If you, like me, are an avid BBC Four viewer, you might have seen the extremely cool trailer for the recent Mediaeval (oh, sorry, we are spelling it the American way now, "Medieval") Season (a not very good YouTube version is shown above).
The "Medieval Mind Trip" trailer was animated by Transistor Studios in New York, directed by James Price at Strange Beast, and produced by Red Bee Media. The music is most amusing: it's a mediaeval-style arrangement of Jimi Hendrix's Purple Haze, arranged by Tam Nightingale and Paul Bideau.
The musicians were as follows:
Jon Banks plays a tef - a kind of drum; Sharon Lindo appears on rebec (a violin precursor) and viol (ancestor of the cello); while Keith McGowan plays hurdy gurdy (a stringed instrument with a handle that rubs a rosined wheel against a set of strings, some drones and others playable with a kind of keyboard), shawm (ancestor of the oboe), rackett (a very deep reed instrument made by drilling holes through a cylinder and joining them up to make a long tube in a small space), and curtal (an early bassoon); and finally there's Emma Murphy on recorders.
You might be interested to note, however, that there are two versions of this trailer floating about, with subtle differences. If you download the MP3 file of the music from the BBC Web site, for example, you'll notice it has an intro.
Not only that, the BBC version of the video (and the one on the Transistor web site) has something missing. Compare it with the one shown here and with the version on Tam Nightingale's own site.
No? I'll give you a clue. Consider the Plague.
The BBC version doesn't have it; the Transistor version doesn't either; the Nightingale Music version does have it and so does the Strange Beast version.
Oh, and the rather crappy YouTube version shown here has it.
Just when you thought things couldn't get worse for ITV, another major revelation about ITV is made public at the same time as Ofcom finally announced its £5.675m fine against ITV; a revelation which caused Ant and Dec to hand back its 2005 People's Choice British Comedy Award.
Basically speaking, Ant and Dec were guaranteed an award at the 2005 British Comedy Awards (at the expense of Catherine Tate) because by doing so it would allegedly also guarantee the attendance of Robbie Williams. Or something. (I still don't properly understand this myself.)
And because the final segment of the formerly live award ceremony had been prerecorded during the news, viewers were also still voting for something which had been (wrongly) decided in advance.
Back in 1989, ITV was obviously feeling the heat from "Mr. Murdoch's Sky Channel" and the forthcoming BSB as well as the cable TV companies that were proliferating their networks during this period, hence moving them to produce this press ad in the Financial Times reminding their shareholders/upmarket viewers that they still existed.
Given yesterday's Freesat launch with ITV HD's initial exclusivity combined with the number of repeats on ITV3 and ITV4 (some of them are quality programmes though), these words sound like ghosts from a distant past. Here's a quote from the 1989 press ad:
"So what are the chances of Satellite TV treating everyone to in-depth documentaries or serious drama? Not as good, it seems, as the chance of being treated to 'I Love Lucy' (1956) or 'The Young Doctors' (1976) which have already been scheduled. Not what you'd expect perhaps from Britain's newest broadcaster. ITV on the other hand have been producing an enormous breadth of quality entertainment for thirty-three years, all of it free of charge. And all achieved without turning Acacia Avenue into a cross between Cheltenham's GCHQ and Jodrell Bank. The best advice to viewers is do not adjust your set."
Freesat officially launched at 12.30pm today, and here are a few points that may be of interest:
- No sign of Channel 4 HD yet even though the standard definition Channel 4 is (now) free-to-air. It may appear fairly soon when the Sky encryption contract supposedly finishes
- The only HD channel available on Freesat to begin with is BBC HD, with ITV HD (and presumably others as well) soon to follow
- There are 72 channels at launch (roughly half of SkyDigital's 140 unencrypted channels), with "many more to follow" in the coming months
- Channel Five is mentioned in Freesat promotional material but isn't yet free-to-air via satellite, so expect Five to lose its satellite encryption fairly shortly
- The Digital Spy rumour was right: ITV HD will be Freesat-only to begin with, which will be interesting from a marketing perspective
- Sky was almost reduced to slagging off the BBC for spending "licence fee money" on the project, which shows that it must be really worried about Freesat
- No Freesat PVR (personal video recorder) box to rival Sky+ is available yet, although Humax has one in development which should appear before the end of the year
It's not been a good few years for Talk Sport, the station that former Sun editor Kelvin MacKenzie fashioned in his old newspaper's image after buying Talk Radio in 1998 and sacking half the presenters.
