If you haven't seen the BBC's Olympic monkey, then it's time to head over to the BBC website now.
The music and animation - which will get their TV premiere on BBC One at 7:30pm on Thursday 24 July - were created by Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett, and will form part of the BBC's presentation of the Olympics.
Inevitably there will be some differing opinions on the package, and already there are some who think it's an outstanding piece of work and a credit to the people who designed and commissioned it, and of course, those who think that the BBC should just shove a piece of cardboard with "The Olympics" scrawled on it in biro instead...
Demand Five - another case of online discrimination
Once again, a sizeable proportion of online users are being discriminated against by on-demand programme providers: this time by Five's TV-on-demand service Demand Five. If they were visually impaired, for example, this discrimination would probably be illegal - but in this case a great many more people are affected.
On the Demand Five sub-site, in the Accessibility section, the company states: "Five.tv and Demand Five are committed to making output as accessible as possible to all users..."
Yet this is patently not the case. Demand Five doesn't support Macintosh users - a sizeable and growing proportion of the on-line community.
The fact is, there are probably four times as many UK Macintosh users on the web as there are visually impaired internet users in the UK. Yet Demand Five wants to be "as accessible as possible" to the latter while neglecting the former, much larger group.
Current statistics suggest that 1 in 60 UK residents are blind or visually impaired. Research further indicates that over 50 per cent of visually impaired people regard the Internet as an important communication tool, so we can assume that 500,000 visually impaired people in the UK will be potentially interested in viewing Demand Five's output. This is inflating the figure by an unknown amount, because we do not know that every visually impaired person who thinks the Net is important actually has access.
By contrast, at the turn of this year, Macintosh-based users topped 8% of all web users in statistics (a number that may underestimate Macintosh usage). Now, 61% (end 2007) of households in the UK have internet access, and we can assume that they use the web. That suggests that three million Mac users in the UK might be interested in Demand Five's content, or four times the number of potential visually impaired customers. But one group is supported, the other is not. (It's actually more complex than that: Macintosh computers, due to their ease of use, will no doubt be the preference of at least some impaired users, so the groups overlap.)
This sounds like a case of discrimination to me.
Other broadcasters support Macintosh users by offering a Flash player as an alternative option - although it does not offer as good quality, at least you can watch all the content.
In addition there is an Open Source DRM project, now quite advanced, that Five could be supporting to help develop a platform-agnostic downloadable system that would work on Windows, Macintosh, Linux and more, and would cost nothing in licensing or suffer the challenges of proprietary solutions.
Will Five consider supporting Macintosh users in the future?
Readers will recall that there was an outcry when the BBC played this trick, supporting only Windows users - they remedied that to a degree with the Flash player and they are apparently supporting the open source DRM project. Couldn't Five do the same?
Quite likely there won't be the outcry against Five that there was against the BBC - it's not a public service broadcaster paid for by everyone with a television*, and presumably relatively few people want to watch the programmes - but that's still no reason to exclude a significant, and growing, proportion of the online audience.
* Now, that's interesting... demand Five has a question in its FAQ section: Do I need a TV licence to watch Demand Five programmes on my computer?
The answer given is, "No, you do not need a TV licence to watch programmes on Demand Five as long as you do not have a TV in your home." Is that actually true? The TV Licensing site says, "You need a TV Licence to use any television receiving equipment such as a TV set, digital box, DVD or video recorder, PC, laptop or mobile phone to watch or record television programmes as they're being shown on TV." I suppose the key phrase here is, "as they are being shown on TV".
There's more than a hint of trying to defend the indefensible when Ofcom chairman David Currie yet again attempts to weaken the connection between the licence fee and the BBC, and it's hard not to conclude that you can clearly hear the sound a corpse being kicked before being consigned to the history books.
And I'm not talking about the BBC here.
This isn't really about Ofcom trying to find a public service alternative to the BBC (although that's still lurking in the background), it's more a case of Ofcom trying to cover itself if/when it ultimately transpires that its loudly-trumpeted 'top-slicing' proposal in relation to the licence fee is actually unworkable under European Union legislation.
If top-slicing the licence fee for cross-subsidy purposes is ruled to be an illegal public subsidy (as is fairly likely to be the case), then that would completely scupper Ofcom's public service publisher proposal. Indeed you can hear the furious sound of backpedaling with the classic "not ruling anything out" catch-all statement.
Then there's the ongoing issue of ITV's ever-shrinking public service commitments, which is defended by Currie in economic terms, to quote: "We would be delighted if the numbers looked different. But they don't. The current downturn will accentuate the pressures" - but that's a very specious argument if there ever was one.
Let me explain. If a famous art gallery placed half of its valuable treasures into storage, then fewer people would want to visit the gallery because there would be fewer items worth seeing. Then if the gallery in turn wanted to shrink the amount of space it occupied then it would have a strong case to do so since there's now less of public worth on display.
