering some titbit info on what went on behind the scenes for the production of these covers. Otherwise, just showing the covers alone would take a bit of effort on the part of the visitor to recall the linkage with TV programmes.

On the second floor, you might miss this wall of photos unless you walk into the interior part of the museum and catch a glimpse of it from the ground floor. This wall of photos features some of the most memorable characters or stars which I think works better than most of the exhibits in the main exhibition. Unfortunately, due to space constraints, it's not possible to be as inclusive as possible but I think it's commendable that they had this at least. Otherwise, I think the exhibition would have seriously flunked in my eyes for being totally ineffective.

Just next to this display and on the reverse of this wall, is a special feature of the ongoing big production on Channel 8 i.e. The Voyage. I watch this drama from time to time but I wouldn't count myself as an avid viewer. What was interesting wasn't the display of the costumes of four of the characters but rather the production process shown at the back of the photo wall. It shows the amount of effort and technology in making the drama while giving you a background of the historical setting of the story. Quite informative, I would say but I think it deserves a better place to be displayed because I'm sure many people would not have known that there was something behind the photo collage wall. Wonder who was doing the space planning, really leaves much to be desired.

In conclusion, I probably would not recommend that people go for this exhibition especially if you already have a fair bit of knowledge about local TV programmes. It basically doesn't offer enough insight or additional information to spark your interest and the selection of displayed items just isn't inclusive enough to satisfy the needs of most visitors. It's also not so user-friendly towards people who can't understand English. I think you might be better off satisfying your curiousity via the Internet where you can get access to multimedia content rather than cold displays you see from this exhibition.