National TV stations: one with kisses, the other with fists. Is this just the beginning of the end?
2026-02-13 11:42:33
TiranaPost
By Fabjola Hije/ In less than 24 hours, two of the country's national television stations became the center of discussion, not for debate, not for argument, but for scenes that raised serious questions about the boundary between spectacle and public responsibility.
On the show Përputhen, a format that has long been criticized as a space where vulgarity is often sold as success and clicks, columnist Laert Vasili stood up and kissed a contestant. But he did it unexpectedly and without her consent. On national television. On the same one where, as a contestant on Big Brother a few months ago, he confessed how he had been sexually abused when he was only 7 years old.
And since we came to Big Brother, it's hard not to notice a clear trend in the new season: the incitement of extreme situations to then turn them into "moral lessons" in prime time. Conflicts, insults, tensions that increasingly come close to physical clashes, a cycle where the viewer sees within 24 hours how far human behavior can go when spectacle is put above everything.
But if it hasn't reached fists yet in Big Brother, it did in Opinion.
On the most watched political show in the country, Opinion, apart from Blendi Fevziu's fistfight with the late Artan Lame, the situation had never reached a physical altercation. There had been insults and hate speech, but not to the point of a boxing ring, which was then, as if by chance, accompanied by a peace video in the publicity.
Two scenes, two different formats, but the same reflection: is this just the beginning of the end of television?
