Posts from
February 2004
Friday 27 February 2004
Times Online: Letters to the Editor A letter from someone who claims to have never watched a commercial TV channel in his/her life. I used to have standards like that too. But then I was 9 at the time....
Read all of 'Dear Sir...'.
MediaGuardian: Channel 4 in talks with Five over merger It was inevitable. The overly commercial state of the current Channel 4 has meant that someone had to think about it at some point. The surprise is that it's not the...
Read all of 'Merging Four and Five.'.
Thursday 26 February 2004
Mass Observation through the years Typically, I find my evening taken up with researching for future Transdiffusion projects. Tonight, it's the turn of Sean Day-Lewis's (ed) 1989 book "One Day In The Life Of Television" for the BFI (ISBN 0-246-13424-0)....
Read all of 'A researcher writes'.
BBC Charter Review - Your BBC, Your Say It has not received a vast amount of attention, but the fact is that not only is BBC Charter Review taking place, you can also take part in it, by making your...
Read all of 'Make your voice heard about BBC Charter Review'.
MediaGuardian: ITV axes up to 400 jobs as Nottingham studio closes Nottingham studios to close. Central News East to move to Birmingham. 400 jobs to go. Will the last person working in ITV plc outside London, please turn out...
Read all of 'Nottingham put out of it's misery.'.
Wednesday 25 February 2004
MPs back campaign to save ITV Nottingham Unfortunately I feel that the MP's involved in trying to persuade ITV plc to back down from doing this might as well throw in the towel. Indeed in the not too distant future...
Read all of 'A futile exercise'.
Tuesday 24 February 2004
Beyond the Charter - The BBC after 2006 "Far-reaching change is needed to enable the BBC to achieve its full potential," begins the press release announcing the publication of "Beyond The Charter", a report on the BBC by the Broadcasting...
Read all of 'Getting the BBC Out of the Way'.
Monday 23 February 2004
BBC sunk in Boat Race row This highlights the anomaly that faces a public service broadcaster such as the BBC when faced with sporting events that are determined to become more sponsored and commercial as ever (and you thought that...
Read all of 'Never mind the Boat Race'.
Friday 20 February 2004
Chris Stacey on being unemployed from the media industry at 44. One can't but feel sympathy for people like Chris Stacey. Bitten by the media bug, he wants to do nothing else by work in the dark arts that are...
Read all of 'The spectre of unemployment'.
MediaGuardian: BBC Manchester plans revealed Well done to the Media Guardian's headline writers. In an act of genius they have not only provided a completely inaccurate headline (nothing has actually been revealed), but the actual story reveals that the plans...
Read all of 'Misleading Headline of the Day.'.
MediaGuardian: Freeview in almost 3m homes It seems like there's one of these stories every couple of weeks, so here's another one then. By the end of December 2003, 2,996,700 homes had Freeview (digital terrestrial television). By now, it's probably...
Read all of 'Freeview hits 3million homes.'.
Tuesday 17 February 2004
Viewers shun Vaughan debut This is another somewhat predictable outcome based solely on overnight viewing figures (something BBC Two controller Jane Root is wisely trying to steer clear of, but her channel is somewhat sheltered from having to prove a...
Read all of 'Self service'.
Leaving aside for the moment the possibility that recently-leaked government documents might have oozed out deliberately to minimise their chances of ever coming to pass, the whole idea of breaking up the BBC along regional lines does not seem to...
Read all of 'It ain't broke'.
Monday 16 February 2004
So, the Sunday Times reports that the BBC could be broken up into 4 seperate broadcasters for England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, according to a leaked government document. Now, before everybody jumps up and says, oh it's only another...
Read all of 'Sunday Times Report: BBC could be broken up regionally.'.
Beware. If you're spell checking a blog entry, remember to pay attention as it will try to convert "MediaGuardian" to "mediocrities"......
Read all of 'Note to self.'.
Media Guardian: Millions could face BBC TV switch-off in 2007 We all know it. Some may deny it. Some may stick their fingers in their ears and go "lar-lar-lar-lar-I can't hear you!" but it's going to happen. No matter how...
Read all of 'Planning a demise of analogue.'.
MediaGuardian: 'What you'll see in my shed' When it comes to defending BBC Three against the bashers, you don't often find its stars saying much, but todays Media Guardian sees Johnny Vaughan doing just that. Of course it's all tied...
Read all of 'Johnny likes to offer more.'.
Thursday 12 February 2004
Shropshire Star confused 'news' report Leave it to dire local news sheets to miss a point with such accuracy (can you hear the true story whistling as it passes their journalist's ears?) Many insults, most of them justified, are hurled...
Read all of 'Sky 'Solus' cards'.
ITV Nottingham to close? We always knew ITV would start cutting costs. We also knew that after Crossroads ended, Nottingham would have a vastly reduced workload. ITV have put two and two together, and it seems Nottingham might be set...
Read all of 'Culling the shots'.
Tuesday 10 February 2004
MediaGuardian: Watchdog raps Channel 4 and Top of the Pops It seems that new media regulator Ofcom already has its work cut out with TV channels either breaking rules through the quest of trying to attract viewers or through...
Read all of 'Time to get tough'.
Monday 9 February 2004
Top Up TV website Yes the rumours really are true. Someone is actually bonkers enough to try and do pay-TV on digital terrestrial television. In a few months time you can have your Freeview, and then top it up. So...
Read all of 'Will you top up?'.
Thursday 5 February 2004
News 24 does the Job Well, it seems that the News 24 rebrand has done some good - for two out of the last four weeks it has had greater viewing figures than Sky News. I hope that this...
Read all of 'Who dares wins'.
Wednesday 4 February 2004
Ouch! Unpleasant to listen to the unpleasant Lord Birt, unlamented late BBC DG, laying into the Corporation in the Lords this afternoon. When Dyke departed the other day, people cheered him and shook his hand; when Birt left some years...
Read all of 'Birt Blasts Beeb'.
Guardian: Government gives strong signal on digital TV You know that analogue-switch off is in trouble when someone thinks that the most important thing to do is hire Lambie Nairn to design a brand identity for the process......
Read all of 'Branding Analogue Switch Off'.
Pay TV for Freeview Ignoring the fact we've seen this story ages ago on DigitalSpy (but two cheers for the Grauniad for being second with the news... as usual) would anyone with any knowledge of the technicalities of terrestrial digital...
Read all of 'MediaGrauniad non-story of the week'.
Tuesday 3 February 2004
Brand Republic: UKTV to launch two new channels to replace Horizons As part of an article on the splitting of UK Horizons into two, it's also revealed that the whole UKTV network is to be re-branded with the UK...
Read all of 'UKTV Rebrand'.
Monday 2 February 2004
Transdiffusion affiliate, the Tyne Tees Logo Page has just had an update. New additions include articles on Trident Television, Channel 3 North East, the City Road studios, the first night schedule, Joblink, and the weather in 2002! And then there...
Read all of 'Tyne Tees Logo Page Update'.
Gone are Granada plc and Carlton Communications plc. No more do they exist. ITV is all ITV plc now. Except for viewers in Scotland, Northern Ireland and the Channel Islands. But they don't matter. So I thought I should mark...
Read all of 'Good Morning, this is ITV plc'.
ITV pull the surprise on us and actually launched the new look ITV News at 5.30am in the morning. The ITV Morning News on ITV1 and the ITV News Channel was the first programme to use the new look. Some...
Read all of 'The New ITV News'.
|
