Posts by
Richard G Elen
Wednesday 3 March 2010
Although the article leads on a poll result that suggest that the majority of the UK population are "broadly in favour" of the proposed BBC cuts, a new poll published by PoliticsHome suggests that a majority of people are happy...
Read all of 'Most people like the BBC as it is'.
Monday 10 August 2009
Coverage of the data presented in Ofcom's Communications Market Report indicates that many correspondents are not at their best when dealing with statistics. But Ofcom themselves don't make it particularly easy to do anything other than misinterpret the data.
Read all of 'Lies, damned lies and Ofcom'.
Friday 17 July 2009
Despite protestations from a number of Guardian/Observer readers (and the odd columnist) that there wasn't much of a story in BBC executives' expenses, now here's a second round. There is even less of a story this time.
Read all of 'BBC expenses: Still nothing to write home about'.
Friday 3 July 2009
ITN newscaster Alastair Stewart calls for a "Beeching style enquiry" into the BBC to assess whether its services are all really "necessary and viable". What a ridiculous idea.
Read all of 'Exactly the wrong thing to ask for'.
Wednesday 1 July 2009
If we're keeping DAB, we need to upgrade it to use modern codecs. But why not skip all that and move the "radio space" to IP networks? However, you can't do that until there is a national broadband infrastructure that will need a lot more than copper-based 2Mb/s. So until then, maybe keeping FM is the thing to do…
Read all of 'Radio and Britain's Digital Future'.
Saturday 24 January 2009
Protest over BBC Gaza appeal veto Let me first state my position. I personally am very much in favour of support for the Gaza Crisis Appeal. Just looking at the pictures of dreadful injuries, UN schools shelled, the use of...
Read all of 'Lose-lose'.
Monday 8 December 2008
John Barrowman item et seq, The Now Show, Series 25, Episode 2, BBC Radio 4 Hats off to BBC Radio 4's The Now Show for, er, raising the issue of John Barrowman's invisible appendage last Friday evening (6:30pm, 5th December)...
Read all of 'Many a true word spoken in jest'.
Wednesday 5 November 2008
Talk about ugly... for some reason US screen graphics are often garish, overcomplex and hard to read in my view. Look at this example from MSNBC this morning....
Read all of 'What horrible screen graphics…'.
Last night found me glued to the BBC News US Election coverage on the BBC website until I dragged myself away at 3am, with Ohio called for Obama and Virginia undeclared. I was watching both the live TV feed and...
Read all of 'For goodness' sake, turn off the tweets'.
Thursday 30 October 2008
Brand has resigned; Ross probably ought to consider doing something similar himself. The pre-recording of edgy comedy programmes is a great way to make sure that the wrong thing doesn't go out – but someone needs to keep an eye...
Read all of 'OK, that's enough'.
Wednesday 29 October 2008
I'm not a fan of either Ross or Brand; I have no comment on the question as to whether or not they are overpaid; and I certainly think that the messages on Mr Sachs's answering machine were ill-advised – and...
Read all of 'Mixed messages'.
Monday 27 October 2008
I've talked about this issue before, but as it keeps coming up, perhaps it's time to talk about it again. It is commonly assumed that for the media to be balanced, they must needs simply give equal time to the...
Read all of 'What is Fairness?'.
Monday 13 October 2008
As someone who remains of the opinion that what the British Government did in the years 1945-51 to establish major post-war institutions (despite the country being nearly bankrupt) was brilliant and that we should have the same approach to current...
Read all of 'Future lessons from the past'.
Friday 3 October 2008
Despite the fact that Cory Ondrejka works for EMI, he knows more about what's really going on in the music industry than almost anyone else.
Read all of 'Watch this man.'.
For Google's 10th anniversary, you can search the web as it was in 2001.
Read all of 'Searching back in time'.
Thursday 25 September 2008
Can you imagine how much time we wasted watching TV - and what we could now be doing instead?
Read all of 'Television: the gin of the 20th century'.
Can you imagine how much time we wasted watching TV - and what we could now be doing instead?
Read all of 'Television: the gin of the 20th century'.
Tuesday 22 July 2008
Once again, a sizeable proportion of online users are being discriminated against by on-demand programme providers: this time by Five's TV-on-demand service Demand Five. If they were visually impaired, for example, this discrimination would probably be illegal - but...