Which is more or less the case with modern-day ITV. Nowadays it repetitively fills the schedules with soaps and other forms of cheap TV to a largely dwindling audience that channel-hops much more than it used to, hence there's less valuable content on display, so to speak, with much more incentive to cut back on the public service commitments.
So it's no wonder that ITV has an audience that's smaller than it really ought to be at this point despite the recent proliferation of numerous television channels, along with all those years of faster-than-average audience decline before Michael Grade took over that have (perhaps) been conveniently forgotten about.
Therefore we can conclude that ITV has dug itself a very deep hole as a consequence, along with burying much of the remaining potential for advertiser-funded public service broadcasting that may still exist. And Ofcom appears to be still obsessed with finding vaguely workable alternatives as opposed to fixing the existing system.
Which, come to think of it, would be 'too difficult' for them.
Now is not a good time to be involved in commercial UK radio, it seems. Advertisers are trimming their marketing budgets in anticipation of a possible economic recession, and this has conspired to become the so-called tipping point which has made certain stations and service areas (as specified by Ofcom) becoming no longer economically viable.
It's ironic though that the local radio sector is complaining about BBC local news (website-based or otherwise) when radio groups such as Global/GCap, Bauer and UKRD are moving away from local radio provision into the murky waters of quasi-national networking, with only token concessions being made for local news provision.
However beneath the inevitable BBC-bashing that economic hardship within the commercial media sector can occasionally trigger (regardless of the actual underlying causes) there's a real problem in relation to how local radio licences are currently awarded and regulated.
In short, Ofcom and the government have been dishing out lots of radio licences to anyone who's willing to pay for them (as well as meeting certain criteria) but perhaps not paying enough attention to whether or not they are actually viable. This not only includes the cost of the licences but also the nature of the radio format(s) specified by them.
Maybe the whole radio licensing system requires a major overhaul, and a switch to digital radio would be an opportune moment to make such a change, although the fiasco surrounding DAB digital radio has delayed that possibility for several years.
In the meantime, commercial radio will continue to suffer through reasons both self-inflicted and beyond its control, and certain measures formerly designed to please commercial operators (such as redrawing coverage maps and changing formats) may inevitably end up hurting them instead.
As of today this story may not be widely reported, but it seems that radio group UKRD is on the verge of handing back a second local radio licence, namely Wisbech-based Fen Radio (in Cambridgeshire), staffed by four people and having a service area of just 77,000 potential listeners.
UKRD was the first radio group ever to hand back a UK local radio licence (Star Stroud), and River FM (a Kingdom Group station in Scotland) later followed suit in the same fashion, so Fen Radio will be the third station to throw in the towel as opposed to the previously usual practice of selling the licence on to someone else.
So what went wrong this time? It's not quite as simple as merely just having a radio station that was too small to work properly hence becoming unprofitable in a worsening economic climate (even though that's undoubtedly the main cause of failure) - the station supposedly had a 20% reach within its service area.
However Fen Radio was originally known as X-Cel FM and had a service area that extended into Ely, although the Ely service was subsumed into Star Cambridge in 2002. This could be the real root of the problem, namely that the original radio service area was scaled down to a size that was too small to be separately viable when things get tough.
According to Ofcom documents (map, station format), Ely's Star Cambridge simulcast is still part of the Fenland licence, so when the licence is handed back this will cease at the same time. Therefore both areas must have been viewed as jointly unprofitable by UKRD management.
We could also assume that UKRD had privately asked Ofcom whether Fen Radio could be replaced by a simulcast of another UKRD station (if not a relocation request as with Star Stroud), and presumably the answer was "No". So UKRD ultimately decided that the only way out was to hand back the licence for the whole Fenland area.
In the Star Stroud case there were geographical restrictions that helped to complicate matters, but this time it just seems that UKRD simply held too many licences for local radio in a particular area. Maybe Ofcom needs to revise much more than just expectations if local radio (analogue or digital) is to be truly successful in the long term.
O2 and iPhone 3G: Where 'first come first served' is a lie
Of course, as everyone might expect, there was enormous demand for the iPhone 3G when it came out earlier in the week: it's obviously an excellent product with several of the features that people wanted added to the new model.
I'm an existing O2 iPhone customer, and very kindly O2 gave us the opportunity to register our interest: as a result I received a text message when the phones became available, so I could go on-line and order one. The deal for existing customers was available until October 11.
So far, so good. But then it all started to go pear-shaped. I was teaching in Greece at the time, with the benefit of an excellent internet connection and I logged into the site, got my customer number from my on-line bill and filled in the order form. It took all the details, including credit card, and I pressed the button.
Next thing I saw was a page telling me an error had occurred, and please try again.
I did so, which was quick and easy as the cache held most of my data. Again it failed.
