Month: June 2011

  • Byliner

    Byliner is a worthwhile new website. It’s purpose is twofold: to link to and promote long form non-fiction to sell original ebooks in that genre under the Byliner Originals imprint The site came to prominance when it released Three Cups of Deceit by Jon Krakauer a couple of months ago. Krakauer wrote Into Thin Air…

  • Where’s Current TV’s Big New Show?

    In January this year, liberal-leaning TV pundit, Keith Olbermann announced that he was leaving his MSNBC show in the US. He was appearing on a news network that, in some way tries to “balance” the otherwise “fair and balanced” Fox News. Both networks – as they appear from this side of the Atlantic – appear…

  • Taking Your Twitter Followers With You

    A few weeks ago, Matt Deegan wrote an excellent piece about radio and usage of, and infatuation with Twitter. He argued cogently on many aspects of stations’ use of Twitter. But towards the end of his piece he raised a question that I’m sure many stations think about depending on how their presenters are using…

  • TV Scheduling and Piracy

    If there’s one thing that UK TV broadcasters have largely worked out in the last few years, it’s that the ease of accessing television shows through nefarious internet-related means makes it smarter if you try to minimise the risk. Sky has learnt this lesson the hard way in the past, and now regularly schedules its…

  • The Apprentice

    This week’s episode of that most upmarket of reality shows was decidedly downmarket. OK. It’s probably not that upmarket a show. The two teams were set the task of creating a new premium free magazine (or “freemium” as Lord Sugar miscalled it) to give away. They also had to pre-sell advertising for their first issue…

  • Sky’s Acquisition Strategy

    Yesterday came news that Sky has acquired the Showtime series, Nurse Jackie, starring Edie Falco and Eve Best (recently seen giving a terrific performance in The Shadow Line). This is the latest in a long line of Sky acquisitions that have come after the show has performed strongly on what we used to call “terrestrial…

  • Myers Report

    Yesterday, Tim Davie presented the Myers Report into Radio 1, 1Xtra, Radio 2 and 6 Music. John Myers, CEO of the Radio Academy and someone who’s for a longtime been involved in commercial radio, had been asked to look at ways for the services to reduce costs while maintaining quality. Responses have largely been as…

  • Keep An Eye on the FT

    Anyone with any sense in publishing will be watching very carefully what the FT is doing. They’ve decided to forgo platform-specific apps, sold through app-stores, and instead produce a compelling, HTML5 compliant mobile-oriented website. OK – they’re not actually dumping their apps. But they are actively trying to persuade their readers to go direct. And…

  • iCloud Cuckoo Land*

    As regular readers will know, I’m a frustrated iTunes user. So what should I make of Apple’s announcements yesterday – in particular those associated with iCloud? I tend to still buy quite a lot of music on CD, if for no other reason than you get nice album covers and booklets to look at. It’s…

  • RAJAR Adopting Digital

    Over at the Onegoldensquare blog, I’ve written about what RAJAR is doing to upgrade its methodology and include a proportion of respondents completing their RAJAR diaries online. I should point out that I sit on the RAJAR Technical Management Group who implemented this, so I’m generally speaking in favour of its introduction! You can read…

  • Television Bits and Pieces

    Starting tonight, ITV1 is stripping its latest drama, Injustice, over five nights at 9pm. I still believe that this is a pretty stupid way of scheduling a drama, unless it’s so far superior to everything we usually see that it really is a special event. But that’s never the case, and although I’ve yet to…

  • Senna

    Last weekend I watched the Monaco Grand Prix. I wasn’t really planning to, and was going to go out, but I got caught up in it. Although I find the constant rule change over refueling or not refuelling tiresome, and the introduction of DRS seems like using some kind of turbo-boost in a video game,…