October 2007 Archives

I'm really looking forward to Bladerunner: The Final Cut, essentially a big DVD boxset that'll be the final version of Bladerunner, a classic SF film that's definitely up amongst my favourites, but which has a troubled version history.

But it's a little disingenuous, for Ridley Scott to claim to claim that he has an aversion to remakes.

I'm a massive Ridley Scott fan, and despite the horror that was A Good Year, it's great to see him back on form with American Gangster, but he was clear when there was a director's cut of Kingdom of Heaven, that it was done for marketing purposes (Note: Wikipedia refers to a Total Film interview about the extended DVD being made as a result of paying too much attention to preview audiences, but I distinctly recall Scott claiming marketing reasons being behind the release in a TV interview. This was around the time, for example, that Oliver Stone's Alexander was being released in numerous versions. Unfortunately, I have no source for this).

Anyway, roll on the 3 December release, and hopefully I'll be able to see it in the cinema too.

There was a great film on Newsnight last night highlighting the child labour abuse in Uzbekistan where during the autumn the schools all close and children are sent off to pick the cotton. They don't have any choice in the matter, and they sleep away from their homes.

This cotton is then sold by the Uzbek government to the cotton trade who process it, largely in Asia, before it becomes cotton goods that turn up in many UK high street stores.

Why are some clothes so cheap? Because the cotton is picked by children for a pittance.

It's really down to us in the West to take an interest in where the materials we buy come from. Fairtrade cotton?

It's probably best that I don't comment too much on this issue just at the minute (In my current position I'm directly involved in this issue. At some point in the future I hope I will be able to blog about it). But I'll point you towards a Media Guardian Organ Grinder blog entry about the Radiocentre's campaign to cut the statutory levels of locally originated programming on local radio stations.

As you may know, it's the fiftieth anniversary of the Today programme on Radio 4 this week, and there have been one or two pieces about it. A large piece in The Observer and something written by presenter John Humphrys himself in The Mail on Sunday.

All very interesting, but the Mail piece has a nice little table showing how the Today programme "beats all its rivals in radio AND TV news."

The chart shows that the Today programme has an audience of 6 million, followed by the BBC Ten O'Clock news with 5.5 million and the BBC Six O'Clock News with 4 million alongside Tonight, With Trevor McDonald also with 4 million.

But is this a fair comparison?

Well, no.

You see, while current RAJAR figures (the industry ratings body) show that three hour Today has an audience of 6.2 million 15+ adults, that's actually a weekly "reach" figure. In other words, that's the number of different people who listen to the programme for at least five minutes across the course of a week. Not everybody listens to the programme every day. And they certainly don't listen to every minute of that three hours. According to the most recent figures it gets:

4.7m on Monday
4.7m on Tuesday
4.6m on Wednesday
4.6m on Thursday
4.5m on Friday

(The slight decline across the week is probably not true, and is slightly symptomatic of the research methodology, with less scrupulous completion of listening diaries later in the week).

But that's not the end either. Generally quoted TV audience figures are not "reach" figures, but are actually the average number of viewers over the duration of the full duration of the programme. For example, last Friday's BBC Ten O'Clock News had an audience figure of 4.1m viewers, but in fact in the 22:00-22:15 period it was 4.0m and in the 22:15-22:30 period it was 4.6m. Since ratings are averaged out on a minute by minute basis, this actually leads to an overall 4.1m figure (In this instance I suspect that the increased number later in the news are people tuning in to watch Jonathan Ross after the news as it got a larger audience than the news).

But we know that it "reached" - at least for a short period - 4.6m viewers, and we can safely assume some of those who watched the first fifteen minutes of the programme did not watch the second fifteen minutes of the programme. So the overall reach of the programme will be higher than 4.6m (I don't have a full TV ratings system to supply the precise number).

Obviously that 4.1m figure for the Ten O'Clock News is divergent from the 5.5m figure quoted by the Mail, but Fridays are likely to be lower rated than other days of the week with more people out, and it's not clear where the Mail figures were sourced from or over what period. But by way of comparison, the audiences for last week were:

4.7m on Monday
4.4m on Tuesday
4.7m on Wednesday
5.4m on Thursday
4.1m on Friday

Note that these are "overnights" and don't include anybody who might have recorded the news for later viewing (as unlikely as that might seem, there are sure to be some), and the full "reach" is likely to be a bit higher.

Suddenly, on a day by day basis, the Today programme's audience is much closer to the BBC Ten O'Clock News's figures, with the TV programme regularly being seen by more people than those who hear some of the Today Programme.

I'm not sure that even Humphrys quite understands the differences:

"Its audience is healthier than it has ever been, at well over six million regular listeners. Most television producers would sell their grannies into slavery for ratings like this."

I should also point out that TV and radio use entirely different methodologies for collating their figures - with radio using a sample of around 130,000 people a year keeping paper diaries for a week at a time, while television uses a panel of around 5,500 homes that have boxes attached to their TV sets monitoring what they watch. Now is not the time to get into this further - perhaps I'll save that for another blog entry - but you should be very wary of comparing figures gathered using different methodologies.

So the moral of this story? Don't compare apples with pears. Radio and TV audience figures are calculated using very different methodologies, and the resulting numbers - even basic audience figures - are not directly comparable.

Robert McCrum in today's Observer has written about why It's time to ditch the prize guys - arguing that it's time for the Booker Prize to be radically reformed from the ground up.

Except, it's really not very clear why exactly he feels it needs this change. Certainly the Booker no longer gets the TV coverage it once had, now being timed to arrive during the BBC's Ten O'Clock News, but I'm not sure I understand why the prize is out of touch as he says it is. He doesn't say why. Is it because the shortlist, Ian McEwan aside, isn't made up of a list of names that I could choose myself if I was provided with a list of eligible names?