First, a lawsuit Mr MacKenzie filed claiming that RAJAR's audience measurement system was costing the station £1.5m a month in lost revenue was laughed out of court and the company was ordered to pay both sides' costs.
Next, it suffered the loss of Mike Dickin, who died in a road accident. Mr Dickin, who revelled in his curmudgeonly reputation, infuriated and delighted in equal measure with his trenchant views on a wide range of subjects.
In September 2007, Andy Townsend came in for a pasting from Graeme Le Saux, a former Chelsea footballer, over rumours that he was gay. Mr Townsend saw Mr Le Saux reading the Guardian on a bus and picked it up saying he wanted to look at the sport. He threw it back a few seconds later, according to the Times extract. "There's no fucking sport in here," he snarled. The implication? You fucking poof. Mr Townsend currently co-presents the Sports Breakfast on the station at the weekend.
At about the same time, two presenters were rapped over the knuckles over anti-gay jibes. Mike Mendoza was suspended for linking homosexuality with paedophilia, and Gary Bushell, a Sun columnist (that paper, again) said that Russia had more pressing problems to solve before queers started preaching the gospel of perversion.
You could be forgiven for thinking that Talk Sport, set up in its current form by a former Sun editor and with former footballers and right-wing red-top columnists on its payroll, was (is?) institutionally homophobic.
Its most recent brush with the regulator has seen James Whale sacked for urging listeners to vote for Boris Johnson in the London mayoral elections. Perhaps he had been reading Andrew Gilligan's propaganda - sorry, reports - in the Evening Standard.
Talking of Mr Gilligan, one wonders what he was doing at the BBC in the first place. After all, it was his notorious 6.06 report on Today that lit the blue-touch paper on the bomb whose fall-out led to the Hutton report, the resignation of Gavyn Davies and dismissal of Greg Dyke and severely damaged the Corporation in the eyes of some. Damage, all told, that a fifth colum would have been proud of. Had the Corporation been quicker to dismiss Mr Gilligan's assertions and shunt him to the Arts or Royal department or something, a lot of damage might have been avoided.
But I digress. Talk Sport's Wikipedia entry states: "In recent years, the station's political outlook has been characterised by traditionalist attitudes towards issues such as capital punishment, immigration, and the ongoing military action in Iraq and Afghanistan."
This could be a potentially interesting twist to the low-key feud between ITV plc and BSkyB, which is attributed to BSkyB blocking potential suitors to a painless ITV plc takeover with its influential shareholding; in particular, blocking Virgin Media's takeover attempt before they lost interest due to rising costs and internal concerns.
Making ITV HD Freesat-only wouldn't exactly hit ITV that hard financially in the short term - especially as it isn't available to the public yet - and could inflict some damage to Sky's subscriber base even if only a temporary measure. It could also act as a bargaining counter in relation to ITV's subsequent dealings with Sky and its ITV shareholding.
Freesat is potentially a much greater direct threat to Sky's subscription income since it has the potential to cannibalise some of Sky's existing subscribers, especially in areas where Freeview isn't yet available.
It's likely that many people don't even realise that there's a "Freesat from Sky" and would buy a Freesat box to replace their Sky digibox even if they're not yet interested in upgrading to HDTV, such has been the power of Sky marketing over the years in convincing a lot of people that Sky TV equals pay-TV.
For one thing, it took years for the stigma of Sky TV being associated with large satellite dishes on the roofs of council house-dwelling Sun readers to be shaken off, and it took a switch to digital TV, a smaller satellite dish and a massive marketing push to make this happen.