Read all of 'Demand Five - another case of online discrimination'.
Sunday 20 July 2008
COO of BSkyB, Mike Darcey, writing in the Royal Television Society journal Television (Vol. 45:6, July 2008 p12), reckons Ofcom – and many of the rest of us – are all asking the wrong question about the future of Public...
Read all of 'Pay-per-PSB? Not as a package'.
Saturday 12 July 2008
Of course, as everyone might expect, there was enormous demand for the iPhone 3G when it came out earlier in the week: it's obviously an excellent product with several of the features that people wanted added to the new...
Read all of 'O2 and iPhone 3G: Where 'first come first served' is a lie'.
Monday 23 June 2008
On the internet, news travels too quickly
Read all of 'Breaking the news too fast'.
On the internet, news can sometimes travel too fast
Read all of 'Breaking the news too fast'.
Friday 9 May 2008
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...
Read all of 'Medi(a)eval Haze'.
Tuesday 1 April 2008
So here we are in this new media world. We download our music and give it to our friends, so the musicians who make it don't get any income. We write our blogs and splatter our opinions all over the...
Read all of 'How do we make money?'.
Sunday 30 March 2008
As if GCap Media's stance on DAB was not obvious enough already, listeners to Classic FM who have not been blasted or lulled into inattention by the ads in the run-up to the news at the top of the hour...
Read all of 'We're not talking about it...'.
Sunday 9 March 2008
So here we are in this new media world. We download our music and give it to our friends, so the musicians who make it don't get any income. We write our blogs and splatter our opinions all over the...
Read all of 'How do we make any money?'.
Friday 7 March 2008
UK's world-class astronomy project faces closure Turning a blind eye to a magic kingdom of marvellous things For arch Government stupidity there can be few more stunning examples than the threat to close not only Jodrell Bank radio telescope -...
Read all of 'The world's most famous radio receiver to close?'.
Thursday 14 February 2008
eSkeptic: Journalist-Bites-Reality! – How broadcast journalism is flawed in such a fundamental way that its utility as a tool for informing viewers is almost nil. I'm in the process of reading Andrew Keen's book The Cult of the Amateur, in...
Read all of 'Trust and new media'.
Friday 1 February 2008
For an extended version of this article, click here. It was bad enough that the BBC's iPlayer excludes tens of thousands of licence-payers by being Windows-only. Now Classic FM, the UK's most popular commercial radio station, has done the self-same...
Read all of 'Microsoft strikes again'.
I've been a technology journalist of one sort or another since 1974, and in my view there are two fundamental requirements for the job: an ability to write, of course, but also an ability to research. You really need to...
Read all of 'Spiegel im Spiegel'.
Thursday 31 January 2008
Eliot (right) and Carolyn's on-screen 'avatar'. BBC copyright. Wednesday (Tuesday in Scotland) saw the latest in a new documentary strand, Wonderland, on BBC2. This week it was "Virtual Adultery and Cyberspace Love" and was billed as follows: "Carolyn is a...
Read all of 'Nothing new under the virtual sun'.
Saturday 1 December 2007
Of all the broadcasting anniversaries we've been noting recently in these pages, there's one that seems to have slipped by. It might seem a small thing, but it was actually quite important, especially at the time. On Thursday 8th November...
Read all of 'The forgotten anniversary'.
Tuesday 4 September 2007
Five News to ban staged shots Is TV editing misleading? So Channel Five's new news editor, David Kermode, is banning a bunch of traditional interview techniques in a bid to try and restore trust in television news, after recent problems...
Read all of 'Mistaking technique for artifice'.
Saturday 25 August 2007
'Second Life' after the backlash Second Life's Real-World Problems This weekend the Hilton, in downtown Chicago, is playing host to the third Second Life Community Convention - SLCC 07 - along with around 800 'residents' of the on-line 'metaverse', or...
Read all of 'Third 'Second Life' Convention sees active media presence'.
?Anchorwoman? Canceled After One Airing We're used to so-called 'reality' shows crashing and burning, or getting themselves into deep water (or other substances). The latest tale that will hopefully contribute to the downfall of this tacky tabloid show format comes...
Read all of 'Another ?reality? show bites the dust'.