It was obvious what was going on: there was a huge demand - bigger than anyone had expected - and the system was simply clogged up. But the O2 site didn't tell you that: it just encouraged you to try again. And indeed I tried again a great many times, on the 7th and every subsequent day until the on-line order page was removed, to be replaced by an "out of stock" banner. I reckon I tried around 250 times in all. A great many people have had the same or a similar experience: see here and here and here for example.
On my return to the UK I called O2 Customer Service and eventually got through to a very distant-sounding gentleman in Glasgow. I told him that I had had all this trouble, and that I understood there was unprecedented demand. I didn't mind that I won't get it for a while, I told him; but can I place an order - which I had been trying to do but had been foiled by their web site failure - and thus get in the queue to receive one? The answer was no: they were being allocated on a "strictly first come, first served basis" and as they were not currently available they couldn't let me order one.
In what sense, I asked, was stopping me placing an order for a back-ordered product, "first come, first served"? Well, I was told, it was company policy not to accept back-orders for the iPhone 3G, even though that is a perfectly normal activity for a supplier. Usually a seller will rather like the idea of potential customers - especially ones who are prepared to put their money down in advance of the product actually becoming available. There's nothing like a full order-book.
Not so for O2, however, it would appear. So what was I supposed to do? I was told that availability would be notified on the web site and to keep checking back. I pointed out that this was not in any sense "first come, first served" - it was in fact a lottery.
In addition, I had been made an offer by the company and, due to the failure of its facilities, which is their problem and not mine, I had been prevented from taking advantage of this offer. The obvious answer was to let me place the order another way, as I had done everything that was required of me to place the order. They were, in fact, by not allowing me to do so, in breach of contract.
Needless to say, this didn't go down very well. We went round and round for a few minutes, with this guy trying to persuade me that "first come, first served" actually meant the same as a lottery in which if you happened to see the notification on the web site you could order an iPhone upgrade, with luck before the October deadline. But this didn't mean I would be able to order one before the expiration of the offer, even though I had done all I was told was required to do so - except actually place the order, which was their fault and not mine. Eventually I gave up.
I thought it might be worth seeing what the score was at my nearest O2 store and called them. He gave me essentially the same story, using this false "first come, first served" phrase liberally again. Again I pointed out that what he was proposing - they would have signs in the window when they next had an allocation of iPhones and I could come in if I happened to pass by at that moment and order one then - was in fact a lottery.
He told me that all staff had been sent emails by head office that threatened investigation and dismissal if any member of staff was found taking details of potential customers with a view to putting them on a list - which of course would be how to offer "first come, first served". Presumably this now-common phrase was included in the emails sent to employees. He wouldn't send me a copy, of course, but if you can, then email relen [at] transdiffusion.org.
Evidently O2 is taking advantage of its monopoly position to save it a tiny bit of effort. If it really wanted to offer "first come, first served", this simple two-step process is what it would do:
Allow customers to place an order whenever they like, creating a "first come, first served" back-order queue for each store, including the online one, just like any company does for a back-ordered product.
Every time a shipment of iPhones comes in, make an allocation to stores, including the online store, in proportion to the number of original iPhones sold (for example).
Thus existing customers have the opportunity to order a unit before the deadline, for example, if they choose to, and all customers get a unit in the order in which their order was placed.
That is true "first come, first served", as opposed to the current lottery, which puts O2, in my humble non-legal opinion, in breach of contract - at least with existing customers. Anyone planning a class-action lawsuit, count me in.
Broadcast Now reports that the director of ITV Regions, Michael Jeremy, has sent a letter to all staff in the regions detailing the timetable for redundancies and their plans for creating their new vision of regional ITV.
I say this a lot in various places, but I make no apologies for saying it again. It's all very well making good plans to save money, but as always, the devil is in the details, and these are the things you have to watch most carefully, because if you don't, they will come back and bite you on the rear end when you least expect it.
Broadcast Now also have a copy of the letter that has been sent out to every member of staff and it makes interesting reading. The plans as we know were to cut the number of regions down to 9, but in essence, each region would produce 2 sub-regional programmes for it's region from it's hub. So take the West of England and Westcountry as an example. Bristol would produce two shows. One to go out to the West of England, one to go out to the Westcountry. Sounds simple enough, but think about this. Bristol to Penzance is about a 3 hour journey time, by road or rail.
Now, you can say, well surely they can have some facilities in Plymouth or closer, but that's not the point. It's the sense of disconnect from the location. Listeners in Plymouth have had that disconnect feeling twice now, from the same company. Back in the early 1990s Plymouth Sound decided to join forces with their Exeter based sister station, Devonair, and provide a joint evening and overnight service. Plymouth listeners practically revolted over the development, and you found listeners moving away from Plymouth Sound at that time. It all came to an end when Devonair closed at the end of 1994, a loser in a franchise auction, to be replaced by Gemini FM.
Then in 1999, Plymouth Sound then decided that their AM service needed to change, from the local Plymouth Sound AM that had been running separately on AM since about 1990, to a networked Classic Gold Plymouth. WIthin 6 months, they'd lost two thirds of their listeners, as Plymouth listeners did not like the fact that a local station had been replaced by a quasi-national one. Even now, Gold Plymouth is a ratings failure, with a reach of just 7,000 listeners in a market of around 330,000 listeners.