Seemingly, the prize chairman Sir Howard Davies gave "one of the most embarrassing Booker speeches in living memory." But McCrum doesn't explain why it was emabarrassing. The main substance of his speech that was reported was the backslapping that goes on between reviewers who know one another and review one another's books. The Times had a good editorial on it. I don't think there's anyone in the literary world who doesn't know that this goes on. Every year, Private Eye helps us when it examines the various Books of the Year lists, helpfully explaining any feuds or friendships that mightn't be too obvious for those of us who don't move in their circles and mightn't otherwise be clued in.

McCrum needs to explain himself.

I've just been watching Verity Sharp interview the members of Sigur Rós for The Culture Show, who have a new concert film - Heima - coming out next month which looks wonderful. And seemingly there's a Culture Show special specifically about the band coming up in November.

The interview was somewhat better than one they gave NPR in the States recently.

I'm just gutted that the film screening for the BBC Electric Proms and live acoustic set were scheduled for Wednesday which is RAJAR results day, and hence I can't make it.

From today's Observer:

"Given that more people vote to evict contestants from the Big Brother house than in general elections..."

This is something that you keep hearing. It's simply not true. It's nowhere near true. The story I've just linked on the BBC News site tells us that 27,128,130 votes were cast in total the 2005 general election. And that was (largely!) one person, one vote.

Now while the figures are a little out of date, in that there have been another three editions of the regular Big Brother since then, the numbers are not going to have increased fivefold.

And as the BBC piece goes on to point out, TV producers don't worry unduly about people voting lots of times. Indeed they actively encourage it. I've just seen the Strictly Come Dancing results show (it's a guilty pleasure) and they're already letting us know the numbers for next week's vote with the lines now open even though we're a week away from the contestants even dancing again.

Anyway, can we once and for all put to bed this urban myth?

So finally Deloitte's report on premium rate services on ITV has been published. Well I say "published" but in fact, what we're getting is an 11 page summary detailing failures on three specific programmes, and mentioning a number of other shows in passing.

Once again, it's turned out that ITV producers and researchers were regularly defrauding the public of millions of pounds over an extended period of time. Sometimes this was because competitions had closed while presenters continued to urge viewers to vote (at a premium rate). In other instances, the various competition elements of peak time programmes like Ant & Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway and Ant & Dec's Gameshow Marathon were not carried out fairly with researchers screening callers to look for people who "sounded lively" and then actually visiting them on pretexts to make sure that they were TV friendly (i.e. cheerful and not ugly).

In other instances, viewers who didn't live within a certain distance of preordained areas of the country were removed from consideration.

There are the usual issues with votes not counted, and in one instance - Soapstar Superstar - the wrong contestants were put forward for eviction. Indeed this was a programme in which first, viewers voted for their favourites. Then, presented with the those with the fewest votes, another viewer vote was used to determine who left the show. And yet another viewer vote determined which song, the remaining contestants would perform in the next episode... except where producers overrode the viewers' decision and made their own choices.

Maybe in a future series, viewers can vote for camera angles, or lighting designs? Which set should they use? What costume should the presenter wear in the next episode? The choices are endless.

There's a great discussion going on over at Media Guardian's Organ Grinder blog, with the general feeling being that what ITV and its various producers have been up to is actually criminal. Will the police investigate? Seemingly the police won't investigate unless Ofcom ask them to, and Ofcom has to conduct its own investigation now. Maybe they can publish the full Deloitte report and not just the 11 page double-spaced summary.

ITV has busily set about promising viewers refunds on their phone bills. But as with GMTV before it, this seems to be a particularly complicated procedure requiring you to fill out a form and remember which shows you voted in as long as two years ago. If ITV is in possession of the numbers of those who voted, I fail to understand why a credit cannot be applied to those bills.

And even though it is promising to either return this money, or give the cash to charity, that's not really enough is it? If I steal some cash from you and get caught, it's no good me saying, "It's a fair cop! You caught me. Here's your money back, and I promise that I'll try really hard not to do it again." That probably wouldn't satisfy either you, or the police.

There's also some fun discussion about Ant and Dec's role in these shows. The guys themselves are obviously feeling a bit bad about it and saying that they knew nothing about it and Michael Grade's backing them up. But they did take Executive Producer roles on the shows and that should mean that they're in quite a senior position on the show - they're not just the hired talent. I believe that they actually came up with the Saturday Night Takeaway format. So should they take more responsibility. (See Media Guardian's Diary for an industry definition of what an Executive Producer does.)

I'm sure that they never dirtied themselves in the detail of how competitions were carried out. But then maybe they shouldn't take the Executive Producer credits. You can't have it both ways.

As part of ITV's remedies, they're immediately suspending text and red-button voting from live programming. Of course they're still asking trivial competition questions on their non-live programming: I refer you 'Dickinson's Real Deal' - sample question that I was unfortunate enough to see yesterday "Complete the following phrase: Bull In A ---------." It was obviously a multiple choice question.

It's all well and good saying that there'll be new broom from now on; on a day in which the media news is obviously being led by the BBC's major news about redundancies and the selling off of TV Centre (where do you send your media correspondent?), but that's not enough. In fact, in many respects the ITV report is actually getting more attention than the BBC because, BBC dealings had been well telegraphed in advance.

Of course Ofcom will eventually hit ITV with a massive fine as they did to GMTV, but it still comes down to a public service broadcaster defrauding members of the public. It really does leave a very sour taste in the mouth.

[UPDATE]

Both Jon Snow and Jeremy Paxman yesterday gave ITV Executive Chairman Michael Grade a real grilling about whether there should be police charges following the defrauding of viewers. He really wriggled on the end of their lines, but didn't make any concessions.

Today, The Guardian is reporting that ITV could face a fine of up to £70m. I assume that this is based on the "5% of qualifying revenue" basis, but I can't quite get the figures to work out. Nonetheless, ITV must be worried.