Tuesday 14 August 2007
"Big L time is three o'clock, and Radio London is now... closing down...." This is what we heard Paul Kaye say, forty years ago today, virtually to the minute as I write this. The "Marine Broadcasting Offences Act, 1967" was...
Read all of 'Free Radio: 40 years on'.
Thursday 2 August 2007
BBC Corrupted by Microsoft Free Software Foundation plans protest against "corrupt" BBC BBC Trust backs calls for Linux iPlayer So, let's look at this story in a little more detail. What this is fundamentally about is that the BBC's iPlayer,...
Read all of 'The BBC Sells Out'.
Wednesday 1 August 2007
A recent blog entry on the web site www.defectivebydesign.org, under the headline "BBC Corrupted by Microsoft" bemoans the latest development in copy protection. What it is fundamentally about is that the BBC's iPlayer, which is required to view the content...
Read all of 'The BBC Sells Out?'.
Wednesday 18 July 2007
DELETE---It's all very well all this wailing and gnashing of teeth going on at the BBC and aired in public. We know that the phone-in quiz business was industry wide, but it's only the BBC that, so far, is...
Read all of 'The wrong mea culpa'.
Sunday 15 July 2007
Treasury makes complaint to BBC about Gordon Brown film Hot on the heels of the Queen/RDF storm in a teacup, Newsnight is apparently in trouble with the Treasury over a piece made by independent film-maker Jamie Campbell in which a...
Read all of 'The ethics of the edit suite'.
Friday 13 July 2007
Well, it's one angle that hasn't been explored a great deal by the rest of the UK media (another writer has suggested it briefly here). As has been pointed out, we don't (yet?) know where in the chain the clips...
Read all of 'Should the BBC do more in-house?'.
Sunday 1 July 2007
I had the occasion recently to go into hospital for an operation. In fact, it was the second attempt to remove a lump on my vocal cords which had grown back after previous laser removal in March. So here I...
Read all of 'Hospital ripoff'.
Thursday 21 June 2007
Do not go to work on an egg It really seems to be beyond the bounds of reason for the Broadcast Advertising Clearance Centre (BACC) to stop the British Egg Information Service (BEIS) re-running the famous Tony Hancock "Go...
Read all of 'Sorry, you're not allowed to go to work on an egg'.
Friday 1 June 2007
It's evidently not enough that Ofcom has roundly condemned the participants in the Big Brother racism row (see our June article) and there's already a further racism accusation raging regarding the new series. And now the same production company responsible...
Read all of 'TIme to end it'.
Sunday 13 May 2007
And now, finally, we know when Tony Blair will leave Number Ten. As the media - and Blair himself - continue to be concerned with what his legacy will be, our regular correspondent Russ J Graham considers what future historians...
Read all of 'Blair's Broadcasting Legacy'.
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'.
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 1 March 2007
You'd think the headlong rush to acquire large flat-screen TVs - that cost more to run, have a larger carbon footprint, and give a poorer picture than the CRT-based sets they replace - was bad enough at the consumer end...
Read all of 'Flat-screen chaos'.
Saturday 24 February 2007
Not such a pretty picture - RTS Journal vol 44/2 You'd think the headlong rush to acquire large flat-screen TVs - that cost more to run, have a larger carbon footprint, and give a poorer picture than the CRT-based sets...
Read all of 'Flat-screen chaos'.
Monday 5 February 2007
Jeremy Paxman's recent article in the BBC house magazine Ariel, republished (presumably) here, seems to have stirred up a lot of fuss for all the wrong reasons. Well yes, of course, Paxman is entirely right to bemoan the fact that...
Read all of 'Unbiased doesn't mean equal time'.
Monday 22 January 2007
Hmmm. First we have the BBC presenting stories about WMDs that the Government doesn't like - stories that turn out, after quite a while, to have been very close to the truth - and then the resulting turmoil, unwarranted departure...
Read all of 'Who's Next? One guess.'.
Saturday 20 January 2007
So the first of the bullies is out on her ear and Big Brother has attained its highest ratings of the series. Two stunningly unsurprising interim results. Other lacks of surprise we can expect in the future include some weak...
Read all of 'When a bigger audience doesn't help'.
Sunday 7 January 2007
Hacker web sites and forums have been talking for the last week or two about a claim that the AACS (Advanced Access Content System) copy protection system used on both the HD DVD and Blu Ray Disc HD disc formats...