Half the UK is going to feel that kind of disconnect under the plans ITV are working on.
The letter also says a detailed plan will be published in the autumn, but the headlines they list do not make great reading.
18 'local' services within a nine region structure
Like I just said, half the country will end up feeling disconnected from ITV
High quality programmes for ITV viewers everywhere
Technical quality, yes, but other definitions of quality might be less easy to claim on
A familiar 'family of faces' making up every regional reporting team
Erm, shouldn't encouraging new talent be a part of that as well?
High TV production values incorporating excellent graphics
Means it will look great, even if it's nothing more than manure, it'll be nice, shiny manure!
Excellent presentation both in the studio and on the road
You actually need to say this? That should be a given.
Broadband delivery as important as television fully integrated in all newsrooms
This is one of the few headlines that reads well. Perhaps, finally, it is a recognition that internet broadcasting is as much a part of our broadcasting future, as satellite and terrestrial are.
We will create truly local city and county sites within ITV Local
They will need to work hard to make these sites work, and there is little sign that ITV really wants to work very hard of anything. Look at how quickly they dropped the ITV News Channel.
Harnessing technology to improve newsgathering and production
Well, that's always going to happen in any broadcast environment. Again, completely unnecessary to say it
Ability to go live from location right across England and Wales a strong satellite and live link fleet
The way we always seem to have reporters live at every location, seems somewhat excessive. For stories that are constantly developing, then yes there is a case for it, but what is wrong with a straight forward packaged report?
A recognition that the capacity to report from location is more important than maintaining oversized expensive buildings or concerns over where studios are located
Wrong, totally wrong, absolutely overflowing with wrong-ness! This would suggest that eventually news will not be presented from a studio, but reporters live in various locations just linking to each other. God, what a horrid thought!
Camera coverage to suit the job; i) maintaining sufficient craft camera operators to provide the quality we need in high end features and on news stories, ii) reporters who can film their own material for use on TV and broadband, with appropriate training to support them iii) ensuring the operators of our 'live from location' satellite vehicles have high quality camera and editing skills
In other words, everybody's gotta multitask. As if there isn't enough of that already!
Clear, inclusive leadership in every region with good communication right across ING
This is an area business tends to fail in. Leadership always says do as I say, and communication tends to work only one way, from the top down. I hope they keep this promise, but I won't hold my breath waiting.
An emphasis on excellent programme producing, first rate planning, high quality news editing and creative features production
This sounds good, but again, I'm not holding my breath waiting for it.
Editorial decisions driven locally. ING will continue to ensure 'best practice' is shared but regional diversity will continue to be celebrated
How can you make an editorial decision for Cornwall, from Bristol? Bristol is a completely different vibe and atmosphere to Cornwall. Hell, Cornwall is different to Plymouth, to Devon, and just abouot anywhere else.
An adherence to ITV values. We're going through major change and we want ITV regional news to continue to be a great place to work
As far as I know, ITV values seems to be appeal to the lowest common denominator. Some of us would prefer ITV to try to raise the bar just a little bit.
They say they anticipate this new structure to begin in 2009. I hope I'm proved wrong, but somehow, considering my own disconnect from ITV, I don't think so.
Currently ITV plc has a big dilemma on its hands. Its share price is several times lower than it was three years ago, and the current economic situation means that hardly anyone is interested in a takeover that would make shareholders happy. (Though RTL might risk going for it if the share price was to become even more attractive.)
Therefore it isn't surprising that ITV is looking long and hard at where it can cut back its operations, and any form of duplication that doesn't obviously have 'shareholder value' - namely regional news - is going to be high on that hitlist.
Step forward Channel 4, which has little or nothing to cut back on and is instead looking to improve its public service credentials further in order to help safeguard its future in a competitive marketplace. Channel 4 has nothing to lose whilst ITV is desperately trying to move in the opposite direction.
Of course there's another question which is immediately raised if ITV and Channel 4 swap obligations in respect of regional news provision, namely could Channel 4 become the next Channel 3? On its own, Channel 4 couldn't afford to bid for Channel 3 licences but does have a privileged position as well as having the right attitude that ITV seems to lack.
If regional news is truly on the agenda for Channel 4, then adding regional programming might be the next logical progression. Given that Channel 4 is prepared to upset its current schedule for the addition of regional news, then the addition of regional programming might as well be considered at the same time.
However the addition of regional programming to Channel 4 would result in encroachment on ITV's territory as a consequence, although it's just as easy to argue that ITV is now intent on moving in the opposite direction of becoming just another commercial channel like Sky One or Virgin 1. This in turn could further jeopardise ITV's Channel 3 status.
