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Any ‘blog like this can become a place to whinge about the ills of the world. Indeed, I do a lot of that here about television (only as a public…

BBC News report Former BBC-1 continuity announcer Michael Aspel is suffering from non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a cancer of the immune system. The cancer is under control through chemotherapy and other treatments…

A new year and it’s straight into our latest update! In this edition of Transdiffusion News: Radio One revolutions, did you get the Pure Evoke II for Christmas? London News…

Tawdry but gramatically interesting piece from the Daily Record about Hogmany television. The verdict: BBC-1 won but were awful. SMG [don’t click this link – it’ll play music at you]…

Hands up if you’d noticed the ITC had gone? Thought not. But hang on… According to the redirect page: "The ITC has ceased to exist from 18 December 2003… Ofcom…

It’s not often that the free newspaper Metro gets mentioned in this publication, but I feel the need to make my first post of 2004 to MediaBlog, a slightly pointless…

Media Guardian piece on C4 This news may be two days old but I only spotted it this morning – now why isn’t this surprising when Channel 4 is essentially…

Does anyone give a stuff about sound quality?

Danielle Demtriou twists the words of a BBC spokesperson in order to create a news story that wasn’t there originally. “[The BBC] does not rule them [resignations] in or out”,…

Lies, half-truths and utter bollocks about the BBC from an American ‘news source’. Least said, soonest mended on this one. But the fact that Google News is drawing on this…

This year’s Christmas presentation on the terrestrial channels was a mixture of the dull and not-quite-so-dull: BBC One: This year was essentially the same as last Christmas, though the ‘children’…

An unusually perceptive piece from Nick Higham on BBCi And so it has come to pass. To the surprise of everyone except us ‘amateurs’ who don’t know what we’re talking…

BBC licence fee ‘criminalises poor’ says a known group of idiots in the Financial Times. This just in: a group of known freelance idiots calling themselves the Institute of Public…

Xmas TV Listings So this is Christmas, and what have you done… to us? EastEnders (soap), Meet the Parents (film, Ben Stiller) Rio Grande (film), Mastermind Celebrity Special (quiz), Porridge…

Media Guardian on the new deal Shock! Horror! BSkyB doesn’t have everything its own way! Think what you will about the European Commission, but there are times when it comes…

ITV Winter Lineup Press Release (Word document) Some of the ‘highlights’ to come this winter on ITV1. There’s a programme where Rob Brydon talks over old comedy shows, in the…

BBCi Charter Review page BBC Charter Review At the top of a webpage there was a large advert-style link entitled “WANTED Your opinions about the future of the BBC. All…

Department of Health Tender Document (pdf) Department of Education and Skills press release It is the era of niche broadcasting. We already have TV channels for bangra fans, art fans,…

Here’s an interesting point. BBC Radio Five Live this morning had a phone in on whether people are better off under Labour. Towards the beginning, one of the invited commentators…

Media Guardian opinion piece BBC Four is one of those channels which you may either avidly watch or alternatively dip into when everything else fails to impress; despite my admiration…

MediaGuardian : Overnight Viewing Figures A relaunched News 24 gives the Media Guardian the perfect excuse to print a piece which reads like a blow by blow report of a…

Well, the long-awaited BBC News 24 rebrand has finally been realised, and it is really rather nice. I’ll start with the good points. The Studio is very much like the…

BBC-1 BBC-2 Strange that ITV.com don’t offer the ability to download their idents, too. Perhaps we wouldn’t be interested in ‘celebrities’ we can’t quite put a name to and anonymous…

pride-drop.tv Freeview Launch Press Release Following on from the appearence of Price-drop.tv on digital terrestrial television on the 2nd December, lots of people will be talking. Lots of people will…

Media Guardian report This is an ingenious way of advertising a product on the BBC by Coca-Cola exploiting a loophole via its new deal with the Official UK Charts Company…

BBC Press Office Audience figures are a tyranny. They tell us nothing of use and blind programme makers to the possibilities of television as an artform. They are derived from…

BBC News: Japanese viewers get digital TV. NHK Digital Site (in English) It’s funny – you always think of the Japanese as being at the forefront of technology but digital…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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%…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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,…

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…

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…

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…

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…