It will be interesting to see what Sky has in its marketing armoury to counter the Freesat threat, since it can't push its "Freesat from Sky" too hard for fear of depleting its own subscription revenue. Perhaps there will be new, low-cost subscription packages introduced or a greater emphasis on bundles including internet and phone calls.
Avoiding the pay-TV only trap for Sky may be nearly impossible if the subscription income is to be protected, though one possibility could be to have a cheaper phone and/or internet service deal that also comes with a "Freesat from Sky" box, although the cost of the box will have to be recouped over a fairly long period of time.
These TV/phone/internet bundles help to improve the 'stickiness' of Sky subscriptions since you can't cancel one without foregoing the others; something that's crucial to Sky especially given the threat of a downturn in the economy.
Otherwise years of Sky marketing that have effectively linked satellite TV with pay-TV will become unravelled, threatening to hit Sky's subscription income even harder if programme and movie downloads become even more popular (Sky is worried about the BBC's iPlayer possibly for this very reason).
Now all Freesat has to do is to ensure that Channel Five is on board and that there's a relatively decent selection of channels in the EPG, even if a third of them are shopping channels.
After last week's duo of lectures purporting to be supportive of public service broadcasting in some form but perhaps hitting the self-destruct switch instead, we now have words from a stalwart supporter of public service broadcasting in its purest form.
David Attenborough was arguably the greatest controller that BBC2 ever had, though it has to be borne in mind that what he did at the time for the channel was fully appropriate for that particular era (the late 1960s) and if exactly the same rules were applied today they wouldn't have the same effect in a 'multichannel environment'.
Or would they?
It's difficult to assess this one since nobody has yet been brave enough to try it, although the recent appointment of Roly Keating as controller of the same channel may have been the closest approximation that the BBC would have dared attempt in a ratings-obsessed era.
The real reason for the current situation relating to BBC Two and the other BBC television channels not only relates back to when the remits for BBC Three and Four were being drawn up but also to the basic philosophy that most viewers would switch off anything vaguely intellectual in pursuit of Strictly Come Dancing or The X Factor.
In one sense it's a pity that the continuing popularity of the terrestrial channels wasn't exploited to provide a greater mix of 'intellectual' content, although the channel controllers were probably too petrified of viewers deserting them as digital takeup increased. This may be less of an issue with the digital switchover close at hand.
Nowadays if you want a "place to think" it just has to be BBC Four, but sometimes you can't help but think that a little more of its philosophy wouldn't go amiss on the mainstream channels. It would certainly be preferable to having yet another reminder of how inferior your home is or how poor your cooking might be.
Indeed with property prices now starting to fall, programmes that major on property speculation may now be looking perilously out of touch with reality, which in terms of encouraging a broader choice of programme genres can only be a good thing. (Take note, Channel 4.)
As for the issue of independent production quotas helping to erode the talent base that the BBC has/once had, that is indeed an issue but one that could be potentially undone at some point in the future - I'm optimistic that the damage is not (yet) terminal but it will take a fundamental change for the effects to be reversed.
It's the "broad-brush" approach of the nature of the independent production quota that's the problem, and indicative of the ideological nature of the policy. Established indies are commercially-orientated and tend to specialise in distinct fields (Kudos - drama, Princess - chat shows, etc.) which makes programme diversity harder to achieve within quotas.
Then there's the problem with Tomorrow's World, namely that the BBC burnt its bridges by tinkering with a format in much the same manner as Top of the Pops, but worse still was the fact that there weren't any equivalent free-to-air science programming alternatives (at least there were music channels to blame for Top of the Pops' demise).
Recently Channel Five has tried to fill the gap in the field of popular science, ITV gave up trying years ago and Sky's Brainiac is arguably too lightweight (and has been cancelled anyway). It's ironic that the BBC should stuff its schedules full of cooking and property porn whilst ignoring the sort of things that the commercial sector also seems to ignore.
There's supposedly a new science show in the works from the BBC, but until that actually appears the jury's out on what that will do in terms of enriching the field of popular science. Taking the public library comparison one step further, would the general public be happy in funding a library that's nearly totally devoid of science books?
