Posts from
November 2003
Friday 28 November 2003
Media Grauniad report "...the way we've been expressing breaking news on-screen has not been conspicuous enough. Lots of people watch News 24 in offices with the sound turned down," Rachel Attwell, News 24 controller and, apparently, half-wit. Oh dear, oh...
Read all of 'BBC News 24 new look'.
Media Grauniad report The fallout from today's power cut continues, with news that BBC News 24 is to miss its planned relaunch date of Monday. The loss of a day's work on the new-look set has pushed the launch back...
Read all of 'News 24 relaunch delay'.
It is interesting to see how well the BBC copes when a power cut or other problem comes to head. In the main, things are as you would expect. All the channels are still running, and they are running their...
Read all of 'Firing Ingenuity'.
Power cut interrupts BBC services It was time for that yearly ritual of the BBC service interruption; not nearly as serious as what has happened on some previous occasions but enough to throw a rather large spanner in the works....
Read all of 'BBC power cut (semi-)chaos'.
Thursday 27 November 2003
BBC Press Release Westminster insiders are quite clear that the BBC as we know it will not make it through the next Charter renewal. The lobbying efforts of those bastions of quality television (News International and ITV) have helped; but...
Read all of 'Going quietly unto the dark'.
Everyone else was concentrating on costs savings and job cuts. Even the Media Guardian barely mentioned it. Thankfully the Independent took the bull by the horns and sniffed out something interesting. Charles Allen, head of Granada, wants to launch more...
Read all of 'ITV3 and ITV Kids. Have they lost their minds?'.
Wednesday 26 November 2003
Yet another study says the government's hopes of turning off analogue by 2010 are in doubt was reported today in the Media Guardian. Informa Media believe that by 2010, 49% of viewers will be doing so via satellite or cable,...
Read all of '2010 Analogue Switch Off In Doubt.'.
There's an interesting article that slipped out last week in the Guardian. The gist of it is a comment piece about how BBCi is being attacked for doing too good a job, with some interesting parallels to the world of...
Read all of 'Scorned for doing things well.'.
Tuesday 25 November 2003
Media Guardian reports that staff at Granada Media belonging to the NUJ, Bectu and Amicus will vote on strike action in a pay dispute after Granada imposed a 2% pay rise. If the strike went ahead, it would affect output...
Read all of 'Granada Industrial Dispute in ITV's future?'.
Thursday 20 November 2003
ITV production from outside London? For how much longer? In a major development announced today, network sports and factual production are moving from Southampton to... wait for it... London! As if we didn't have enough of our broadcasting coming from...
Read all of 'Meridian Massacre'.
Wednesday 19 November 2003
When you think about it, it was inevitable but that hasn't stopped the Guardian telling the world about Granada's secret plan leave its Manchester HQ. The rather dismal grey office block that has been home to Granada since it was...
Read all of 'ITV Quits the North and SMG gets a bit upset.'.
Tuesday 18 November 2003
VRT website A trip tomorrow to Belgium causes me, somewhat sadly, to have a poke around for what I could watch on TV whilst I'm there. Of course, British television is now so heartachingly awful that I watch a grand...
Read all of 'Sunny Belgium'.
Monday 17 November 2003
There seems to be no let up in the number of channels that are ready to launch, and the number of companies launching new channels onto the market. The latest to launch is iSportsTV from the team behind Avago. Broadcasting...
Read all of 'iSportsTV arrives on Sky Digital'.
Sunday 16 November 2003
Sometimes, when a change takes place, it does so with enormous fanfare, other times, it barely gets noticed. This is one of those changes that happened at some point recently, and nobody noticed. Somehow, a deal has obviously been done...
Read all of 'Changes on the quiet.'.
I must confess that haven't actually seen Liquid News for quite a while due to a lack of digital TV (and flast year, a lack of TV), but it's a pity that it's been axed. It was one of the...
Read all of 'Liquid Reflections.'.
Saturday 15 November 2003
Latest Sky financial results press release Is anyone here concerned about BSkyB's profits being too high? If you consider that the majority of their profit appears - according to their press release - to come from the unjustified 'tax' on...
Read all of 'Paying the piper, or How I learned to stop worrying about the BBC and start begruding Sky's megaprofits'.
Sky Corporate's press release on the recent AGM. "It is a great honour to be able to stand before you today as Sky's chief executive, and I am deeply grateful for this opportunity to play a role in the future...
Read all of 'Sky's (infamous) AGM'.
Friday 14 November 2003
From Transdiffusion's Bitstream department, comes news of new channels coming soon to a television near you. VH-2. Years after the original VH-1 launched, the team at MTV Networks have finally gotten around to launching a VH-2, the VH of the...
Read all of 'New Channels Coming Soon...'.
It has been speculated on since the death of Christopher Price in 2002, but now we know for sure. BBC Three is bringing the axe down on Liquid News. The entertainment news programme, which grew out of BBC News 24's...
Read all of 'BBC Three liquidizes Liquid News'.
As an interesting aside to the potential arrival of price-drop.tv, Section 7.4 of the license of Multiplex 2 (a thrilling read, available in pdf form at the ITC website) states in longwinded but surprisingly clear legalliese, that space on the...
Read all of 'Legally Binding.'.
Thursday 13 November 2003
The latest in the never ending list of developments on digital terrestrial television (or Freeview if you must) is the arrival of a placeholder for one price-drop.tv, sister station to bid-up.tv. Although price-drop.tv hasn't started broadcasting on the platform yet,...
Read all of 'Shop your way to the TV set.'.
Wednesday 12 November 2003
One of the more interesting media stories to surface has been the announcement that the ITC was selling its family jewels - and what interesting examples have been under the hammer according to an article in the Guardian. ITC's successor...
Read all of 'Grape scissors and a tea set used by the Queen.'.
Wednesday 5 November 2003
Analogue television in Berlin was turned off on 1 August 2003 (better late than never with this news) - in contrast to the rather slow death for Analogue, Berliners were given just a year for convert before the plug was...
Read all of 'Analogue Dies - In Berlin.'.
Tuesday 4 November 2003
According to the press release from BBC Broadcast (120k Word document), UK G2's new idents will have the theme 'bending the rules'. One ident will be... "It is Sunday morning in a local playground and all the local dads are...
Read all of 'Bend it, shake it, any way you want it.'.
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