I woke up this morning and I turned my TV on

Da da-da da DA...da da-da da DA.

I woke up this morning and I turned my TV on

Da da-da da DA...da da-da da DA.

Then I cried and I cried; BBC World was gone.

Oh, yeah baby, I got the blues. I loved my BBC World.

All right, I'm going overboard here; but seriously, I do miss that bit of culture and the worldly update that used to kick-off my day. The reason I'm writing about my disappointment here is that I think it is important what people - especially kids - watch on TV. I'm not saying BBC World is perfect, but it stacks up pretty well against the rest of what's floating around on the air waves and, unlike many stations, it can be very educational.

BTV used to relay the British made programmes when they didn't have any shows of their own to air, but as those of you who own TVs but don't subscribe to a satellite service already know, they dropped the service about a month ago.

Evidently, the contract ran out and BTV officials chose not to renew.

Some say this development is a good thing, and it would be hard to argue against opening the airwaves to more local programming if BTV had some other world-news, arts and current affairs programmes lined up, but that doesn't appear to be the case. What we are now getting during BTV downtime is a mixture of test patterns and rather odd MSNBC programmes from the United States.

Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, MSNBC specialises in US election coverage and interviews with skinheads, white supremacist and mass murderers.

Questionable viewing content for anyone, but not what I would choose for the local audience, and a definite worry for working mums who leave the kids at home with the maid.

I used to watch BBC World news for half an hour each morning to keep up with world affairs. I didn't assume all the information was accurate or that the reporting was unbiased but at least I got the basics so I had a shot at reading between the lines, and I was able to keep up with the latest tribal conflicts in the Middle-east, the Balkans, the former Soviet Union and the rest of Africa. I also occasionally got an idea for this MYOB column.

Okay, the simple solution would be for me to get myself a dish and decoder and pick up BBC World on DSTV.

For the time being, I'm resisting heading down that road because, if I do, my family will have a whole load of additional distractions to deal with on the other channels and some of us might get sucked into the far too common affliction of spending all of our free time peering into a flickering box.

A grim note to close on; but then again, these blues numbers rarely have happy endings.

CSI Gaborone

I mentioned in the other half of this week's column that TV can be dangerous, but that it can also be educational.

For example; BTV has carried several police and crime scene investigation programmes like CSI New York and CSI Miami, so viewers here know there are many sophisticated ways to track down the bad guys and nail them to their offences with forensic evidence from things such as fingerprints and DNA from saliva, blood, hair and semen.

What gets me is why don't the police make more of an effort to collect that kind of evidence here?

I realise it takes money to establish the lab facilities and to train the investigators, but hey, the government couldn't manage to spend one third of last year's development budget and the overall surplus was P7.66 billion. We also have about P70 billion in foreign reserves.

Muti killings are a shameful reality in Botswana.

Surely, some of that cash could be spent on improving our investigation and detection capabilities so the police would be able to track down everyone involved in these and other horrible crimes.