Read all of 'Measure and Countermeasure'.
Monday 1 January 2007
Hacker web sites and forums have been talking for the last week or two about a claim that the AACS (Advanced Access Content System) copy protection system used on both the HD DVD and Blu Ray Disc HD disc formats...
Read all of 'Measure and Countermeasure'.
Sunday 17 December 2006
Do flat-screen TVs eat more energy? Bad news this month for those of us considering a flat-screen Hi-Def TV who are also energy conscious: they can take more energy than a conventional CRT (Cathode Ray Tube)-based set. This came as...
Read all of 'Flat screens a bad idea - for now?'.
Thursday 7 December 2006
Going on from my comments about radio-advertised charities the other day, last night I went to a presentation at the Royal Geographical Society by the Population and Sustainability Network (PSN). The theme of the evening was "Population Increase ? the...
Read all of 'More reasons not to give goats at Christmas'.
Tuesday 5 December 2006
I notice that Classic FM is running a joint promotion in the run-up to Christmas with the theme "The Alternative 12 Days of Christmas". Every day participants can win one of a number of "alternative" gifts ? such as "four...
Read all of 'Where does the money go?'.
Friday 1 December 2006
Whatever the impact of Michael Grade's departure on the BBC - and there are all sorts of opinions on that from disaster to nothing at all - there can be no doubt that his move to ITV can be anything...
Read all of 'Grade to the Rescue'.
Wednesday 29 November 2006
That's the question that I am sure many people at the BBC are asking at the moment. On the face of it, Grade's departure is an enormous slap in the face for the Corporation. But is that really the case?...
Read all of 'Betraying ? or just leaving?'.
Sunday 26 November 2006
Unless I'm away, items seldom stay long on my Sky+ system: I've usually watched them and either wiped them or archived them to DVD before the week is out. So why is last week's Torchwood still on my hard drive,...
Read all of 'Over the top'.
Saturday 25 November 2006
Is it me, or has the BBC's Click technology programme gone completely off the rails while I wasn't looking? I haven't seen the programme for some time and happened to switch on News 24 this morning just before it...
Read all of 'Click off'.
Thursday 23 November 2006
Just as the war between HD-DVD and Blu-Ray Disc is ensuring that comparatively few people buy either HD disc format (leaving the way open to downloads superseding packaged media on video as well as audio), along comes something to...
Read all of 'Beatles breathe new life into hi-res audio'.
Al Jazeera's English service gets into its stride Despite US protestations, nobody can surely now be in any doubt that "Al Jazeera is the new frontier" as Sir David Frost claims in their trailers. Looking at the English language service...
Read all of 'Changing the news agenda'.
Wednesday 1 November 2006
There was a time, not so long ago, when ITV was the country's leading advertising medium, with vast amounts of money changing hands for expensive spots. Now, as ITV1 continues to lose its way, the precipitous fall in popularity -...
Read all of 'The trouble with ITV'.
Tuesday 17 October 2006
Samsung launches BluRay player in the UK (BBC Radio 4, Today, Business Report) The first player from one of the two high-definition optical disc formats has been launched in the UK: it's Samsung's BluRay Disc (BRD) player and it'll cost...
Read all of 'Hi-Def disc format war begins today.... not.'.
I don't know about anyone else, but I discovered a cool little sci-fi series a few weeks ago, A Town Called Eureka, running on Sky. Unfortunately I missed the first few episodes and as a result I looked the show...
Read all of 'Cleverness and stupidity combine to annoy'.
Sunday 1 October 2006
The recent sad passing of naturalist and TV presenter Steve Irwin inevitably raises questions about how we produce television programmes about the natural world. The BBC spends vast amounts of our money on natural history programming, and the resulting multi-award-winning...
Read all of 'Science or show?'.
Friday 1 September 2006
So, the World Cup has long since passed, and as a result you're probably watching the crop of available HD channels on your Sky box and wondering what to do next. Needless to say, the BBC content is wonderful -...
Read all of 'Put that thing down!'.
Monday 28 August 2006
A slightly unfortunate side-effect of Charles Allen's recent MacTaggart lecture in Edinburgh is that it has reignited a rather annoying debate around the metaphorical water-cooler and elsewhere, on the future of Channel 4. This is a debate one would rather...
Read all of 'If it ain't broke, don't fix it'.
