EU to allow product placement on TV What's the betting that ITV will now campaign to be allowed to feature product placement on its light entertainment and long-form drama productions, and Ofcom will simply roll over and oblige? Although limited...

This is a story that I have been following since the first announcement of the second Plymouth licence. I was half expecting that Macquarie was going to stetch this one out all the way until March 2008, but they actually...

VoD: Five left on the sidelines Recently it was announced that Ofcom's plan for a high definition Freeview service would provide HD channels for the BBC, ITV and Channel 4, but no standard provision given for Channel Five to have...

We're not normally ones for abusing our blog for some shameless self promotion. Honest. So to make up for the cunning lack of any, here's some for our new look Media News pages. Every day, a highly trained set of...

This one crossed the wires whilst I was at the RMC newsdesk, and once again, it had me shaking my head in pure disbelief at how out of touch with reality outgoing GCap Chief Executive Ralph Bernard really is....

What is television for? The recently departed ex-BBC One controller Peter Fincham asked various media industry peers to give their opinion on the worth of television, and the resultant answers give a widespread range of responses to this question that...

Has the death of mainstream TV been exaggerated? If you believed the pessimists a few years ago, BBC One would now be struggling to attract 5 million viewers and Sky One would be just as popular as ITV, but for...

Verity Lambert is best known to those of us who follow the media and media history as the original producer of Doctor Who from 1963 onwards. But she started her career at Granada, then went to ABC before joining the...

Broadcasters agree Freeview HD plan HD is the future of television (just as digital, colour, 625 lines on UHF, 405 lines on VHF and children, children, future, future, were) so the announcement today that the four main broadcasters have come...

WTOP, the Washington DC all news radio station is reporting that Katie Couric has been caught on video channeling Dan Rather, when he spent half an hour discussing whether his coat should be open or closed, and his collar up...

Broadcast is reporting that the media committee has recommended that a portion of the licence fee be used to fund children's programming. The problem with this is simple. Funding that has been assigned to a public service operation, should not...

A week in the death of public service broadcasting In the week that the retrial of Barry George was announced, the BBC said that it is going to axe Rough Justice, namely the programme that has uncovered numerous miscarriages of...

From a ratings standpoint, there are times when I question the strategy of having lots of channels doing similar things. Take Discovery for instance. Back in 1998, which is the earliest point that I can reference online, Discovery had 2...

The dream job in British television that no one seems to want Personally speaking I don't think that the job of BBC One controller has (yet) turned into a "poisoned chalice" - that description is probably best reserved for Michael...

40% of adults pray, says survey "Britain is the most atheistic country on earth, thank God." Thus Nick Cohen - capital "G" and all, quoted in "Pretty Straight Guys" some four years ago. Perhaps it is, I don't know. Perhaps...

There are not many big stories in this week's ratings, so I thought I would look at the little stories that populate the ratings most weeks, but we tend not to touch on. Diva is one story I have touched...

Just a few days ago I reported that Setanta Sports News would be added to the BARB figures on November 29th. Now, Digital Spy are reporting that November 29th has been cofirmed by Setanta and Virgin Media as the official...

I regularly report on the ratings from BARB, and am always keeping an eye out for information about new channels launching. Well, the AGB Neilsen Media Research site reports on channels that are being added to the BARB ratings in...

Low-key, nervy, raw: Birth of a channel Channel 4 @ 25: on screen highs... and lows Channel 4: Channel 4 News at 25: changing faces The launch of Channel 4 at 4.45pm on 2 November 1982 was a landmark in...