Maybe the problem with science on television is that most people in charge of commissioning come from a media/arts background therefore they may find it instinctively harder to commission anything with a science element.
Then there's the lack of presenters with a science or technical background, with Carol Vorderman and Patrick Moore perhaps being the only famous presenters left with such credentials; the era of Johnny Ball, James Burke, Judith Hann, Magnus Pike and Michael Rodd seems to have all but died out in broadcasting with that generation.
Indeed the biggest lost opportunity has to be BBC Three for not commissioning further scientific programming on television, with its controllers superficially appearing to be more concerned with 'box-ticking' their channel remits as opposed to encouraging further diversity.
Will the producers behind the premium-rate phone scams now be individually prosecuted in the wake of ITV's £4m fine?
(a) Since ITV has now been punished there's no need to investigate any further
(b) Making a scapegoat out of Simon Cowell and/or Ant and Dec - that is if they're guilty of course - may please a fair number of people but the Government doesn't want to upset its media friends so that won't happen
(c) Charles Allen ought to be put on trial for systemic fraud but the Government doesn't want to upset its media friends so that won't happen
(d) Ofcom doesn't want to investigate individual cases because Ofcom/the Government doesn't want to upset its media friends
(e) All not guilty, m'lud
(f) All of the above
Phone 0898 999999 with your answer. Calls cost £999 a second unless you work in the media. Phone lines close when we want them to.
According to Peter Davis who is Ofcom's director of radio and multimedia, DAB just requires a "Freeview-style relaunch" and also claims that "It's not Ofcom's role to save DAB". That last comment may come back to haunt him in the future, depending of course on how DAB progresses in the next year or two.
The commercial radio industry also apparently "missed a trick" by not investing in new digital radio brands; a comment perhaps intended as a sideswipe directed towards GCap's recent withdrawal of most of its digital-only services from DAB. But that comment assumes that the trick was there in the first place.
Can DAB still succeed in the UK despite the odds now being stacked against it? DAB now needs new stations and new ideas for content as a bare minimum, but with GCap closing stations and Channel 4 Radio scaling down its future plans, that prospect is looking very unlikely in the short term.
With regards to in-car radio systems, there is hope that the rise of DAB+ (the system that the UK should perhaps be adopting instead) in other countries could result in Far Eastern radio makers such as Pioneer and Sony making car radios that are compatible with both DAB+ and DAB, but this won't happen for at least another year or two.
Whilst the industry waits for something like that to happen, there's always the prospect of in-car DAB radio adapters such as the Pure Highway, but it's yet another adapter to hide in the glovebox along with the sat nav and the iPod; that in turn may be too much for the average driver to cope with on a regular basis.
What mitigates against a Freeview-style relaunch for DAB in the UK is the fact that DAB digital radio has already been extensively promoted as being a new means of receiving more free radio stations, so any relaunch would require a reluctant commercial sector to come up with new content as well as more money for a new marketing push.
In the UK, radio stations have generally been perceived as being free to listen to, even though there have been subscription-only alternatives available via satellite reception; this fact alone makes any potential rebranding exercise for DAB radio an uphill struggle, and that's before you reach the hurdle of finding more free digital radio content.
Freeview was successful because it moved the digital terrestrial platform away from the general public perception of being a second rate pay-TV alternative to Sky satellite television (and cable) into a completely new proposition where you could get a better choice of channels without paying extra for them.
And there are plenty of free radio stations already available on FM and AM frequencies that are receivable using cheap pocket radios, meaning that the disparity of station choice that exists between analogue and digital TV that in turn drove the adoption of digital TV doesn't exist with radio.
Unfortunately for Ofcom and the government, now is not the right time to ask the radio industry to come up with new ideas for digital radio stations, and with Channel 4 Radio now trying to economise its future plans with various proposals to team up with Global Radio, the prospect of this happening is virtually nonexistent at present.
So in the meantime there's a definite risk of "treading water" syndrome, and DAB could well end up sinking under a weight of apathy if Ofcom does absolutely nothing. Then Ofcom will be forced to intervene in order to try to save digital radio, but its options may end up being limited to the more unpalatable ones.
