Month: June 2015

  • Discovery Buys The Olympics In Europe

    Well here’s something a little unexpected. Discovery has swooped in and bought exclusive Olympic rights across Europe for €1.3 billion for the years 2018-2024. In the UK, the BBC already had a deal in place that stretched out until the 2020 summer games in Tokyo, as does France TV. But the BBC would not have…

  • A Microadventure in the Fenlands

    A Fenland Microadventure from Adam Bowie on Vimeo. I’ve been meaning to do one of these for ages. I can’t remember what path of serendipity sent me in the direction of Alastair Humphreys and his blog, but I’ve been reading it for quite a while now. He describes himself as an adventurer, author and motivational…

  • Bookazines

    I’m slightly obsessed by bookazines. But first, let me apologise for using that word (also known, equally unattractively, as magbooks). It’s clearly made up by the publishing industry, and so perhaps I need to explain it first. It’s obviously a contraction of two words. Books need no real explanation. They get published; they sit on…

  • Can We Have A Moratorium on Shallow Depth of Field in TV?

    If you’re a photographer you might know what I mean in the title of this blog. If you’re not, then I might need to explain a little. The depth of field in an image or piece of video is a measure of how much of the image is in focus at any one time. By…

  • Platform Exclusives

    On Monday, Game of Thrones finished its fifth series run on Sky Atlantic with an explosive episode. Don’t worry, you won’t find any spoilers on this site (Unlike certain news sites). Anyone who wanted to, could watch it on Sky Atlantic. Well, up to a point Lord Copper. If you’re a Virgin Media customer, then…

  • Don’t Bring Back TFI Friday: And Why Are Today’s Most “Dangerous” Presenters All Working on Radio 2?

    This isn’t a proper review of TFI Friday since I must admit that I dipped out a few times during near two hour run-time of last night’s show – and it over-ran massively last night, even becoming a joke in the show. TFI Friday was a terrific programme of its time. Because Chris Evans first…

  • Music Tourists

    There’s been a new report published by UK Music, the consortium that supports the UK music industry’s political needs. Wish You Were Here 2015 highlights the importance of the music industry to tourism and that audience’s spending power. It was released on Monday and has generated a decent amount of press coverage. It’s a chunky…

  • The Champions’ League – Part Two

    This is a follow up to yesterday’s piece anticipating BT’s changes in packages having won exclusive Champions’ League and Europa League rights, although I’m mostly talking about Champions’ League coverage here. Well BT has announced its new football deal and there were some things we expected, and some things we didn’t. Yes, Gary Lineker is…

  • Apple Music

    So now we finally know the details of Apple Music. I won’t go through all the details because every site on the planet has already done so, breathlessly live-blogging the full announcement. So go elsewhere for those. To be honest, as The Verge reports there are probably some sighs of relief around the rest of…

  • The Champions’ League – Part One

    On Tuesday we will hear what BT has in store for its coverage of the Champions’ League and Europa League. It outbid Sky and ITV to win exclusive rights for the next three seasons. The expectation is that they’ll announce Gary Lineker as co-presenting with Jake Humphries over Tuesday and Wednesday nights, with a £5…

  • Tour of Cambridgeshire Gran Frondo

    “This is a race!” That’s what the chap on the public address tannoy kept telling us as we queued up in our pens for Sunday’s start of the UK’s first ever Gran Frondo. Technically it was a race. And those keen club riders were in a front pen which would be let off first and…

  • Risk

    Our understanding of risk is very much misplaced. When we hear about fatalities in train or plane crashes, the news is widely reported. New safety regimes are put in place. There are large scale changes made. But the reason these incidents are reported is because they’re so unusual. Sadly, the biggest transport killer is our…