Being reliant on public buses to get around, I’m thankful that I live in an area that’s serviced predominantly by SMRT buses. Why, what’s wrong with SBS Transit buses, you ask?

Just this one incredibly annoying thing known as TVMobile.

You know how, when you’re riding on a bus or train, you sometimes encounter this one inconsiderate bonehead who either (1) hasn’t heard of a technological innovation known as ‘earphones’, or (2) has an uncanny interpretation of what it means to ’share’, so that your ears are assailed by the tinny, infuriating noises of techno, trance or heavy metal from his MP3 phone? Almost like a new-age take on the ancient Chinese art of water-torture.

Well, TVMobile is something like that… only that Mediacorp actually profits from bugging the hell out of you. Here we are, commuting to work or back home, and all we want is (a) to get some shut-eye, (b) to listen to our iPods, with earphones, (c) talk to our friends, (d) to phase out and stare blankly into space (for a change), and there’s this horrid contraption that’s blaring out these unimaginably noxious jingles.

There’s nowhere to run once you board an SBS bus. In an era of digital cable TV and watch-as-you-please media like DVDs and YouTube, the TVMobile concept is a throwback to a primitive entertainment form. Where newer, alternative media have focused on bringing more choice to consumers, Mediacorp has regressed to a brute form of informational force-feeding, much like how the Party in George Orwell’s 1984 employed ‘telescreens’ to broadcast propaganda and enforce a homogeneity of thinking. They can’t get us in our homes… so they get us in public buses instead. Tellingly, the Mediacorp TVMobile website proclaims, “In fact, our captive audience has increased by 10% from 947,330 in 2004 to 1,040,255 passengers in 2005.” ‘Captive’ audience, indeed!

Even worse, the programming choices are highly suspect. If Mediacorp thinks that Singaporeans’ viewing habits consist only of the sappy (e.g. endless reruns of Channel 8 dramas) and the inane (e.g. endless reruns of Planet’s Funniest Animals), they must be grossly mistaken. Just today, my fellow commuters and I on the 66 bus were subjected to a 10-minute barrage of the most godawful mouth-drumming / vocal-impersonation / I-can-make-many-non-human-sounding-noises routine ever.

I also wonder, in passing, whether the continued existence of TVMobile might at least partly explain the constant hikes in bus fares, at least where SBS Transit is concerned. After all, those things guzzle electricity, and cost money to maintain, repair and replace.

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In case you’re wondering, my blog has really not gone the way of angsty griping at the System. I intend to post a reponse very soon to Prof Thio’s article in today’s Straits Times Insight section about secularism, and the place of religion in a democracy.