We've already had Peter Bazalgette attack the BBC's public service dominance in a speech this week, so I suppose it just had to be the case that one of the Murdoch boys (in this case, James) should want to "have a go" (so to speak) as well.
Sometimes you get the impression that James (and Rupert) Murdoch would still be upset with the BBC if they still only offered one channel of 405-line television from Alexandra Palace, and there's the danger that people won't treat them seriously since they are now starting to sound like a stuck record on this issue.
But what does he exactly mean when claiming that the BBC's iPlayer is "squashed other competitors"? There's Apple's iTunes, YouTube and BitTorrent downloads together with games consoles now also offering (or are about to offer) movie downloads that provide far more than just BBC content, so there must be another reason for this statement.
All things considered, it's probably the fact that the iPlayer has successfully promoted the concept of obtaining TV content online as opposed via to the traditional broadcast medium to the mass market before the Murdoch clan has prepared a proper response to this long term threat to their lucrative subscription model.
The fact that BSkyB in the UK doesn't offer that much in original content beyond live events, movies and US imports is probably a key point to consider; these three things can potentially be offered by their original content providers online as opposed to via satellite TV and the traditional BSkyB subscription model.
You don't have to have a Sky subscription anymore to watch a movie with the advent of iTunes, and it's only a matter of time before the majority of sporting events can be easily viewed online via some means. And as for Sky One, there's only Gladiators and a forthcoming attempt at a Blake's 7 revival that are currently headline news.
Take all these things into consideration and BSkyB is now starting to look vulnerable in the longer term. And the successful launch of iPlayer - with Project Kangeroo soon to follow - has just made that time draw even closer.
Want a lively debate combined with a whole host of potential contradictions? Then hire Peter Bazalgette as a guest speaker as what happened with the Royal Television Society last night, so brace yourself for a deluge of buzzwords and policy ideas that have been rejected by the Conservative Party.
Firstly, the subject of radio. There are more differences between the national BBC radio stations and the commercial stations than many people realise; all because BBC Radios 1 and 2 play a handful of identical popular music tracks doesn't result in the fact that privatisating them will preserve their character.
Plus the modest amount of money saved by privatising Radio 1 and Radio 2 would be far less than the immense damage such a move would inflict on the already embattled private radio sector. The commercial sector works to a radically different set of objectives when it comes to playlists, audience appreciation and commissioning new content.
And whilst it's true that the commercial radio sector has been too complacent and needs a shakeup, having a major new competitor will cause them to raise the white flag higher as opposed to upping their game, since a very popular private national commercial popular music station would have immense commercial power.
The resulting fight between two large commercial radio networks versus the rest would create a bitter battle between the radio incumbents, with the listener being the loser as a result because they would naturally concentrate on scrapping amongst themselves for advertisers (and listeners) as opposed to serving the listener.
That's the radio argument dealt with, so what about privatising Channel 4? We've been here before with trying to preserve public service commitments - and that strategy failed miserably with ITV - so why should doing the same thing to Channel 4 be any more successful in the long term?
Indeed Channel 4 subjectively went downhill at the very point when it became responsible for its own advertising sales, so giving it even more responsibility isn't going to make things 'better' by any means if it relates to the issue of public service remits.
Then there's the very appropriately-named 'Boggle', which is Bazalgette's take on the "public service publisher" idea; this time sidestepping the public-private subsidy issue by concentrating on existing public arts institutions for the cash. Do I detect a conflict here between this proposal and the notion of "shaking up the establishment'?
The extreme irony is that the commercial sector has been well placed to produce 26-part documentaries about World War 2 in the shape of Discovery Networks or National Geographic, so getting a bunch of art galleries and museums to do something similar would result in a string of terribly worthy documentaries that few people would watch.
Which let's face it wouldn't exactly be value for money.
Combine everything together and you would end up with two new powerful commercial radio networks doing precious little in the terms of public service content, a severely weakened local commercial radio network, a Channel 4 even more dependent on Big Brother and a handful of Egyptian Art documentaries on YouTube.