Alternatively getting Channel 4 to supply the regional news on Channel 3 could upset ITV, but ITV may not be able to argue with such a proposal if it wants to keep its Channel 3 position. Current Culture Secretary Andy Burnham seems to have adopted a relatively tough line on ITV's regional commitments so this option isn't entirely out of the question.
Perhaps the only real solution is to scrap all of the existing regional Channel 3 licences, drawing up new regional boundaries if required and readvertise them again, although to do so might indirectly imply a government policy failure so this may not happen until there's a change of administration.
It all depends how valuable that much-coveted Channel 3 position is to ITV plc, and based on the current evidence it seems that ITV is only interested in the status it gives as a broadcaster opposed to the associated long-term commitments.
It may be true that after the recent premium rate interactivity scandals, both television and radio have become rather more bureaucratic as a result, with more form-filling and back watching to be done just to keep the regulators happy. The way this affects programme content is a cause for concern, but not necessarily in the way some might think.
You can perhaps tell that traditional broadcasters are a world apart from advertising agencies, since the latter seems to thrive on ways of circumventing the numerous restrictions that have been placed in their path whilst the former appears to just moan that their wonderful idea for a phone-in has now become too much trouble to implement.
It seems that the current crop of producers and presenters should not only ally themselves closer to their respective managers but also need to extend their horizons beyond finding new ways of fleecing money interacting with their listeners - not everyone was enamoured with what passed for 'entertainment' just before the scandals erupted.
If done correctly and fairly, interactivity can add value (as suggested by many within the media industry), but more often than not just superficially helped to paper over cracks that shouldn't be there in the first place. Both radio and television relied too heavily on interactivity, and it's now time to bring other creative ideas to the forefront again.
Or are most of the current crop of media professionals just not creative enough?
As somehow befitting a modern broadcaster, it's taken a while but they got there in the end, namely that someone within the BBC has finally realised that the recently-imposed corporate end credit promotion style (you know, the one where the credits get shrunk into a tiny box to make way for details of six programmes you don't care about) just wasn't satisfactory.
A fair number of complaints came from members of the public who couldn't read the end credits when they were squeezed, but presumably a more persuasive voice on the issue came from actors' union Equity who has campaigned against this sort of thing on behalf of its members.
It's good news that the relevant parts of the BBC have finally seen sense and decided to axe the wretched thing (look at Channel 4 to see how to do essentially the same thing a whole lot better), as opposed to just playing around with the credit text size (an interim idea floated back in February) that obviously wasn't the answer to the problem.
However the very fact that the BBC marketing department is now quickly backpedaling on something that was designed only last year with the assistance of licence fee payers' money is rather worrying. Take this quote from Helen Kellie who's head of marketing:
"We also want to improve legibility so we will phase out the quarter page of end credits. And finally we are simplifying the messages we include in the end credits and making them feel less busy".
Bear in mind that this is the head of the very same marketing department that presumably helped to design that overly busy, ill-conceived and badly planned mess of an end credit promotion (ECP) layout in the first place.
And you just have consider the effectiveness of a command structure that allowed a marketing department to impose its will on an important subdivision (namely that of presentation) without any form of constructive feedback unless they were perhaps too scared to say anything because they feared for their jobs.
Half of me was hoping that the individuals responsible for that disaster were shown the door as part of Mark Thompson's recent staff clearout, but something tells me that this may not have been the case. This example just proves what can go wrong when marketing messes up big time and nobody had the bottle to simply say "No".
Alternatively you could take the view that in the world of modern broadcasting it is automatically assumed that "the marketing department knows best", therefore any and all recommendations from that department end up being rubber-stamped without anyone cross-checking them. Because their surveys prove that they're always right. Right?
This could theoretically end up being the best solution to the lingering problem of how best to support broadcasters with public service remits when money is hard to come by and when confronted with unworkable alternatives, although it may be desirable for the likes of Channel 4 to also increase their public service credentials as a consequence.
Although Channel 4 isn't specifically mentioned, such a proposal does seem to have been designed particularly with them in mind, especially after Channel 4 had previously accused the BBC of having "closed body language" when dealing with other broadcasters. (Which may be an unfounded accusation, but that's beside the point.)
The BBC could also benefit in kind from closer cooperation with broadcasters like Channel 4, and the limited pooling of resources may also have beneficial side effects such as reducing the amount of duplication across channels. So everybody could potentially win from such a deal as long as the boundaries are tightly defined.
However, Channel 4 in particular may still have much more work to do on its side of the bargain in order to improve its public service credentials further, so in turn it will have to find another way of easing the commercial pressures that the broadcaster will face in the near future in order to continue to maintain its semblance of a public service remit.
And that will be far from easy for Channel 4, especially with the added burden of digital radio to contend with.
Another suggestion mentioned elsewhere is for the BBC to cross-promote Channel 4 programmes on BBC channels, which may seem a surreal concept but is something that would directly benefit Channel 4 with minimal cost to the BBC as a result (as opposed to having the BBC licence fee permanently top-sliced).