[UPDATE 2]

One of the areas that Paxman gave Michael Grade a hard time over on Newsnight last night was the reason why it was such a complicated procedure for viewers to reclaim their cash from the various phone votes and competitions. Grade said that it was standard practice that consumers should proactively claim what was rightfully theirs. But there's a difference between a retailer recalling a toy that they've sold, where there's no record of who bought it, and a telephone call which has a distinct phone number - and therefore account - attached to it.

Maybe Grade didn't know the answer at the time? Perhaps there's a legal reason involving data protection laws, and ITV or the telecoms companies involved no longer hold the information. In which case, say so.

The rules regarding compensation are not straightforward, so it's no wonder that Grade was suggesting it may cost ITV up to £2m to simply process them. Some of rules are incredibly complicated - for example ITV2+1 claims (where no "Lines Now Closed" caption appeared preventing callers entering competitions that had already ended): "Only affects limited dates between certain times where banner advising that the competition was closed was omitted on ITV2 + 1 catch-up channel."

Let's face it, if you were one of those callers, you'll have absolutely no idea whether you should claim or not. And only a limited number of X-Factor votes are involved. If you're an infrequent voter on the show, there's no way you'll know whether or not you have a valid claim. You'll need a remarkable memory to be certain, or be a vigilant collector of old telephone bills.

If someone could explain why the calls could not simply be recredited, then I'd love to know. Some accounts may have expired or become dormant, but for the most part it could surely be performed automatically.

Incidentally, the front page of ITV's website has a link to the claim procedure as it should, but it's not at all clear to the consumer that this is what it is.

"PRS reimbursements

"Click here for more information on measures to reimburse consumers for PRS failures."

Huh?

If you're not up on arcane television terminology, then that's going to be completely meaningless to the average viewer. As a keen media watcher myself, I associate PRS with the company who collect music rights. Google "PRS" and you'll have to scroll down before you see a link to Ofcom's "Premium Rate Services" page.

ITV, I know that this is a massive embarrassment, but there's no point in trying to hide it away. At least GMTV's homepage has a clear "Competitions Announcement." Although of course GMTV similarly made viewers go through a claims process to reclaim the cash they'd wasted on their competitions.

Grade has talked a lot about regaining trust, but part of that is surely making it easy for consumers to reclaim what is rightfully their's.

[UPDATE 3]

In related developments, the Serious Fraud Office is reviewing evidence in the GMTV case to see whether a criminal investigation should begin.

I've just been looking at this website's "activity log" and was amazed to see how often comment spam comes in. Thank goodness that I've got some basic filtering in place. Yesterday there were 170 attempts to comment here (with one genuine comment), all of which failed because they didn't pass my cunning challenge response box.

Interestingly, I've had one piece of spam come through and reach publishing which did pass the challenge response. I guess that was entered "by hand" which seems a very dull thing to be doing.

In other news, there are some very odd findings coming out of Technorati searches. It seems that people cut and paste things from this blog into other blogs (and link back) purely to include spam links on those blogs. I'm sure that there's a word for this, but I don't know what it is.

Finally, here are some entertaining search terms that resulted in people finding their way onto this site recently:

derek acorah imhotep
tessa dunlop
imhotep derek acorah
sally morgan star psychic
allo, allo british film vicki michelle photos
jeremy kyle merchandise
playback the return of allo allo
sally morgan psychic
"allô, allô" rené download clip
"martina cole" culture show clip
"robert kilroy silk" "new zealand"
"sally morgan" psychic contact details
"star psychic" production company

OK - that's not all of them, and some of the search terms at the bottom are the result of only one search. But what's clear is that the stuff I like least and tend to moan about is what people actually end up here looking at.

I'm guessing that Derek Acorah and Sally Morgan fans are going to be truly disappointed that I think they're frauds who play on the insecurities of the gullible and the emotionally vulnerable (and with any luck, they'll be visiting even more so as a result of this entry!).

I'm also impressed by the number of Allo Allo fans out there, including those who include the correct accents.

The Robert Kilroy Silk search is especially concerning...

For most things, if you opt to download the material rather than get physical media, if there's any difference in price, it's cheaper to download. Think of iTunes v CDs, or software that you can download from many sellers. There's no postage or packaging to account for, and minimal physical production costs.

So it's odd then, that this morning I got an email from Adobe to my work address trying to get me to upgrade to Photoshop CS3, but which gives cheaper prices if I pay for the physical media rather than download a large file. I realise that thousands of people downloading 700+ MB is a significant bandwidth cost. But sending me a big box through the post should not be cheaper.

Try it yourself.

Very odd.

Today sees the BBC make its big job cuts announcement which will get loads of press coverage. So it's completely random that ITV's reporting on its phone-in scandal today as well.

What are the chances?

Slide is one of the more recent Hard Case Crime novels - those wonderfully trashy hard-boiled crime novels. In this instance we follow the twin stories of "Slide" and "The M.A.X." as Max Fisher likes to call himself.

The book itself, I discover, is the sequel to Bust which came out last year, also under the Hard Case Crime imprint.

The story in this instance begins in the middle of nowhere (well somewhere forty miles from Mobile, Alabama) as well as in Dublin. The main protagonists are hard men who kill... a lot. Bodies fly left right and centre, but the story moves apace, and you can be sure that in a few minutes someone else is going to get it.

But lest you think that this is just a vicious crime novel, there is a certain element of humour. At least two crime writers are killed along the way, and Hard Case Crime's own "noirish" covers are referenced.

Great fun, and I'll certainly be hunting out Bust from last year.

A bit of searching on Amazon seems to reveal that the two authors of this book are quite prolific. Ken Bruen, an Irish writer publishes one or more crime novels a year, while Jason Starr has also published a number of crime books.

I suspect I'll be reading more of their work.

The press is always talking about TV audience figures, and commonly fails to understand them at all. I've often railed against the ludicrous claims perpetuated around the football World Cup or the Olympics, so it was quite interesting to see this story from earlier in the year.