When a public version of the BBC Programme Catalogue was made available online a while back as a 'beta' version, it became an invaluable resource for anyone interested in the history of television since it then became easy to find out selected information related to the BBC's archive holdings.
The database wasn't perfect by any means; for example, there were discrepancies between the BBC's internal INFAX database and the public access version, the radio side of things in particular was incomplete and there was usually no indication of whether or not the BBC actually had a copy of a particular programme in its archive.
But it was a heck of a lot better than having nothing at all.
Then this public resource was taken offline with the expectation that one day it would become available again (indeed the rumour was that it was just moving servers), so occasionally I would check the archive catalogue page to see if it had returned.
This state of affairs lasted for many months without any hint of change, until I revisited the catalogue page today only to be confronted by the following message:
"This experimental prototype trial has now concluded. Thank you for your continued interest in the BBC Programme Catalogue. The BBC is now looking into how this data can be incorporated into its programme information pages."
Given how long it has taken for the respective BBC department to come to this conclusion, I fear that we can expect to wait years as opposed to months for such a resource to be made public again, and when/if it does appear again the available information may be even less useful than before.
Without a definitive written answer from the BBC on this issue, we can only speculate as to the reasoning behind the demise of the public archive catalogue, but rumours include preventing bored tabloid newspaper journalists from dredging up BBC 'facts' such as how many times Little Britain has been repeated on BBC Three (ie. too many).
Others have suggested that actors/writers/etc. may use the catalogue to discover whether or not they have been paid the correct repeat fees, but I suspect that this wouldn't be an issue in practice since I expect that the BBC has been scrupulously honest in its past dealings with programme producers.
And of course there could be a bandwidth issue with public catalogue access, although the internet bandwidth issue in relation to the the iPlayer is probably a far more pressing concern at present.
It's a pity that such a potentially useful resource has been withdrawn, and we can only hope that it will return one day in a form that will remain useful to anyone interested in accessing programme catalogue information as opposed to just selected facts perhaps reappearing in a potentially 'dumbed down' version.
On the more trivial side of broadcasting news recently is the revelation that popular TV personalities Ant and Dec have rushed out and bought the rights to their old shows SM:TV Live and Byker Grove, apparently in a bid to stop digital TV channels buying the rights and showing their previous work without their permission. Or presumably, at all.
They're not the first celebrities to wish to control their past - at least one major TV star managed to block the showing of their early programmes when TV channels wanted to repeat them years later.
Of course such things are compounded by the mass TV viewing public's obsessions with programmes like Before They Were Famous, which brings us the dodgy scenes of Zoe Ball singing "The Grand Old Duke of York" on Playaway and Arnie doing that advert for sausages or whatever it was. But the past is always a part of our lives, and the story of our lives. Byker Grove introduced Ant and Dec to the world, and SM:TV Live helped re-invent them into the stars they are today. They form part of the story of their rise to fame. And they won't be forgotten.
Besides, there's far more embarrassing things on the internet already. As this video proves. Come on then - watch them wreck the mic, watch them wreck the mic, psych!
Here's a question for you: What is Google best known for? Is it
a) Web services
b) Industrial manufacturing
c) Food recipies
If you think you know the answer (ha!) ring 09012 345678 with your answer for a chance to win £5,000 in our prize draw. Don't worry, calls cost only £1 per entry.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is pretty much the difficulty level of Five's after-the-show competitions. Tonight, it was NCIS. One of the more enjoyable of the cop/forensic show derivatives, our intrepid band of detectives with the Navy Criminal Investigative Service tonight had to work out how a man could lead two federal agents into a booby-trapped building (the booby trap in this case being the apparatus strapped to the suicide bomber's chest), only for the SOCOs to conclude that he'd been dead at least 24 hours before the bomb went off.
It turns out that the person they saw entering the building was not the person who they found afterwards. The agent provocateur entered, followed by two NCIS guys. They both died when the bomb went off, and when the body parts of a third man were found, a leg here, an arm there, the torso and... er, better duck. I said DUCK, dammit!
Owwwwwwww! What just hit me?