However there may still be an ideological problem. Although relatively painless for the BBC, assisting existing public service broadcasters may run counter to the philosophy of Ofcom's original "public service publisher" proposal, namely the concept of having a new 'digital age' public service broadcaster that was totally independent of the BBC.
It all depends whether or not Ofcom's Ed Richards (and politicians) feel that the issue of saving the public service credentials of existing broadcasters such as Channel 4 is more important than reinventing the wheel with yet another public service broadcaster that would end up consuming precious resources just for the sake of a bit of 'plurality'.
Regardless of the outcome of any European Union anti-subsidy directives, the resources for another public service broadcaster cannot be obtained without something else suffering as a consequence, unless the currently unthinkable was to happen and the licence fee or general taxation was increased in order to pay for another broadcaster.
And that may not even be possible if classed as a cross-subsidy under EU legislation.
So it appears to be a relatively straight choice between 'saving' Channel 4 with the partial help of the BBC, or pulling money out of thin air to fund something of unknown worth whilst letting other public assets rot. The smart money's on the former, even if the latter may be an ideologically closer fit to various politicians' ulterior motives.
Normally when a death occurs occurs out of the public eye, steps are taken to hold back the news out of courtesy until next of kin have been informed. This is particularly true when the death is that of a public figure.
Thus, when NBC News presenter Tim Russert died over a week ago on June 13 - subject of this month's lead article in Transdiffusion, the network held back public announcement of the news until it could inform Russert's family, just returned from holiday in Italy at the time, as well as preparing its own obituary coverage.
NBCs efforts to preserve a sense of decency in the Internet age were in vain, however, as Wikipedia - or at least, one of its contributors - got there quicker.
Russert collapsed as the result of a heart attack at about 1:40pm, according to the New York Times, and he was pronounced dead after his arrival at a local hospital around 2:30, while NBC News colleague Tom Brokaw made the on-air announcement just over an hour later. Major newspapers carried the news a few minutes earlier.
However the Wikipedia entry for Tim Russert was updated just thirty minutes after he had been pronounced dead, including the date of death and editing of verbs from present to past. NBC staff were surprised to learn of the update, having taken steps to delay their own announcement and securing the agreement of other networks to do the same. "We wanted to be sure, absolutely certain, that every member of Tims family who needed to be told in person, in private, had that opportunity, was given that small piece of grace today. Other organizations did not do that," said MSNBC host Keith Olbermann as reported in the New York Times.
Keith Olbermann remembers Tim Russert (above)
The record of changes at Wikipedia indicated that the edits were made by someone at Internet Broadcasting Services in St Paul, Minnesota. A junior employee, who apparently made the update, was later fired.
The information was on line for just ten or so minutes before the edits were redacted by someone else at IBS - although half an hour later the news was made public and the Wikipedia article was re-edited again.
In theory, Wikipedia's principles include the idea that there should be no original research published on the site: information has to have appeared somewhere else reputable beforehand. But this kind of thing has happened more than once, generally involving the death of celebrities, when a person's page has been updated as soon as the news has become known by someone, somewhere out there.
In the world of journalism, a scoop - getting the story out first - has always been a prime directive. However, that determination has always been tempered with respect, especially when it comes to informing families of the dead officially before an announcement is made. Regrettably, new media have less of a traditional sense of decency.
Here's an interesting one. The Guardian are reporting that the Scottish Government are consulting about a possible ban of alcohol related TV ads before the 9pm watershed. It's a question that has been raised nationwide, but so far discounted.
So that leaves an interesting question of how Scotland could run a different set of advertising rules for TV in the first place given almost all TV stations are broadcast to the whole of the United Kingdom. Only ITV1, Channel 4 and Five actually have the ability to show different adverts to different parts of the UK after all.
Would a potential ban force all broadcasters in the UK who broadcast in the UK to either ban ads nationwide, have a split feed for Scotland and elsewhere or even simply black out their broadcasts in Scotland rather than put up with the hassle?
Alternatively, a ban could be restricted to just be to those broadcasters who are based in Scotland rather than targeting the country - in which case the whole thing would just be a half-baked and pointless proposal that wouldn't solve anything given that the impressionable youth would just see the adverts on other channels anyway.
Of course some simple thought quickly shows that the whole thing is a none starter - it's simply not practical. It's not even an area that the Scottish Government really could legislate on - the Scottish Government could try and wrangle it as a Health related issue, but ultimately broadcasting is a reserved matter and the power that rests in Westminster and not Edinburgh. So if the chances of it happening are nil, one wonders what the point is in even consulting on it
Tonight's "Beat the property slump" on ITV1 (which for the next couple of days can be seen again via ITV Catch Up if you have the Silverlight plugin) contained an interesting media-related accusation:
"One of Britain's foremost media academics, Professor Greg Philo, says that television has played a role in 'quite a scandalous overselling of the property market'.