But let's get a little more current. There's an article in today's Londonpaper that I saw on the train this evening that said the following:

"18 Million Watch Dancing

"Strictly Come Dancing put the smile back on the faces of beleaguered BBC bosses today after pulling in 18.1 million fans over the weekend."

Er. No it didn't. The paper reports 9.9m watching Saturday's show, and 8.8m watching on Sunday. Except Media Guardian reports the figure as actually being 8.2m on Saturday and 7.7m on Sunday. The reporter for the Londonpaper was probably taking the shows' peak minutes rather than overall average. In any case, you can't simply add one number to the other to get an overall figure. These are not different people. Nearly everyone who watched the results show on Sunday will have undoubtedly watched the main programme on Saturday. It's just a basic misunderstanding of maths.

I'll be fair though, and highlight a different story, that I was at first very dubious about, but turned out to be remarkably prescient. Friday's Evening Standard, amongst other media outlets talked about 30m watching in Britain and France. Instinctively, I thought that this was nonsense. But actually, it was pretty much spot on - with 12 million watching in Britain and 18 million watching in France. ITV's going to be laughing all the way to the bank this Saturday.

So what will the final get? I'd guess that it'll be somewhere between 14 and 16m. That figure, however, doesn't include anyone watching it at a bar or club. You can add a good number onto that figure for an accurate idea - particularly given that the game's on a Saturday night.

Can I just point you towards Tommy "Ground Force" Walsh's My Media is today's Media Guardian (Free registration required).

A couple of choice excerpts:

Normally ... I get my local paper, the Hackney Gazette, because I like to know what's going on, and on a Sunday the Sunday Express, which my wife likes. ... I like proper journalism, not the kind of tittle-tattle that you get in tabloids. [sic]

I've just got back from Cyprus, where I read four books, all novels. One was the new Martina Cole, Faces; I'm not a big fan of female writers, mainly because they can be a bit flowery, but she is very gritty. The other three novels were good, too, but I can't remember what any of them were called and I left them all in Cyprus.

(For more on Faces, read this).

Brilliant stuff.

Another day, another "new" TV channel.

UK TV has decided to rename the stupidly named UK TV G2 as the even more stupidly named Dave.

UK TV has never exactly inspired a great deal of confidence in me regarding its branding. For years, there was simply a channel named UK Gold with a basic premise that it'd repeat classic old British television. It's a joint partnership between the BBC and Virgin Media (formerly Flextech), and as such, has relied on largely showing BBC programmes.

Over time, the channel was joined by various other "UK" channels like UK History and UK Drama.

But then at some point in 2004, somebody decided that it'd be a much better idea to insert "TV" into the channels' names. So then we had "UKTV Gold", "UKTV History", "UKTV Drama" et al. Of course, nobody actually says those extra letters - UKTV Gold is still called by all and sundry "UK Gold."

As Wikipedia notes, the channel now known as Dave has an even more ridiculous history, having previously burnt through "UK Gold Classics", "UK Gold 2", "UKG2", and the even more appallingly meaningless "UKTV G2" until we arrive at Dave.

The reason for it being called Dave, incidentally is that "everyone knows a bloke called Dave." (It might be true today, but isn't likely to be so for much longer. I've just been looking at popular boys names; David is at number 66, and is less popular today than Finlay (and Finley come to that), Kai, Connor, Harrison, Dylan and Cameron. John is even less popular at 75. The way I see it is that if you're having a child, pick a name that's not in the top fifty of this list or the equivalent girls' list. Oh, and read the chapter on names in Freakonomics.)

So what is Dave doing different to the previous channel incumbent, UKTV G2?

Er. Not a lot.

Here's the exciting line-up tonight:

7.00pm Whose Line Is It Anyway (Double Bill
8.00pm Top Gear
9.00pm QI
9.40pm Never Mind The Buzzcocks
10.20pm Have I Got News For You
11.00pm QI
11.40pm Never Mind The Buzzcocks
12.20am Have I Got News For You

Maybe "Slightly Warmed Over BBC2" would be a better new name for Dave?

Idly flicking through the free local paper, I came across this ad:

It's for a new betting shop that's just opened locally. Obviously that's exactly what we need more of. But much more than that was one of the celebrity attendees to the opening.

Paul Merson!

He was a wonderful footballer who played for Arsenal amongst other teams, but he's also a man who's famously battled with booze and gambling. He's written two books on the subject for goodness sake.

So what on earth is he doing, in the pay of a betting company at the grand opening of their new branch? You wouldn't invite an alcoholic to a pub opening would you?

The company behind this new store opening - Better Bet - must be completely mad. First, employing someone famous for being addicted to gambling, is not exactly a great advert for your product. And secondly, it's irresponsible even having him in that environment.

I don't know what Paul Merson's current circumstances are. Wikipedia reports that he pens a column for the official Arsenal magazine, and he does indeed pop up on Sky Sports from time to time. It can't be easy for him. But this is not the way forward for anyone's sake.

Truly awful.

11 July 2000 - Blatter backs World Cup rotation plan

12 October 2007 - Sepp Blatter ... wants to ditch Fifa's controversial [rotation] selection policy

Yes - Sepp Blatter, the man who runs FIFA as his own personal fiefdom (sorry), has had something of a volte face and now wants to scrap the rotation system that means that each regional confederation (effectively continents) gets to run a World Cup tournament in turn.

South Africa is the next host in 2010 (and they've got a contingency plan), and now only Brazil in South America has shown any interest in the 2014 tournament. This means that there's no chance for FIFA to maximise revenues when there's no competition.

Blatter probably also realised that including Europe more frequently in the system will mean that television revenues will be significantly enhanced. Games at unsociable hours in Europe simply don't earn the cash that games that take place in time for evenings do.