Oh, you found his head, then. So that's where it went. Pushed through the ceiling by the force of the blast. Trouble is, the post-mortem found that he'd already been dead for a day when his body was dismembered. He was actually innocent of any complicity in this dastardly deed. He'd been killed in advance, rigged up with the IED (army speak for improvised explosive device; that's bomb to you and me); the agent provocateur enters, vanishes through the wall, the federal agents enter, and... BOOOOOOOM!
The building and the adjacent one had been used for some sort of magic show years ago, and the wall had a secret opening to the room next door. And guess what the question was? "How did the bomber escape?" Been paying attention? Here's an easy one: have you actually seen the programme? Yes? Good, then you'll have no trouble answering this question. Dial the number, there's a good chap. Get the right answer and into the prize draw with you. Only a quid; best phone call you'll ever make. There's one born every minute.
The simplicity of the question gives it away. That, and the fact that you are told explicitly you can't enter by e-mail or text message. Hobson's choice - the phone or nowt. It is a tried and tested tactic: easy questions + premium rate phone lines == lots of callers and lots of money. The more people think they've got the right answer, the more likely they are to phone. The dollar signs light up in their eyes, and the cash register keeps pealing. Mugs.
Legally, this may be above board in a way that some of the high-profile scandals last year were not, but it is definitely something that Ofcom should look into.
The first signs of new management ideas at GCap Media are slowly being revealed. Whilst the company is not yet part of Global Radio (the move has to be agreed by shareholders first), it would seem highly unlikely that the potential new owners would have not been consulted first on todays announcements.
Announced today is the decision of the company not to sell the Scotland and Manchester XFM stations - although the sale of the XFM South Wales will continue. Of course whether they stay as XFM branded stations in the long term is another question.
Another interesting u-turn is the decision to put on hold the sale of GCap's share of DAB operator, Digital One. The suggestion from most media commentators is that Global have a more positive attitude towards GCap, which would explain the decision to hold on to the stake for the time being.
Still on the radar however is the disposal or closure of DAB station Planet Rock, whose closure was proposed until the end of April following takeover talks.
There's not much I can say about the latest set of numbers released publically on the BARB website.
One story that garners my attention though, is that we have two channels this week, who have scored less than 1,000 viewers, for the week. There are internet TV stations that do better than that! Life One and MusFlash both score a * on the table, which means basically that the total is greater than 0 but less than the minimum amount. And since on weekly reach figures, the minimum is 1,000, well, that tells you everythging you need to know.
Some of these channels really need to put in some greater effort to attract viewers to their station.
Last summer's Live Earth concerts turned out to be controversial not only for the nature of the BBC's coverage (judged by some to be non-partisan though that's a whole separate debate), but also for the amount of swearing that was clearly audible during some of the daytime coverage of the concert.
Separate from the Ofcom ruling but related to Live Earth is the alleged story of the BBC employee who was responsible for transmission compliance checking being in a meeting (concerning the Live Earth concert itself, strangely enough) that took place during the concert whilst swearing was being broadcast on national BBC television.
The BBC naturally defended its output on the basis that it was live, but in Ofcom's opinion 'live' is no longer a defence against the broadcast of (presumably excessive) swearing.
And of course there's the whole issue of how much regulatory power Ofcom has against the BBC; its powers relate to UK television transmission in a general sense, hence bad language comes under Ofcom's jurisdiction in this instance.
But should we be overly bothered about the rare daytime broadcast of words that you can easily overhear just by walking past a crowd of schoolchildren or in a shopping centre? And we know full well that pop stars like to cajole the audience that they are performing to, so will Ofcom's rule signal the end of the truly live broadcast?
Having said that, there is perhaps still a case for a degree of restraint to be shown in relation to the broadcast of live events - especially when young children are likely to be watching - but this is an issue that needs to be revisited as opposed to just dishing out punishments based on a set of rules.
The problem is that there's no straight answer, despite Global Radio chief executive Ashley Tabor assuring us otherwise. He points out that the Global strategy is to offer a "national proposition" to advertisers, but you can equally do that with a string of reasonably disparate local radio stations (duplication and format issues notwithstanding).
