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Xiaoying asks: Please explain “crime heavy”, “There’s not much not to like” and, above all, “battery chickens” in the following passages (This is from your column 2008-03-04 about Faint Praise). City University head of journalism and former ITV news staffer Adrian Monck gives “an old fashioned critique of an old fashioned show”, saying that the story balance was too crime heavy and the one thing missing was a sense of humour. “There’s not much not to like here - which isn’t to damn with faint praise, but simply to point out that with news viewers the less you can do to drive them away, the more will stay. But like battery chickens, the odd surprise is good for them.” My comments: The first two questions are straightforward. “Crime heavy” means there are too many stories about crimes in the ITV news show, heavy suggesting that it outweighs other sects of the program and therefore creates an imbalance. If, for instance, the half-hour show devotes 12 minutes of it to crime stories, it is crime heavy. Our 7pm news show, on the other hand, is leaders-meeting-other-leaders heavy, especially during the first half of the program. The first several minutes, for example, are invariably consumed by a top leader meeting someone else – and you are left wishing, of course, that they, today, somehow, might conjure up something interesting to say. “There’s not much not to like” is simply another way of saying “there’s much to like”. “Not much not to like” = much to like, as “Not” and “not” cancel each other out. | 