The media's jumped on the fact that suddenly England would be able to bid for the 2018 World Cup. But Blatter does seem to have a history of telling people what they want to hear. Every time he comes to Britain to give an interview, it's nothing but positive news.

And let's not forget that he's constantly full of "great" ideas:

Play European football through the summer (quite how the World Cup would fit into that scheme is unclear).

Ban games at high altitude (you're kind of screwed if your country happens to be at high altitude)

Limit overseas players (he's not on his own on this one, but there are EU laws against this kind of discrimination making it a non-starter)

Ban the singing of national anthems

And most famously of all "Fifa president Sepp Blatter has urged women footballers to wear skimpier kits to increase the popularity of the women's game".

"Let the women play in more feminine clothes like they do in volleyball," said the Fifa chief.

"That decision was taken to create a more female aesthetic, so why not do it in fashion?"

This evening, for the second time this year, it was off to see the Cowboy Junkies. This time, it was at the Royal Albert Hall, and like some of my fellow concert goers, I was at first worried about the paltry turnout. As it happened, by the time the Cowboy Junkies took to the stage, there was a pretty good audience. Mind you, the ticket clerk did offer me an upgrade of my arena standing ticket for a seat for £1.50 which I politely declined. By standing in the arena and arriving early, I was able to get right to the front.

The concert was to be a performance of their groundbreaking first album, The Trinity Session. As Margo Timmins, lead singer told us, it was recorded in the Church of the Holy Trinity in Toronto on a single day in 1987 and was a launchpad for the Cowboy Junkies.

I first came across them when they appeared on The Late Show on BBC2 on 21 March 1990 (got to love that BBC catalogue, even if it took a bit of additional Googling to find it). A friend and I immediately got standing tickets for their show at the Dominion Theatre a few days later on March 25 - we must have been home for Easter from our respective universities.

Since then, I've seen them many times, ensuring that I see them at least once on every trip they make to London.

Tonight they had two special guests - Ryan Adams, the prolific singer/songwriter, and Thea Gilmore who I'm determined to learn more about (Neil Gaiman mentioned her the other day).

The concert was wonderful and followed the tracklisting before we had a couple of encores including Margo singing a Ryan Adams song. I picked up the new CD and DVD pack of Trinity Revisited and went off happily into the night.

Why is it that so many crap ranting books are being published? It's very disturbing to see them cluttering up the floors of Borders and Waterstones in the run-up to Christmas.

And most of them seem to have been penned by Talksport DJs. If I was at that station and didn't have a Christmas book out, I'd be on to my agent pronto.

So we've got Undaunted: The Shocking Truth Behind The Popular Shock-Jock by Jon Gaunt (if the puns in the book are as bad as the cover name, then it must be even worse than I'd have expected) at the princely sum of £16.99, Both Barrels From Brazil: My War Against the Numpties by Alan Brazil (with Mike Parry, another Talksport DJ who obviously "helps" Brazil string his "thoughts" together) at £18.99, and Almost a Celebrity: A Lifetime of Night-Time by James Whale at £18.99.

Then there are some perennial "favourites" with Jeremy Clarkson, who gets worse with age, releasing Don't Stop Me Now at a massive £20.00, and a second title from Chris Moyles - The Difficult Second Book at £17.99.

If you've got half an hour to spare and a twenty pound note kicking around then you could read anyone of these titles. Obviously, most of them are going to sale for a maximum of half that price in your local Asda, but really - why bother? If those books appeal to you, when are you going to get a chance to read them? Isn't all your time taken up making phonecalls to Talksport and masturbating over a copy of Top Gear magazine?

Save the money, and find a good real old-fashioned pub. Pop in around 11.00am and join some of the regular old men in there. Enter into their conversation, and you'll hear the same wordly wisdom, and get a few drinks in at the same time. And you won't end up with a tome so embarrassing that you have to hide it underneath your Complete Playboy Playmates coffee table book.

[UPDATE] Quite disturbingly, since I looked up Amazon links to those titles above (only so you can mock, not so you can buy), Amazon has now started highlighting these and similar titles automatically when I go there. The perils of using Amazon logged in.

Scary.

It reminds me of a post from years ago entitled "My Tivo Thinks I'm Gay." The chap involved was convinced that his Tivo (which records fare similar to that which it knows you've watched to try and guess your programming likes) started recording programmes with gay themes. He overcompensated by deliberately recording "butch" programming like war films to try to put his sexuality "straight" with his Tivo.

Well that worked surprisingly well.

Following the announcement last week that Radiohead was releasing its new album today, I went ahead and bought it, paying a reasonable £5 (+45p service charge), rather than the boastful 0.01p that so many people seem to be paying. Mind you, I'd suggest that a good number of them wouldn't have bothered to buy the album on CD, so like Prince, Radiohead is probably going to get more exposure than otherwise (not that they really need it).

As for the process itself? Well yesterday, I was sent an email to say that the file would be a 48MB Zip file (and providing links for un-zipping software if I didn't already have it), and that I'd receive another email today with my unique download address.

Then at 7.31am this morning I got my download email which I saw before coming into work. The download took about five minutes on my home broadband, and voila: ten mp3 tracks.

I suppose technically, the only disappointment was that the mp3s are only encoded at 160kbps. I'd have preferred 192 or higher. But it sounded good when listened to on my iPod on the way into work.

Music reviews have never been my strong suit, but this is very much Radiohead as you remember them, with definite reminders of OK Computer rather than the more experimental fare we've had recently. Well worth the cash.

And yes, when a non-collector's CD is released, I'll probably buy that too.

Ridley Scott is back with a new film which stars Russell Crowe. Now, those with long memories may recall that these two have made films before. First there was the enormously successful, and very good, Gladiator.

And then there was A Good Year. That's 90 minutes of my life I won't get back.

Well this time, we're back to drama, which Scott does rather better, and also onboard is Denzel Washington.

American Gangster tells the true story of Frank Lucas, a black gangster based in Harlem, who took on the Mafia to run his own major drug ring.