As for the claim that "It will be national at the right time of day and local at the right time of day, offering people local programming when they really want it", then what happens if you have to travel somewhere urgently during a "networked slot" and require local information beyond what your satellite navigation system might (or might not) offer you?
Or alternatively you may never listen to the radio during the daytime but still appreciate local news and gossip at other times; local radio can be so much more than just a local-sounding voice. Being "quasi-national" in this case means being local at times when Global Radio thinks the bulk of the audience wants it but maybe not when YOU want it.
As for the subject of local presenters, again there isn't an easy answer. One presenter was sacked from a local station (one of a group of stations) for allegedly being "too local" but then moved on to found a successful and popular community radio station that trades on having a strong local character.
Plus of course there was the recent charade of GCap (now part of Global of course) dropping daytime presenters altogether from its XFM stations before reinstating them, and (regardless of the ultimate intention) at least proves that presenters are only one part of the radio equation.
So it all depends what radio station management wants from its 'local' radio station(s), namely either trying to sound like a bad national radio station clone (all too common, sadly) or sounding like a true local station instead, with strong local community involvement and a very individual-sounding playlist.
Therefore it's perhaps understandable that judging from Ashley Tabor's comments Global Radio is trying to avoid the "bad national station clone" comparisons for its local stations but there again you could always try and sound truly local instead. (But perhaps nearly impossible to achieve with accountants breathing down your neck.)
Then there's the subject of presenters. Being merely competent as a local radio presenter ultimately requires a degree of natural aptitude (granted) but practice is much more important and isn't rocket science unless you plan to be one of the small number of "superstar DJ's" that work at Radio 1 or for the largest commercial radio stations.
Cutting back on local presenter slots may make parts of your "quasi-national" behemoth sound a bit more professional, but it also cuts back on jobs and work experience within the local radio industry. How many potential "superstar DJ's" will be denied a foothold within the radio industry through fewer industry opportunities?
Good local radio stations used to pride themselves on their involvement with local community projects and giving local people their 'voice', but in recent years this has been lost in the quest to play the same Robbie Williams, Mika, Fleetwood Mac and other AOR favourites on heavy rotation, namely those perceived to be the most popular bland.
There's no getting away from the fact that making a radio station quasi-national makes it less local as a consequence, although this strategy has ultimately derived from a large radio group's desire to have a national music radio station along the lines of BBC Radio 2, no matter what Ashley Tabor and other radio industry executives may say in public.
Top of the pile when it came to today's April Fool jokes was an inspired effort from the BBC which cleverly used special effects to make something happen that wouldn't naturally be the case, namely to make penguins fly.
On top of this, both the Daily Mirror and Daily Telegraph also featured this as an April Fool joke which is very unusual for rival newspapers. And the added BBC Breakfast News/website promotion and iPlayer link gave this rather far-fetched idea some wings, even if some of you weren't entirely convinced by what's written in a newspaper.
Even cleverer is taking this idea and effectively using it as a promotion for the BBC's iPlayer video-on-demand service, hence giving this creation a life outside of the April 1 timespan, with the slogan "When amazing things happen on the BBC you never have to miss them".
Next they will be telling us that spaghetti grows on trees...
It brings to an end the anti-DAB reign of terror of GCap CEO Fru Hazzlit, and the demise of the ill-fated merger of Capital Radio and GWR where cost cutting saw large drops in audience and advertising revenue, rumours of GWR staff revolt, aborted sales of stations and the demise of most of the senior management.
What happens next is now in the hands of Global Radio. Competition concerns will inevitably lead to the sale of some stations in certain areas (between it, the combined Global/GCap will own a five of the nine major FM stations in London for example, as well as three stations in Birmingham) however generally there was limited overlap between the two. Then there are the questions of the XFM and Planet Rock disposals.
Global is, however, a privately owned company. It does not have to appease masses of shareholders, and has different rules to follow from the publicly quoted GCap. It can just get on with repairing a tattered company.
Shame it all happened too late to save theJazz however, which closed yesterday.