He believes that whilst cheap credit and high employment started the boom, the spate of TV programmes in its wake created what he calls a "social panic" where people felt they had to buy property whatever their circumstances.
And as so many programmes are repeated, which therefore cite market information which is no longer current, he is especially concerned that television has allowed some programmes to be sponsored by companies which could profit from a false impression."
To their credit, Channel 4 has responded to this problem as well as could be expected: "In later correspondence, Channel 4 said "To clarify, revisits have always had the original record dates astoned on screen. Repeats of older programmes (carried primarily on More 4) now clearly caption the original record date in aston form.""
Also bear in mind that NatWest's 4homes sponsorship deal was presumably put in place during a property boom, meaning that their brand obtains maximum exposure alongside all sorts of Channel 4 property programmes.
And it's up to NatWest as to whether or not someone gets a mortgage approved through them, plus the enthusiasm previously generated by these property shows could have resulted in one of NatWest's competitors (Abbey, Barclays, Halifax, HSBC, etc., etc.) getting a mortgage deal instead if NatWest didn't sponsor them.
So if we assume that NatWest was being just as responsible as all of its competitors in terms of mortgage approvals during and after the property boom, then you can't really blame them for Channel 4's "property porn overdose" together with any effect on the housing market. But what about the association factor working in both directions?
Having a credible name such as NatWest sponsoring property programmes on Channel 4 perhaps gave those same programmes a greater air of credence than they perhaps might have deserved in terms of overencouraging prospective property developers to follow suit, so to speak, since if NatWest thought it was OK then "it must be OK".
All the property porn being shown did make the property development market seem rather glamourous when housing loans were more widely available (and cheaper) at a time when wannabe developers could botch a job and still make a profit because property prices were rising so fast. They could do it, so you could have a go as well.
This was despite the various presenters warning of various pitfalls during the programmes themselves, and if anything illustrates a hidden problem caused by sponsorship and the deregulation of television that has occurred over the last twenty years.
Even if financial products are scrupulously regulated, there are still problems that can be indirectly caused by advertising them in the form of sponsorship, and Channel 4's property porn overdose followed by a credit squeeze has uncovered one of those problems that may not happen until an exact set of circumstances have been reached.
This problem was previously dealt with by severely restricting their promotion, but the relaxation of rules can have unintended side effects as a consequence. Last year's premium phone line scandals caused a hasty revision of regulatory practices, although a new Communications Act may not see the light of day before the next election.
In the meantime it is up to Ofcom to realise what the problems are and to inform politicians of them, but whether any potential financial sponsorship problem is given enough priority when free market practice is still openly encouraged remains to be seen.
Now here's a surprise that some people may not have seen coming, namely the fact that Culture Secretary Andy Burnham is actually defending the integrity of television programmes over and above the whims of broadcasters' advertising departments and marketing people.
At least he is clever enough to realise that to allow unbridled product placement would run the risk of undermining the integrity of a whole industry, although the UK is perhaps the exception rather than the rule within the whole of Europe in that it still produces television programming that people still care about to some degree.
Whether Andy Burnham would have adopted the same stance if all those TV fakery scandals hadn't taken place last year is wide open to conjecture, as well as whether this opinion is widespread throughout central government. Of course BSkyB doesn't care about such things when it has a subscription model to support itself with.
Despite what some within the industry might say, the traditional TV commercial is far from dead and buried, and it's more of a case of an industry having to creatively adapt to change by making commercials in such a style that people will want to watch them (eg. drumming gorillas or live skydiving exploits) as opposed to skipping over them.
Before anyone gets too excited, bear in mind that the whole thing could end in some form of (potentially messy) compromise and will perhaps require legislation to be passed, although keeping obvious forms of product placement well away from drama productions should be a fundamental priority.
And any UK broadcaster who dares to speak out against what the Culture Secretary is advocating, namely that "As a viewer I don't want to feel the script has been written by the commercial marketing director", must obviously care more about their profit margin than the fundamental integrity of their 'product', despite their arguments to the contrary.
During the early years of colour television in the UK, colour videotape recording was very expensive, therefore videotapes were often reused or junked at a later date (either accidentally or deliberately for a variety of reasons), therefore there aren't that many colour videotape recordings from before (say) 1975 still in existence.
Many recordings of television programmes during the early years of colour were made by pointing a film camera at a studio monitor, but for reasons of cost (and expediency) the film used was black and white. Some of these film recordings then became the only surviving copies in existence when expensive videotapes were later reused or junked.
Therefore it's somewhat ironic (and frustrating) that many surviving programmes from this early period, including landmark drama productions such as Nigel Kneale's The Year of the Sex Olympics, only exist nowadays in monochrome as opposed to the glorious colour that a few lucky viewers experienced when they were first transmitted.
However most of these black and white telerecordings (as they are known) contain a potentially useful secret, notably the fact that much of the information relating to which colours make up the image is also concealed in the monochrome picture in the form of a barely visible pattern of dots.
