Month: September 2007

  • The Jeremy Kyle Show

    Jeremy Kyle used to work at Virgin Radio hosting the late night “Jezza’ Confessions” show where he took calls and gave advice in between playing music. But most people these days know him from his morning ITV show where his guests confront various issues. Actually that’s a pretty polite way of saying that some very…

  • Will I Get An iPhone?

    Well the short answer is no. But since a few people I know are beginning to get tempted, I thought I’d lay out all my objections to Apple’s new wondrous piece of technology. Cost Most people in the UK who have large monthly spends are used to getting even the very newest phones free of…

  • Heat Radio

    This week, Heat Radio has relaunched using an advertising free format. Instead it’s using sponsorship to earn revenue. In this respect it’s similar to stations like Virgin Radio Xtreme which launched with Sony PSP for the first six months. Heat magazine isn’t exactly regular reading for me. I’m not, and indeed, have never been in…

  • Mayoral Promises

    Boris Johnson has now been formally chosen by the Tories as their candidate for the London Mayoral elections. That’s what a few appearances on Have I Got News For Your can do. Now far be it from me to really believe that his key election promises are those that the media has highlighted, but let’s…

  • Marketing Speak in the Wild

    Languages always change and develop as we start to use words that never existed before. But there’s one area of language development that I really don’t like, and it’s the use of marketing-speak in everyday language. I have too pet peeves – “content” and “premium.” They can be used separately, and are particularly terrible when…

  • Burma/Myanmar

    In my last post I mentioned that I was pleased to be able to watch Channel Four News when I get in without having to record it first. The reason I was pleased to see it this evening was because there was an excellent report from Burma where as we know, there are enormous anti-government…

  • +1

    It’s all about the plus ones it seems just now. Channel 4 is terribly excited about it’s newly launched +1 channel allowing you to see programmes that were on an hour earlier. It has always confused me that they’re called “+1” channels – surely they should be “-1” since it was on an hour earlier?…

  • Alisher Usmanov

    Hello lawyers at Schillings! (I’m pretty sure, there’s nothing illegal, libellous, or defamatory on this page, but be sure to let me know if you think otherwise! Send me a comment. You and your client have certainly done us all a favour by drawing attention to the man). I’ve no idea if they’ll read this…

  • In The Air Tonight

    You can’t move for Phil Collins at the moment. Geneis has just embarked on a new tour of North America for the first time in something like fifteen years. There’s a new book out about the band. But mostly, there’s that Cadbury’s ad: Over in the States, there’s a new ABC sitcom called Carpoolers which…

  • The Colour Purple

    Guess where I was last night? I had my camera confiscated at one point, and was very pleased that I slipped the memory card out of it and into the palm of the person next to me, as I was directed to some lockers to hand it in. It was an unnecessary subterfuge since they…

  • Dynamic Interactive Content from the Radio

    I note that Virgin Media customers will be able to get “dynamic interactive content” from BBC Radio services later this month. Basically this gives you lots of “now playing” type information when you’re watching a BBC Radio channel. As the press release explains, this has been available on Freeview for sometime. And the release also…

  • Apple Video Pricing Revisited

    There’s an interesting piece about Apple’s pricing for video in Variety at the moment. It seems that Apple would quite like to drop prices from $1.99 to 99c an episode, and not all the studios are happy. ABC/Disney might bite the bullet, but as an unnamed commenter for the piece says ‘it doesn’t make sense…