Wednesday 9 August 2006
So Allen steps down, and it would appear that ITV has favoured its shareholders at the expense of its viewers. As one commentator put it: "ITV has tried to be blatantly populist but has failed to be popular...". And the...
Read all of 'Still busy making money'.
Tuesday 1 August 2006
"What ITV is up to" is a subject that occupies our minds from time to time here at Transdiffusion, especially in the wake of the 50th anniversary last year, which encouraged us fairly inevitably to look back over that half-century...
Read all of 'Not your parents' ITV'.
Monday 10 July 2006
It's surely a truism, but in my view the big problem with commercial broadcasting is... the commercials. Or, more accurately, the crass, ill-conceived and inappropriate ones. Typical is the supermarket chain that will break the mood of a peaceful programme...
Read all of 'Unnatural breaks'.
Sunday 9 July 2006
Many thanks to Malcolm Smith for bringing this to our attention. Alexandra Palace Television Group Chairman: Richard E Norman CBE; Treasurer: Tony Wilding; Secretary: Frank Phillip ****URGENT PRESS RELEASE**** Alexandra Palace TV Heritage Faces Destruction John Thompson, curator of the...
Read all of 'Alexandra Palace TV Heritage Faces Destruction'.
Saturday 1 July 2006
I wonder if you invested in an HDMI/HDCP-equipped flat panel display and an HD box to watch the World Cup in Hi-Def? Well, let’s not talk about that then. But have you seen Wimbledon in HD? The World Cup looks...
Read all of 'HDTV or not'.
Tuesday 27 June 2006
The Independent: Sony does battle with Toshiba over new DVD formats Many of us involved in the home entertainment business are keeping our eyes on the progress of HDTV, and also on the success (or, more likely, otherwise) of the...
Read all of 'Never mind the quality, feel the convenience'.
Thursday 22 June 2006
by Joseph Gallant Living in the United States, I only got to see one season of BBC's long-running Top Of The Pops: in 1987-88. That season, CBS transmitted the programme in a late-night Friday slot, adding segments presented by Nia...
Read all of 'TOTP's Demise - An American View'.
Friday 9 June 2006
Tango Clear - Bravo Sony Bravia - Balls You know that commercial... the one that starts with aerial views of a city; gently-edited shots of streets and street corners... beautifully scene-setting music (Heartbeats, performed by José González from his album,...
Read all of 'Sony's clearly been Tango'd'.
Wednesday 7 June 2006
At 3pm on Friday, 7 June 1946, a BBC Television Service announcer drove up to the doors of Alexandra Palace in a chauffeur-driven car. She stepped out and walked up to a TV camera. Then, captured on newsreel film...
Read all of 'It was sixty years ago today...'.
Thursday 1 June 2006
It seems that hardly a week goes by when there isn't some new scheme from the commercial sector to emasculate the BBC, either by stopping it from getting the money it plainly needs to continue its world-leading services, or by...
Read all of 'More commercial BBC-bashing'.
Monday 1 May 2006
There's something that has been widely talked about recently in the several forums and email lists that discuss goings-on in television and the media. If you're someone who frequents such places, you'll already know about it: but to the vast...
Read all of 'A goldmine of programming history'.
Saturday 1 April 2006
I'm very pleased to see that our friend 'Sir' Gavin Sutherland's excellent new recording of Fritz Spiegl's Radio 4 UK Theme is now on the shelves, metaphorical or actual - backed with a very pleasant rendering of Sailing By, I...
Read all of 'Why Spiegl should stay'.
Wednesday 1 March 2006
There's a long television tradition for getting an 'expert' to pronounce on-screen in a documentary series about their specialist subject: it goes back to Kenneth Clark's marathon 13-part Civilisation in 1969 and beyond. The latest example is Michio Kaku, one...
Read all of 'Overstretching Time'.
Wednesday 22 February 2006
While reading a piece on how the BBC intends to set aside £100m for UK films over the next ten years (excellent news!) ? assuming a positive outcome regarding the licence fee, of course ? I was prompted to wonder...
Read all of 'What we want (other people) to watch'.
Wednesday 1 February 2006
With all this kerfuffle about Radio 4's UK Theme, has anyone noticed that 'light music' is disappearing from radio and television? No sooner has BBC Four televised a (rather good) documentary on "Music for Everyone" than it's suddenly Music for...
