Month: June 2009

  • Radio Festival – Tuesday

    [Note: Thiese are rough notes so apologies for any typos and general bad English. I’ll try to update as I go.] Nicky Campbell kicked off proceedings as host with a few stories about his life in radio before introducing a very nice summary of radio in the last 12 months. The first panel has Tim…

  • Setanta

    So Setanta’s finally died – or at least gone into administration. It’s as good as dead. It won’t be missed by many. It did itself no good by having a reputation for truly awful customer service. In particular, cancelling it proved near impossible with, at times, people being asked to write a letter (no phone…

  • Radio Times – 22 June 2009

    Tonight’s TV selection is a tribute to those MPs’ expenses! Programmes of an unsuitable nature have been redacted on grounds of taste. I’m selling the original to the Telegraph. See the large version.

  • Arcadia

    I first saw Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia in 1993 at the Theatre Royal Bath, when the play was touring following its premiere at the National Theatre in London. It was a joy to watch and I instantly fell in love with it. I rushed out to buy the text. It was smart, and literate. The dialogue…

  • Digital Britain: 2015 – First Thoughts on Radio

    It’s finally here – The Digital Britain report. It’s Lord Stephen Carter’s magnum opus, before he ups and offs. The headlines are sure to be the levy charged on fixed lines to fund broadband, encouraging and enabling the wider take-up of broadband, and even the piracy issue. What happens to BBC licence fee money is…

  • Radio Times – 16 June 2009

    Unsure what to see on TV tonight? Let my notes on top of today’s Radio Times guide you through the major channels. As always, this is best viewed very large to read my scribbles.

  • Lightning

    Glorious sunshine at lunchtime. Electrical storms by 7pm.

  • Email Marketing

    This is easily a topic for a book, but I shall limit this to a short rant about Epson. In early January this year I bought a new printer – an Epson. It was nice printer, not massively overpriced, but a good quality photo printer with the widely priased Claria ink system. During installation and…

  • Massive £985,000 Sale!

    A local bed comapny has a massive sale on. But they seem to have run the numbers, and although it might have been nice to have had a £1 million sale, it seems they ended up just a little short. So it’s only a £985,000 sale! (Oh, and they’ve decided that since they’re giving away…

  • Free To Air Listed Events Review

    The DCMS has for the last couple of months been conducting a review into the listed events – those events that must be covered live on free-to-air television – Group A Events. That’s event like the Olympics, the World Cup and so on. It also includes events to which highlights must be made available on…

  • iPhone Fun And Games

    I’m not quite sure I understand all the annoyance at the moment over the new iPhone. As I see it, things go like this: * November 2007 – Apple and O2 release the iPhone in the UK and sell 18 month contracts. * July 2008 – Apple and O2 release the 3G version of the…

  • ITV Multichannels Going Subscription Only?

    According to a report in Media Guardian, ITV has been considering taking its channels from free to view to subscription only. The reasoning is that despite losing out in terms of viewers and their associated advertising revenue, there’d be enough gains to be made in getting a small share of the Sky revenue to make…