Posts from
April 2004
Thursday 29 April 2004
The BBC are very, very lazy. On News 24 today they are covering a news story involving a crackdown on youth drinking. As is the norm with the news, they have sent someone out to be in a bar and...
Read all of 'Lazy BBC'.
Monday 26 April 2004
Avid readers of this occasional column will notice that it has been a while since we last looked in on the old Victorian mansion where Madame Arcati and our fellow sitters congregate to contact the spirits of our dear, and...
Read all of 'Sense and sensibilities'.
Thompson issues public service challenge Whilst it is good that ITV should be forced to account for the reason(s) why it should throw away the remainder of its 'public service obligations' for the privilege of showing even greater quantities of...
Read all of 'Pass the parcel'.
Saturday 24 April 2004
Digital Spy: TBS to relaunch on June 4 No. Don't worry. It's not this TBS. Nope. The Transdiffusion System is not planning a revamp on June 4 at all. Especially not a revamp with such dire consequences. No. The article...
Read all of 'What's In A Name?'.
Thursday 22 April 2004
Metro: 60 Seconds Interview with Peter Simon Seems strange to imagine, but yes we live in a world where former kids TV presenter Peter Simon can get 1 million viewers on a Saturday night for flogging chunky necklaces, odd globes...
Read all of 'Watch the auction arrow'.
Tuesday 20 April 2004
Telephone Numbers for drama purposes (TV, Radio etc) A lot of water has passed under the bridge since VINcent XXXX was the dramatist's number of choice. OfGums, showing more imagination than the American 555 single option, offer 01632 as a...
Read all of 'Planning a drama?'.
40 years of quality broadcasting The launch night that never was Well, it's the 40th Birthday of BBC2 today, and what better way for BBCi to advertise it with a picture of 'The Office'. Wow. Just think of what they...
Read all of 'Happy 40th Birthday BBC2!'.
Friday 16 April 2004
Almost inevitably, in the wake on Michael Grade's statement about broadcasting not using the net well enough as a distribution medium, the BBC has announced that it will be broadcasting all 40 of its BBC Local Radio stations in England...
Read all of 'BBC Local Radio, available on the internet.'.
Wednesday 14 April 2004
Jermey to head ITV regional news Buried in an article about ITV plc appointing its first ever executive in charge of all ITV1 regional news bulletins in England and Wales, the Media Guardian reveals that ITV1's regional news bulletins are...
Read all of 'It really is the end of regional ITV as we know it (and I feel fine)'.
BBCi takes an interesting line... ...not backed up by their own figures. Success stories: Arsenal vs Newcastle United, Sky Sports, Sunday - 1.6 million viewers Friends, E4, Thursday - 1m viewers Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Saturday -...
Read all of 'Multi-channel TV comes of age... it says here'.
Tuesday 13 April 2004
Using Attitude Based Segmentation to Better Understand Viewers' Usability Issues with Digital and Interactive TV (pdf) From a snappily titled paper presented at a 2004 European Conference on Interactive Television comes an interesting little nugget of information. In a survey,...
Read all of 'Interactive TV - less difficult than an aeroplane?'.
MediaGuardian: Viewers desert BBC channels Another day, another "BBC is down the pan" story, but this time the news is both good and bad. Good in that considering the 300-plus channels that are now available, the number of viewers not...
Read all of 'The (almost) lost generation'.
Monday 12 April 2004
Interview with producer/director Jo Haywood Would someone - anyone - like to explain the meaning of the following quote from Jo Haywood? ...but ITV have also lost a lot of stuff. When all of the contracts changed hands between Granada...
Read all of 'Missing Believed Wiped interview on BBC4's website'.
From the Intertel section, comes word that the company which owns CityTV, CHUM Limited, is acquiring Craig Media Inc. for $265 million Canadian. The deal, subject to regulatory approval from the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, will mean that CHUM...
Read all of 'CHUM acquires Craig Media, to expand into Western Canada.'.
Sunday 11 April 2004
The Scotsman - of all things - on the BBC Essex free radio celebration. This is a busy year for broadcasting historians - the 40th anniversaries of Radio Caroline, Rediffusion London, BBC2, RTF2 and ahem Transdiffusion. The first celebration is...
Read all of 'Pirate DJs take to the waves again'.
Thursday 8 April 2004
ITV3 lined up for September debut In the swirling mists of the past there Granada and BSkyB and they had a gangcalled GSkyB. And it did have TV channels called Plus and Men & Motors from Granada's shed in Manchester....
Read all of 'Fighting it out for ITV3'.
ITV plans 'blank screen' gameshow Given that staring at a blank screen is infinitely more entertaining than the majority of current ITV programmes, it was perhaps inevitable that the idea would be plagiarised at some point, though unsurprisingly they have...
Read all of 'Watch this space'.
Wednesday 7 April 2004
Reality ratings boost ITV2 So a constant diet of formulaic TV reality TV (I'm a Celeb, American Idol etal) has sent ITV2 spinning to become the second most popular entertainment channel in the first three months of 2004. Depressingly (the...
Read all of 'Constant diet of Reality TV works. Constant diet of Friends doesn't.'.
Tuesday 6 April 2004
Media Guardian is reporting that Michael Grade is urging broadcasters to embrace the net, or face the sort of piracy issues that have been dogging the music industry. When the net was new, radio and TV were quick to start...
Read all of '"Broadcasters failing to embrace net" - Grade'.
Monday 5 April 2004
BBC and C4 face threat of analogue charges The scenario: The pace of digital takeup has probably now slowed down again after a promising period late last year with the sales of 'Freeview' boxes, so Ofcom decides that something else...
Read all of 'There's really no need for this'.
Saturday 3 April 2004
Early yesterday morning, we were surprised by a knock at the door. On stumbling downstairs and opening it, I was astonished to see Madame Arcati. She was so excited at having apparently perfected her Ectoplasmic Speaking Tube, thereby allowing direct...
Read all of 'Broadcasting in the World Unseen'.
Friday 2 April 2004
Michael Grade is new BBC chairman My first instinct was that I wasn't quite sure that he would be entirely suitable for the post (remembering how Channel 4 went downhill during his stint as chief executive), but there again...
Read all of 'Making the Grade'.
Pioneering socially experimental documentary strand begun on World in Action spearheads ITV's 50th Anniversary J. Nigel Pickard, ITV's Director of Programmes has brought Granada's mammoth documentary project, back to ITV1 in time for its 50th anniversary celebrations in 2005. Film...
Read all of 'Michael Apted and his Granada "Seven Up" programme returns to ITV1'.
Thursday 1 April 2004
ITV backs 'top slicing' BBC licence fee Yet another highly predictable outcome, though the only logic here is that ITV wants to see a weakened BBC but not a neutered one (which would totally devastate its ad revenue). But ITV...
Read all of 'Sliced and diced'.
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