Read all of 'Editorial: February 2006'.
Thursday 26 January 2006
I cannot imagine that there are many Transdiffusion writers - or readers, for that matter - who are not fans of startup themes of one sort or another. Virtually all the stations we write about have had themes, just as...
Read all of 'A Theme For All Reasons'.
Sunday 1 January 2006
I would like to start by wishing all our readers, contributors, editors and 'back-room' staff a very happy New Year, and here's hoping that 2006 will be a little more peaceful than last. To start they new year , we...
Read all of 'Editorial: January 2006'.
Friday 16 December 2005
Just a quick note to wish a very Merry Christmas and seasonal greetings to all our readers, editors, contributors and supporters. Check out our special Christmas Card and read the Review of the Year - including a commemoration of broadcasting...
Read all of 'Merry Christmas from Transdiffusion!'.
Thursday 1 December 2005
Late in October I attended a one-day conference on 50 Years of ITV at the National Museum of Photography, Film & Television in Bradford. It was actually fascinating - although not all of the presentations seemed to have a lot...
Read all of 'Editorial: December 2005'.
Tuesday 1 November 2005
Some fascinating new articles for you this month, kicking off with an in-depth look from Russ J Graham at what exactly happened when the BBC Television Service went off the air at the outbreak of the Second World War. You've...
Read all of 'Editorial: November 2005'.
Friday 28 October 2005
I must admit to finding myself slightly bemused, bothered and bewildered at the appearance of the two Tory party leadership contenders at the National Television Awards earlier this week. Coming on stage to present the Most Popular Drama Award to...
Read all of 'What are THEY doing here?'.
Thursday 6 October 2005
Thompson brands New Statesman claims 'nonsense' (Media Guardian) I read that BBC Director General Mark Thompson has sent news staff an email denying today's New Statesman report that chairman Michael Grade tried to sack Radio 4's Today presenter John Humphrys...
Read all of 'Humphrys on the ropes - or not'.
Saturday 1 October 2005
In the update this month we have an interesting discussion on the importance of public service broadcasting and a piece on how to reverse ITV's decline. We also feature an article on Ulster Television – with an alternative view to...
Read all of 'Editorial: October 2005'.
Sunday 18 September 2005
Blair 'attacked BBC over Katrina' Interesting that Rupert Murdoch is apparently now Tony Blair's mouthpiece on media matters. In a recent speech at Bill Clinton's Global Initiatives forum the News Corporation tycoon told the audience that the Prime Minister is...
Read all of 'Having it both ways'.
Thursday 1 September 2005
In what is without doubt the most extensive monthly addition to the Transdiffusion Network in its history, we have several things to celebrate. The obvious one is the fiftieth anniversary of commercial television in the UK, and as Kenny Everett...
Read all of 'Editorial: September 2005'.
Monday 1 August 2005
Something unique happened at the end of last month: the BBC broadcast for the last time via its own transmission system. The sell-off of BBC Broadcast to a bunch of Australian bankers, which went through on the stroke of midnight...
Read all of 'Editorial: August 2005'.
Wednesday 27 July 2005
As we come up towards ITV50 in a couple of months time, and in the wake of Lord Bragg's variable-quality self-congratulation for the so-called 'People's Channel', there is a lot of ITV-bashing going on. Some of us see the third...
Read all of 'Is ITV-bashing justified?'.
Friday 22 July 2005
We are sad to note the death of Ray Herbert, one of John Logie Baird's co-workers, on 20 July 2005. Ray Herbert was one of the last remaining former employees of Baird Television Limited, joining the company after it had...
Read all of 'Television Pioneer Dies'.
Friday 1 July 2005
It's BBC-bashing time again, it seems - a perennial pastime these days. This time it's the old saw about the BBC threatening competition. BBC 7 is just so good that it's blowing the competition - OneWord, mainly - away. Now...
Read all of 'Editorial: July 2005'.
Thursday 30 June 2005
It's interesting that my colleague mentions the competition between OneWord and BBC (Radio) 7. I've discovered that when I listen to the radio, I'm listening more and more to BBC 7 (well, in fact I quite often listen to it...
Read all of 'BBC 7: A good reason for DAB'.
