Posts from
March 2007
Friday 30 March 2007
Was it really ten years ago today when at 6pm I watched a decidedly fuzzy picture of the (then massively popular) Spice Girls launching Channel 5? Indeed I was lucky that Channel 5 was available at all where I...
Read all of 'Five is ten'.
Wednesday 28 March 2007
Channel 4 queries rival digital radio bid The National Grid Wireless Bid The 4 Digital bid Today was the deadline for the submission of bids to run the new second national commercial DAB multiplex, and it now looks as if...
Read all of 'Reception trouble'.
Tuesday 27 March 2007
Moira Stuart loses BBC News slot It's bad enough that BBC Television News has become a round-up of the day's press-releases from think-tanks, pressure groups, charities and universities interspersed with showbiz trivia and cross-promotions for other programmes on BBC TV....
Read all of 'RIP BBC Television News'.
Friday 23 March 2007
Recently we've been watching two interleaved documentary series on BBC Two by two award-winning people: Adam Curtis's stunning three-parter The Trap (Sundays, 21:00); and Are We There Yet (Tuesdays, 19:30) by former World In Action and Panorama journalist John Ware....
Read all of 'Putting two documentaries together gives new answers'.
MediaGuardian: TV nation: first mass survey finds homely bias in what we watch A survey for Ofcom, part of its first public service broadcasting annual report, shows that more than two thirds of viewers think the main five channels don't...
Read all of 'Perception and Innovation'.
Tuesday 20 March 2007
NCC pleas for temporary pay-TV truce Logically speaking, BSkyB ought to seriously consider the National Consumer Council's plea for a temporary deal allowing the return of the basic Sky channels to the Virgin Media cable service, but from recent...
Read all of 'The waiting game'.
At the request of BT, Setanta, Virgin Media and Top Up TV, OFCOM are to investigate the world of UK based pay television. Whilst I am all in favour of an investigation, I do have my doubts as to whether...
Read all of 'OFCOM investigates UK pay TV'.
Monday 19 March 2007
Yes, it is true. A legend of the television industry has returned to the broadcasting ether. This particular legend first arrived on South West televison screens in 1961, and disappeared in 1992. He's been spending his time since then at...
Read all of 'A Television Legend returns to the Cornish airwaves!'.
Sunday 18 March 2007
Making Your Mind Up website I didn't watch Making Your Mind up last night but caught a bit of the rather shambolic results programme (spectacularly they announced one person to be the winner, only to five seconds later decide they...
Read all of 'Congratulations. We've lost Eurovision again!'.
Thursday 15 March 2007
Biddy Baxter 'appalled' by Blue Peter phone-in row One minute you may think it's all over, but it seems that premium phone line-related scandals continue to emerge like skeletons tumbling out of a large cupboard, and in their wake appear...
Read all of 'Infallible? Think again'.
Tuesday 13 March 2007
Well, I have to say this is great news for people like myself who have a love of the broadcast media. The overly commercial venture known as ITV Play, is to completely closedown, and will be replaced on Freeview by...
Read all of 'Breaking News. ITV Play to close. Hooray!'.
Monday 12 March 2007
In PC Pro this month (May 2007 edition), editor Tim Danton writes: In the 1960s, people were happy with black-and-white, grainy images with jittery sound quality.They weren't. 405-line television in the 1960s looked and sounded very much like a monochrome...
Read all of 'Irritating cliché #234563'.
ITV Play cleared At the moment it's ITV Play the late night quiz strand on ITV1 and ITV2 that has been cleared as opposed to ITV Play the channel, which is still off air at the time of writing and...
Read all of 'Playtime's over?'.
Friday 9 March 2007
The real global warming swindle You'd have thought that the arguments about global warming were more or less over. After all, even the Bush administration is appearing to go along with prevalent scientific opinion in accepting that CO2 emissions are...
Read all of 'Margaret Thatcher causes Global Warming'.
Thursday 8 March 2007
Icstis seeks 'fair deal' for viewers What started as a single premium rate 'irregularity' allegedly involving the Richard and Judy show's "You Say We Pay" quiz has now turned into a scandal that threatens to overwhelm the whole premium rate...
Read all of 'What fair deal?'.
Tuesday 6 March 2007
Life on Mars Apart from the retro continuity, mucking about with Test Card F and other trivia of interest to us pres geeks, Life on Mars offers a fascinating look back to another world. It's actually quite an apt name....
Read all of 'The good ol' days'.
TV channels clear phone-in shows Now why doesn't this surprise me? Various television broadcasters set up premium rate quizzes/'interactive' phone-in voting systems that earn a respectable side income (if not enough to replace other forms of revenue), and all superficially...
Read all of 'Broadcasters clear broadcasters'.
Friday 2 March 2007
BBC News: Consumer body angry at BSkyB row In the latest stage of the Sky-Virgin debacle, The National Consumer Counci are threatening to put in an official complaint to the government, in an attempt to "knock heads together" (perhaps they'll...
Read all of 'The Sky's The Limit For The Control Freaks'.
Thursday 1 March 2007
Following on from the Sky blackout for Virgin customers, it's also not going to be long before Sky turn something else off. The free months subscription they gave me to "entice" me from my freesat setup, to paying them a...
Read all of 'Pay for my TV? Not likely!'.
Sky urges Virgin customers to switch BSkyB's latest move in this unfolding saga of Virgin Media-baiting may not win it many friends, either amongst Virgin Media customers (who may either by hostile towards Sky or cannot have satellite TV for...
Read all of 'Cheap tricks'.
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