The BBC are very, very lazy. On News 24 today they are covering a news story involving a crackdown on youth drinking. As is the norm with the news, they have sent someone out to be in a bar and...

Avid readers of this occasional column will notice that it has been a while since we last looked in on the old Victorian mansion where Madame Arcati and our fellow sitters congregate to contact the spirits of our dear, and...

Thompson issues public service challenge Whilst it is good that ITV should be forced to account for the reason(s) why it should throw away the remainder of its 'public service obligations' for the privilege of showing even greater quantities of...

Digital Spy: TBS to relaunch on June 4 No. Don't worry. It's not this TBS. Nope. The Transdiffusion System is not planning a revamp on June 4 at all. Especially not a revamp with such dire consequences. No. The article...

Metro: 60 Seconds Interview with Peter Simon Seems strange to imagine, but yes we live in a world where former kids TV presenter Peter Simon can get 1 million viewers on a Saturday night for flogging chunky necklaces, odd globes...

Telephone Numbers for drama purposes (TV, Radio etc) A lot of water has passed under the bridge since VINcent XXXX was the dramatist's number of choice. OfGums, showing more imagination than the American 555 single option, offer 01632 as a...

40 years of quality broadcasting The launch night that never was Well, it's the 40th Birthday of BBC2 today, and what better way for BBCi to advertise it with a picture of 'The Office'. Wow. Just think of what they...

Almost inevitably, in the wake on Michael Grade's statement about broadcasting not using the net well enough as a distribution medium, the BBC has announced that it will be broadcasting all 40 of its BBC Local Radio stations in England...

Jermey to head ITV regional news Buried in an article about ITV plc appointing its first ever executive in charge of all ITV1 regional news bulletins in England and Wales, the Media Guardian reveals that ITV1's regional news bulletins are...

BBCi takes an interesting line... ...not backed up by their own figures. Success stories: Arsenal vs Newcastle United, Sky Sports, Sunday - 1.6 million viewers Friends, E4, Thursday - 1m viewers Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Saturday -...

Using Attitude Based Segmentation to Better Understand Viewers' Usability Issues with Digital and Interactive TV (pdf) From a snappily titled paper presented at a 2004 European Conference on Interactive Television comes an interesting little nugget of information. In a survey,...

MediaGuardian: Viewers desert BBC channels Another day, another "BBC is down the pan" story, but this time the news is both good and bad. Good in that considering the 300-plus channels that are now available, the number of viewers not...

Interview with producer/director Jo Haywood Would someone - anyone - like to explain the meaning of the following quote from Jo Haywood? ...but ITV have also lost a lot of stuff. When all of the contracts changed hands between Granada...

From the Intertel section, comes word that the company which owns CityTV, CHUM Limited, is acquiring Craig Media Inc. for $265 million Canadian. The deal, subject to regulatory approval from the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, will mean that CHUM...

The Scotsman - of all things - on the BBC Essex free radio celebration. This is a busy year for broadcasting historians - the 40th anniversaries of Radio Caroline, Rediffusion London, BBC2, RTF2 and ahem Transdiffusion. The first celebration is...

ITV3 lined up for September debut In the swirling mists of the past there Granada and BSkyB and they had a gangcalled GSkyB. And it did have TV channels called Plus and Men & Motors from Granada's shed in Manchester....

ITV plans 'blank screen' gameshow Given that staring at a blank screen is infinitely more entertaining than the majority of current ITV programmes, it was perhaps inevitable that the idea would be plagiarised at some point, though unsurprisingly they have...

Reality ratings boost ITV2 So a constant diet of formulaic TV reality TV (I'm a Celeb, American Idol etal) has sent ITV2 spinning to become the second most popular entertainment channel in the first three months of 2004. Depressingly (the...

Media Guardian is reporting that Michael Grade is urging broadcasters to embrace the net, or face the sort of piracy issues that have been dogging the music industry. When the net was new, radio and TV were quick to start...

BBC and C4 face threat of analogue charges The scenario: The pace of digital takeup has probably now slowed down again after a promising period late last year with the sales of 'Freeview' boxes, so Ofcom decides that something else...

Early yesterday morning, we were surprised by a knock at the door. On stumbling downstairs and opening it, I was astonished to see Madame Arcati. She was so excited at having apparently perfected her Ectoplasmic Speaking Tube, thereby allowing direct...

Michael Grade is new BBC chairman My first instinct was that I wasn't quite sure that he would be entirely suitable for the post (remembering how Channel 4 went downhill during his stint as chief executive), but there again...

Pioneering socially experimental documentary strand begun on World in Action spearheads ITV's 50th Anniversary J. Nigel Pickard, ITV's Director of Programmes has brought Granada's mammoth documentary project, back to ITV1 in time for its 50th anniversary celebrations in 2005. Film...

ITV backs 'top slicing' BBC licence fee Yet another highly predictable outcome, though the only logic here is that ITV wants to see a weakened BBC but not a neutered one (which would totally devastate its ad revenue). But ITV...