Tuesday 28 June 2005
MPs seek to block BBC free downloads The All-Party Internet Group apparently wants to stop the BBC making its archives available on-line for nothing. They're concerned that it could miss out on a valuable source of revenue if the Corporation...
Read all of 'Make up your minds'.
Wednesday 1 June 2005
It's interesting how digital terrestrial television – the subject of our lead article this month – has taken off after being such a flop when it started. I was out of the country at the time, but from what I...
Read all of 'Editorial: June 2005'.
Tuesday 24 May 2005
It would appear that the BBC unions significantly overestimated the effect they could have on broadcast output, if yesterday's efforts are anything to go by. Despite an apparently good turnout, I am sure that ordinary viewers and listeners will have...
Read all of 'Wrong, wrong, wrong'.
Friday 6 May 2005
Paxman v Galloway (transcript and video) Election coverage highlight for many must surely be the acrimonious exchange between the BBC's Jeremy Paxman and George Galloway of Respect, moments after the latter had been declared the winner in a bitter...
Read all of 'Galloway and Paxman, head to head'.
Sunday 1 May 2005
It's General Election time again in the UK, so this month's issue has a distinctly political flavour, although we've been careful to put it all in one place - namely in a TBS Election Special meta-edited by Russ J Graham....
Read all of 'Editorial: May 2005'.
Monday 25 April 2005
Full biography We regret to inform readers that noted composer Robert Farnon passed away peacefully on the night of Friday, 22 April 2005, at a hospice near his home in Guernsey. He was 87. Farnon was widely regarded as one...
Read all of 'Robert Farnon dies peacefully at 87'.
Thursday 21 April 2005
Teyrnged Elan Closs Stephen Hopkinss, Cadeirydd S4C, i Gwynfor Evans "Gwynfor Evans realised the power of television to influence and change culture and language and he was determined that Welsh would have a proper place in the medium. His part...
Read all of 'S4C Chair Elan Closs Stephen Hopkinss's Tribute to Gwynfor Evans'.
Friday 1 April 2005
Tessa Jowell’s Green Paper on the BBC, the subject of one of our articles this month, appears rather innocuous on the surface, but a more careful reading perhaps begins to explain the extensive, and I believe possibly disastrous staff cuts...
Read all of 'Editorial: April 2005'.
Thursday 24 March 2005
A few weeks ago I was flicking through channels on my Sky ?freesat? (the quotes are because ?Freesat? is actually, believe it or not, a BBC trademark) system upstairs to see what I could actually receive, and I stumbled across...
Read all of '?Fox News is not fair and balanced?, says Ofcom'.
Monday 21 March 2005
Over 2000 more jobs to go at BBC - this time from production The news that 2050 additional jobs, this time primarily from the production side, are to go, is a shock. If the BBC is to live up to...
Read all of 'Enough is enough'.
Monday 7 March 2005
The Green Paper on the future of the BBC largely leaves well enough alone, thank goodness. At least it doesn?t appear to propose causing any lasting damage. I suppose I should congratulate Tessa Jowell, and perhaps the Prime Minister, for...
Read all of 'Nothing is better than something'.
Tuesday 1 March 2005
Welcome to the March edition of EMC, with four new articles for your delectation and pleasure. We lead off with a fascinating article from Russ J Graham on Britain's first TV star, Gilbert Harding, who from around 1952 to 1960...
Read all of 'Editorial: March 2005'.
Tuesday 1 February 2005
Hi, and welcome to February's new additions to EMC. Some philosophical content this month, including a look at modern British television that would no doubt make Adam Smith proud – privatise, damn your eyes, damn your eyes; why the Television...
Read all of 'Editorial: Februrary 2005'.
Wednesday 8 December 2004
Skateboarding with a Ming vase Amidst controversy surrounding the massive job cuts and extensive reorganisation at the BBC announced yesterday by the DG, Mark Thompson last night delivered the New Statesman Media Lecture in which he placed the announcements in...
Read all of 'Thompson states his case'.
Although some of us were expecting some major reorgs at the BBC, including bits and bobs of something-or-other moving to Manchester, I am sure the loss of so many jobs came as a surprise to many people. I really don't...
Read all of 'Smaller may not be so beautiful'.
Wednesday 1 December 2004
Hello, and welcome to the latest updates to Electromusications. We have a spread of articles from across the Transdiffusion spectrum for you this time, kicking off with a piece by Louis Barfe about the first buildings in Britain that were...