So if a computer program could somehow analyse this pattern and extract the hidden colour information that may be contained in each frame of film, it could be theoretically possible to restore the missing colour to the image.
This idea was suggested a few years ago but until very recently it remained just an unproven theory with various highly complex technical problems to be resolved. Fortunately this didn't deter a small group of talented and experienced individuals from pooling their expertise to see if such a colour recovery process was feasible.
In recent weeks some excellent progress has been made by this group, and although there are still some remaining technical issues, the development of a colour recovery system has now reached the stage where the technique has produced some extremely encouraging results.
The colour restoration process is obviously affected by glitches in the film, but for many good quality film recordings it seems that the possibility of recovering the lost colour from them has not only been successfully proven but is on the verge of becoming practicable; other restoration techniques could also be used to improve the final result.
It's ironic that in the age of Big Brother and other reality TV programmes, the technology now exists - fingers crossed - to potentially show The Year of the Sex Olympics to a wider audience in its full colour glory; Nigel Kneale's original vision of a future where television had evolved to become a mass-market pacifier has never been more relevant.
Maybe MTV deserves the fine just for the mere notion of showing lots of cheaply-produced, derivative, clichιd and target audience-obsessed identikit reality TV fodder such as Totally Jodie Marsh.
This if anything is potentially good news for both the BBC and (paradoxically) Channel 4, namely that the European Union seems to think that diverting cash from the licence fee to aid Channel 4's digital switchover - as well as perhaps also being used to fund Channel 4 itself - is illegal in terms of breaking commercial cross-subsidy rules.
Personally speaking I thought that all this talk of using the licence fee to cross-fund various semi-commercial activities (ie. Channel 4) would ultimately fall foul of EC anti-subsidy rules, and this now appears to be the case. It all hinged on whether money from the licence fee (as opposed to direct taxation) fell into the category of being a public subsidy.
And another broadcaster's objections to this subsidy (presumably ITV) contains the line "Why should the non-public service commercial actitvites of Channel 4 benefit from aid?", which more or less summarises the fundamental problem with the proposal in the first place, and is also the problem with using the licence fee to support C4 in the long term.
Don't forget that ITV still have public service remits so it's easy to argue that if C4 gets a subsidy then ITV should get some licence fee cash for digital switchover as well. But that argument still doesn't resolve the commercial cross-subsidy issue.
So what next for Channel 4? Well it now looks as if it will have to fund its own digital switchover, and unless HM Government can perform miracles then Channel 4 will have to survive on its own - maybe either becoming fully commercial (as Mark Thompson proposed), or having to radically reinvent itself as a public trust or other non-commercial entity.
Whatever James Whale himself might say, flogging double-sided bed linen, toasters and gold bangles is still a demotion from his previous radio presenter job on TalkSport; Bid TV's advertised salary (circa £25k) is more in line with a salesman role as opposed to a TV presenter that supposedly reaches millions of viewers. But at least it pays the bills.
Let's face it though, there are still rules regarding impartiality when it comes to the leadup to any election (mayoral, general or otherwise) and James Whale broke them, although sacking him was perhaps harsh given who he is and why they employed him in the first place (namely to have a presenter who's controversial).
But the real issue here is the dwindling number of real opportunities in the radio and television industries, with groups such as Global Radio attempting to introduce more automation and networking shows whenever they can get away with it. This in turn slashes the number of real presenting opportunities on 'grown-up' radio stations.
There are significant differences between 'grown-up' radio and mainstream TV presenting compared with the experience gained from either student radio or selling toasters on a shopping channel, and it doesn't just relate to differences in working hours or salary either.
Reducing the number of opportunities threatens the very core of the media industry in the long term, and relying on Big Brother plus other reality TV contestants is a quick fix that's a poor substitute for finding real talent and nurturing it.
This is a tricky issue which may never be resolved to the true satisfaction of the BBC's commercial competitors, namely in respect to having a new series of controls to prevent a theoretical danger in relation to the BBC's online services.
Take the example of local news; a subject that's been a bone of contention for a long time. It's entirely plausible that if the BBC offers a good online local news service for a particular area then that service may end up being by far the most popular news website for that area thereby stealing potential visitors from a competing local news site.
However some of these competing sites are fairly abysmal in quality presumably because they may wish to protect their existing newsprint interests, namely if everyone started to use the website instead nobody would bother buying printed copies, and this is already happening in many cases regardless of the quality of the website(s).
Or alternatively their commercial owner(s) may lack the resources to provide other media such as audio and video on a regular basis. Then there are the other commercial operators such as the ITV Local initiative as well as the even bigger threats of Google, Microsoft and Yahoo, etc., to contend with.
So should the BBC back off providing a service in a particular online area in deference to a commercial competitor who ends up providing a relatively poor alternative in order to protect established interests? These and other issues will be more than enough to keep the BBC Trust busy for quite some time.