Crow plays Detective Richie Roberts, a cop who's almost too good, who takes on the job of tracking down the drug dealers.

The film takes place over a period from the late sixties through to the mid seventies, and reminds me most of a Martin Scorcese film like Casino or Goodfellas, taking a long look at a particular criminal family. The setting is wonderfully realised, with a dirty Harlem that reminds you of old cop shows.

It's actually very easy to empathise with Washington's character, since as well as the Mafia families, there are corrupt cops to take on, as well as the racism of the period. But he's not good. He might look after his mum, but there's a vicious streak engendered into him by his previous boss. In one shot, over the Christmas period, we see a junkie having overdosed and died with her baby crawling around her fly-infested body.

And this film has more black characters in it than any film I've seen since early Spike Lee films, which is a pleasant surprise. Maybe Scott's watched some episodes of The Wire.

In many respects this is not the usual fare for Scott. With very few exceptions, there are not glorious vistas for the eye to wander across; instead, much of the action takes place in rooms and in close up. There are no fancy camera shots, and the only CGI in the film is likely to have been employed to remove modern buildings.

I suppose I'd like to see Crowe not play an outsider, but he gives a strong performance. And Washington's is even better, as the very calm and measured Lucas. The rest of the cast are excellent including Josh Brolin's nasty New York cop, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Carla Gugino.

Despite the film's length, the story is fast and you're never distracted. Thoroughly recommended.

Here's a question... Is the Strictly Come Dancing results show live?

Well here's the answer. No. It's recorded on Saturday night.

Previously, Strictly Come Dancing has been an all Saturday affair. After the main programme, viewers were invited to vote while they watched the National Lottery show. Then the programme returned for the results. All done and dusted in one evening.

This year, for reasons no way related to increasing Sunday night ratings, the results show has been bulked up a bit, with a dance off, and moved to Sunday.

Now it's perfectly possible that Brucie, and audience, and all the judges could all come back on Sunday for the results. But there's a problem with this. Two of the judges (Len Goodman and Bruno Tonioli), and possibly the voiceover guy and one or two producers, all need to get over to the US for Tuesday night's Dancing With The Stars on ABC. They have a results show on Wednesday - mainly because with a variety of timezones, fitting everything over one evening isn't possible (Hawaiians would never get to vote, and East coast audiences would probably have to stay up until midnight to discover the winner).

So for Len Goodman, the senior judge, he's probably looking at a schedule something like this:

Friday - Rehearsals at the BBC
Saturday - Record show at the BBC
Sunday - Rest
Monday - Fly to LA and attend rehearsals
Tuesday - Record show at ABC
Wednesday - Record results show at ABC
Thursday - Fly to London

You could remove that Sunday rest day, but he's 65, so he needs a little time off, even if he is traipsing back and forth across the Atlantic in first class.

So why is it obvious that it's not live on Sunday, and recorded after 9pm on Saturday evening? Well, that's because 9pm is the cut-off time for getting your votes in on Saturday night.

That, and the fact that tickets to the show are only distributed for Saturdays.

The major problem with recording a reality show like this is that the losers (and winners) are bound to leak in advance. I guess that if you care about the programme you'll just have to learn not to read the Sunday tabloids (or broadsheets) and avoid internet message boards.

ITV paid £40m for the rights to the 2003 and 2007 Rugby World Cups. So they must be really happy when a certain Antipodean themed pub-chain replaces ITV's ads for its own - cutting into the ad break to run them, before returning to ITV programming.

While Sky Sports undoubtedly has a contract with pubs that show its service (pubs have a different version of the Sky Sports channels - hence that little "beer" icon in the bottom right), free-to-air broadcasters are unlikely to have any agreements. So whether ITV could do anything about it, I don't know.

I saw about ten minutes of Sky One's much trumpeted new gameshow "Are You Smarter Than A Ten Year Old" at the weekend. Based, on a format from Fox in the US, it asks contestants questions aimed at children aged 10 and under.

I gave up watching because of that malaise of all recent quiz shows... it's just too slow. Ever since Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, we get fake "tension" in every show ever, by having long pauses between contestants giving their answers and the host (in this case, Noel Edmonds) saying whether they're correct or not.

What's wrong with the rapidfire nature of something like 15 to 1, University Challenge or Mastermind? It gets even worse on commercial television, where the host will often tell contestants that they'll find out "after the break." They might, but I won't. I'm out of there.

This general malaise also obviously spreads to every other kind of programming, especially those that see contestants voted off. Inevitably we get a head to head between the bottom too, and ten seconds of pausing between the host saying "and the next person to be voted off is..." and the reveal.

The fake pause is now nothing more than a cliché and formats need to be amended.

An even more worrying trait displayed in the opening ten minutes of "Are You Smarter..." was a kind of precis of what we were going to see on that evening's show. This, in effect, showed us which contestants were going to lose in advance. I hate these trailer-within-the-programme things that seem to effect many factual programmes. "Coming up we've got..." and then some clips is OK at the top of the programme, but at ten minutes in we'll get "Still to come..." and the same clip again.

I do actually have enough of a concentration span to get through a full thirty minute programme - you don't need to do it.

Anyway, I'm sure "Are You Smarter..." is a brilliant format - but I want to get through more than three questions in an hour if I'm watching a quiz show, so I don't suppose I'll ever know for sure.

Living TV has for the last few years ridden the crest of a "paranormal" wave - most successfully with their "Most Haunted" franchise, in which teams of "ghosthunters" arrive at some old building and try to sense the presence of spirits from days of old.

There are two key elements to these programmes: the "psychic" Derek Acorah, once a Liverpool Reserves footballer, who spends his time divining links to the "spirit world"; and shooting everything in the dark using nightvision cameras that make everything green.

The franchise is quite a money earner, with plenty of DVD spin-off sales alongside the regular series and live specials.