Read all of 'Editorial: December 2004'.
Monday 29 November 2004
Howard Goodall?s 20th Century Greats In what is evidently going to be a cracking good four-part series on 20th century composers who will be remembered in the future much as Beethoven, Mozart and Bach are today, Howard Goodall kicked off...
Read all of 'Never mind the aspect ratio: hear the music'.
Monday 1 November 2004
Hello, and welcome to the latest updates to Electromusications. As you may know, if you subscribe to some of the mailing lists about broadcasting history, television presentation and related topics, a couple of months ago Russ J Graham - overall...
Read all of 'Editorial: November 2004'.
Saturday 30 October 2004
Jonathan Miller's Brief History of Disbelief, BBC Four If you, like me, are of the opinion that the only documentaries that make it on to TV these days are those overloaded with oft-repeated CGI sequences and which re-state their meagre...
Read all of 'Documentaries the Old-Fashioned Way'.
Wednesday 13 October 2004
BBC digital channels 'poor value for money' Evidently I am one of not very many people, as the channel I watch most of all is BBC Four, criticised today in a report commissioned by Tessa Jowell from Professor Barwise of...
Read all of 'When good programming goes nowhere'.
Tuesday 12 October 2004
Former DG... blames 'dumb' programmes on women execs Much as one can admire Alasdair Milne (left, in a photo from some time ago) as a programme-maker (eg Tonight in the 50s) and for standing up to the Government (over coverage...
Read all of 'Grumpy Old Ex-DGs'.
Friday 17 September 2004
Reaching middle age, Horizon appears to have slowed down The current season of Horizon marks the 40th anniversary of what we must still, I imagine, regard as the BBC's flagship science and technology series. But what a shadow of its...
Read all of 'Science at a snail?s pace'.
Friday 10 September 2004
Big Brother in 'torture' row - MediaGuardian For the presumably small number of people who haven't made the connection already, the spectacle of reality television getting more and more horrendous - as is happening not only in Germany but arguably...
Read all of 'This time, it's real. Why?'.
Thursday 22 July 2004
BBC news chief Sambrook moves job In what is presumably one of the final bits of fallout from the toxic nuclear waste (painted with whitewash to fool us, of course) that was the Hutton Report, comes the announcement from the...
Read all of 'Fairly balanced, falling upwards'.
Monday 5 July 2004
BBC online services: redefining the remit "The BBC has just under four months to redefine the remit for its online services, the government has said. The Graf Report, commissioned by the government, also said at least 25% of the BBC's...
Read all of 'Misbegotten beliefs'.
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'.
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'.
Saturday 27 March 2004
Well, Madame Arcati still has some work to do on her apparatus for receiving voice messages from The World Unseen, if last night's efforts are anything to go by. Attempting, as we are wont to do, to contact the departed...
Read all of 'Ariel's Organ'.
Friday 12 March 2004
My nautical independent television pioneering, and, sadly, defunct correspondent Captain T.B. has chosen to indicate quite categorically to me, in the latest seance held in our front room yesterday evening with, as always, the invaluable intercedence of Madame Arcati, that...
Read all of 'Birt crony in line for the chair, says message from Beyond'.
Monday 8 March 2004
Majority 'want change to TV fee' says ICM/Panorama poll According to the BBC's own research, aired on Sunday in "What's the Point of the BBC?", 70% of people in the UK (not necessarily viewers, by the way) would like...
Read all of 'Would alternative funding pay for specialised programmes?'.
Thursday 26 February 2004
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'.
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'.
Tuesday 17 February 2004
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'.
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'.
Wednesday 22 October 2003
As someone kindly pointed out the other day, that old Channel 4 out-of-hours stalwart, "The Art of Landscape" is back, but this time on FriendlyTV (Channel 268 on Sky). It's running from 04:00 to 09:00 hours and from 10:00 to...
Read all of 'Quiet blast from the past'.
Tuesday 7 October 2003
It is hard to imagine that the Granada/Carlton merger, mooted for so long, could do anything other than steepen ITV1's slide into mediocrity. In the best (or worst) Thatcherite tradition of eschewing small, human-sized enterprises in favour of enormous trans-national...
Read all of 'ITV Loses its Place'.
|