It's entertaining junk that seems to be based around a game of murder in the dark, with strange noises, that are in no way caused by assistant producers off camera, oh no.

Anyhow, this brings us to Paranormal Egypt in which Derek Acorah goes to Egypt with historian Tessa Dunlop. Now, once upon a time, many moons ago, Tessa Dunlop worked in these parts as a producer on the Russ n Jono show for a while. She's since done plenty of stuff, including stints at BBC London and TV presenting work on Time Team Live. And she did study history at Oxford, so she is a historian (mind you - I'm a mathematician, statistician and computing expert on the same basis).

Unfortunately her job on this programme is to breathlessly believe everything that "psychic" Derek tells her, putting some historical perspective into procedings as Derek conjours up various names and words, that he obviously didn't look up earlier on Wikipedia. It's a particular shame because it's somehow demeaning to have no questionning of what's going on - a cynical presence if you like. By being presented as a historian, yet accepting at face value everything a psychic is saying, probably doesn't do anyone any favours. But I understand the needs of a professional broadcaster to get work.

The first programme was about Imhotep - you know the guy from The Mummy. Imhotep's tomb has never been found, although it seems that most people think it's likely to be at Saqqara which is handy, because that's where the team was.

After some Lara Croft-style exploration, Derek finally said that, yes, Imhotep is definitely in this area, somewhere.

Phew.

Now obviously nobody can prove this one way or the other until such day, if it ever happens, that his tomb really is found. Unfortunately, Derek's ability wasn't enough to point us to an exact location where archaeologists could start digging. Shame.

I did laugh as they entered various pyramids and tombs that the cameras dropped into the usual nightvision mode, when it was patently obvious that the whole of the interior was wired up with electricity and lit up. They didn't even turn the lights off - Egyptian health and safety rules I expect. Perhaps they had a particularly poor set of cameras that meant that in anything less than full sunshine they simply don't work too well. I'd suggest the production team invests in new cameras if that was the case - most modern TV cameras operate in lowlight quite happily. Surely it wasn't just for effect?

At one point Tessa gasped as she saw a small skull. Derek looked at it, and being something of an anthropologist as well, told us that it wasn't human, but a monkey's. He's a better man than I (a B in O Level biology), as it could quite as easily have been a child's skull. But then I didn't have an Egyptian antiquities expert just off-camera. And I must say - fair play to him for keeping a straight face as Derek kept contacting the spirit world.

As I mentioned before regarding a couple of recent shows on ITV (oh say ably picked apart by Charlie Brooker in his new series of Screenwipe), there are some quite strict Ofcom codes about presenting psychic ability on television.

Demonstrations of predictive practices, whether 'psychic' or otherwise (eg horoscopes, palmistry), are acceptable only when they are presented as entertainment or are the subject of legitimate investigation. They should not include specific advice to particular contributors or viewers about health or medical matters or about personal finance. They should not be included at times when large numbers of children are expected to be watching.

Was it presented as "entertainment"? Well it was certainly entertaining, and to be taken with a pinch of salt. But I'm not sure that it quite abided by the rules. A legitimate investigation? "Investigation" is probably Living TV's get-out clause, as it's bandied around quite a lot. How you conduct an investigation with a Scouse ex-footballer who rubs his head and looks upward and downward a lot, I'm not sure, but that's what we got. Somehow you just know that the DVD boxset will be out in time for Christmas.

In a blaze of publicity (well, they'd bought the back pages of either one or both of the free London papers), Virgin 1 launched last night at 9pm.

Virgin 1 (like most Virgin products - no relation to my employers), is partially Virgin Media's response to the petty falling out between Virgin Media and Sky One. As all Virgin Media fans of 24, Lost or Battlestar Galactica know, Sky One is not carried on its service, along with Sky News and Sky Sports News.

So rushed into existence comes Virgin 1, to fill some of that hole. It takes the place of Ftn on Freeview, but is available on Sky Digital alongside an obligatory "+1" flavour. I very much doubt that Sky are paying anything to Virgin Media to cover it.

So what fantastic programming have they got? Well unfortunately, the Virgin 1 website doesn't actually provide a schedule of the "Proper Telly" they'll be carrying. But whizzing through the Sky EPG isn't inspiring. There's one quite decent show which they showed on their launch night - The Riches starring Eddie Izzard and Minnie Driver. This did reasonably well on FX in the US and has been renewed for another series. The channel has also bought the Sarah Connor Chronicles which is showing on Fox in the US. I say is but it hasn't started yet, and isn't due on Fox until early 2008.

So if The Riches runs for three hours a week (at least two repeats), what's on for the rest of that time? Well, it's brutally unfair, since there are plenty of other channels showing equally as poor fare, but here's tomorrow's schedule:

0600 Knight Rider (staple of Bravo)
0700 Takeshi's Castle (staple of Challenge TV)
0730 Takeshi's Castle
0800 Fresh Prince of Bel Air
0830 Fresh Prince of Bel Air
0900 Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? (courtesy Challenge, courtesy of ITV)
1000 Nothing To Declare (never heard of it)
1030 Beach Patrol (who knows)
1100 Street Crime UK Uncut (Uncut? At 11am in the morning - it must be tough)
1130 Street Crime UK (This edition isn't labelled as uncut - Bravo regular)
1200 Cops On Camera
1300 Take It Or Leave It (Challenge TV originated Richard Arnold quiz)
1400 Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?
1500 Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (another major purchase has seen this franchise depart Sky One)
1600 Knight Rider (NBC are talking about a remake you know?)
1700 Fresh Prince of Bel Air
1730 Fresh Prince of Bel Air
1800 Take It Or Leave It
1900 Cops On Camera
2000 Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
2100 The Unit (previously shown on Bravo - not actually that bad)
2200 The Real Exorcist: Devil Hunter (This is "New & Exclusive" apparently)
2300 Criminal Minds (Virgin 1's launch programme on Monday night)
0000 Play Live Roulette (Oh dear)

So there you have it. Also showing at weekends are decent programmes like The X-Files, which'll be edited to fit a 1600 slot. But it's not exactly going to have Sky One worried, and it'll take some real investment to become a major player in the multi-channel world. I'd have thought of Virgin Media's portfolio, Living TV is currently the biggest player.

In other multi-channel news, I stumbled across Diva TV yesterday. What a very odd channel. From the name alone, it would seem to be aimed at an entirely different demographic to mine. But I stopped and watched. Why? Well take a look at Diva's schedule for tomorrow:

0600 Picket Fences
0700 Yoga
0730 Yoga (Half an hour's never enough)
0800 Kid's Healthworks
0830 The Bold and the Beautiful
0900 The Bold and the Beautiful
0930 Style By Jury
1000 Hot Property
1030 Judge Hatchett
1100 The Bold and the Beautiful
1130 The Bold and the Beautiful
1200 The Oprah Winfrey Show
1300 Rachael Ray
1400 Picket Fences
1500 Yoga TV
1530 Style By Jury
1600 The Oprah Winfrey Show
1700 Kids Healthworks
1730 Rachael Ray
1830 The Independent Traveller's Guide
1900 Hot Property
1930 Judge Hatchett
2000 Tease
2100 The Late Show With David Letterman
2200 Heroes' Mountain (I think this must be a TV movie)
0000 Teleshopping (what's wrong with the word "Closedown" any longer?)

No prizes for guessing what stood out for me: there's a channel carrying David Letterman in the UK once again. But what an odd place to find it. From the brief excerpt I saw, I haven't been able to work out how up to date the episodes are. They've also got Oprah which seems like a sensible purchase since she gets some big names on her sofa. But the scheduling could do with re-jigging.

I'd put Letterman on at 11.00pm and bring forward their TV movie - there's just too much competition at 9pm. Indeed, a late night - Sky+able repeat would be good. And I'd move Oprah back to 5pm and compete directly with whatever rubbish ITV's running at that time, and Richard & Judy/Paul O'Grady on C4. They've obviously decided to avoid that clash. An interesting channel launch, although I've seen precisely no marketing for this channel (perhaps it's all in magazines that I don't read).

This is fascinating. Radiohead has suddenly announced that their new album comes out... next week!

And much more interesting is their revenue model. Since they've been out of contract with EMI, it was I suppose, expected that they'd either re-sign with EMI or another label. But they've gone down a very different route.

As their website reveals, they've decided to release the album in two ways, either a £40 box set CD with an additional CD and two 12" vinyl discs, or as a digital only download. And for the digital download, you can pay whatever you want. Clicking on the "?" sign next to a pair of £ and pence boxes, reveals "IT'S UP TO YOU." Clicking on a further "?" reveals "NO REALLY, IT'S UP TO YOU."

Seemingly you can pay anything from 1p upwards with a 45p service charge added, and you'll get the album. Buying the boxset gets you a digital download too, since you won't get your box until Dec 3 or so.

As Boing Boing rightly notes, this must be massively jarring for the music industry. The real cash that bands can make these days is in the touring. Where once singles were the loss-leaders to albums. Now albums become loss-leaders to drive concert ticket sales.

You can, of course, only get away with something like this if you're already as big as Radiohead. And they did get big through the traditional record company route. But now they don't feel that they need to be beholden to a record company to market an album.

We've already seen Prince give away his new album with The Mail on Sunday (and at his concerts) to promote his 21 date occupancy of the O2 in London. And yesterday the same newspaper was giving away what was effectively a Travis Greatest Hits CD (albeit including a number of live tracks along with studio versions) which included their latest single. Except the single, My Eyes, was released on 17 September, and seems to have entered the singles chart at number 60 yesterday. So it was a calculated gamble that now giving it away is unlikely to have impacted on a chart position. And in any case, single sales aren't what Travis are likely to be worried about.

So where does this leave record companies? Well for a new band, they surely still need the marketing muscle of a record company behind them. Yes there are artists that arrive via internet buzz, but how many can be brought through that way? Who's going to advertise new releases in the pages of NME and other music magazines? Who's going to pay for pluggers to shop their wares around radio stations? Not every band is good mates with someone who can put together a top website/MySpace/Facebook/Bebo/whatever site for them. But you need this kind of backing if you're serious about the industry. At least, you do at the moment...

But this is the beginning of a worrying trend? Record companies speculate to accumulate. And the accumulation part of that equation comes when the band hits the big time, and album releases regularly go platinum. But if an artist is out of contract, it reaches a point where it might be uneconomic to re-sign them anyway. I'm sure there have been instances of precisely that.

I don't know the answers to all these questions. But I'll certainly buy the download, and I might splash out on the boxset - I don't know just at the moment.

[UPDATE] And now I note that The Charlatans are going to give their new album away free with Xfm (More here).

As the article notes:

[Alan] McGee said the decision to give away the album could create a "new business model" for the industry, after claiming the majority of revenue produced by artists came from tours, merchandise and synchronisation deals.

It doesn't immediately appear the Xfm are paying The Charlatans to do this, just support the band:

McGee said: "We were really excited when Xfm got behind us and were as enthusiastic about the download as we are -- they are the first people to embrace music for the people.

"The band will get paid by more people coming to gigs, buying merchandise, publishing and synch fees. I believe it's the future business model."

But the following is also a fair comment:

Kim Bayley, the director general of the Entertainment Retailers Association, which represents shops and online outlets that sell music, warned that the idea risked "narrowing the spectrum" of British music by denying new bands, who are unable to attract large live audiences, the chance to make money from selling their music.

"Music will become regarded as a throwaway item," she said. "This model is fine if you are a band that has already made it but our worry as an association would be whether it takes away that ability of new bands to get their foot on the first rung of the ladder."

It's a lively time for the music industry.