January 2008 Archives

...reading breakfastdj.blogspot.com aren't they?

(Doing for radio what the Secret Blog of a TV Controller (aged 33 and 3/4) did for a person who's in no way connected with BBC Three)

In some respects, this is a continuation of my last entry about Qtrax. While the final position of Qtrax has yet to be established, it's interesting to look at another high profile example that got plenty of coverage last year - Nokia's Comes With Music package.

As you may or may not recall, Nokia announced that a new range of Nokia phones would come with the ability to listen to free music from the Universal catalogue. Well, according to a piece from Bloomberg reported by Engadget, all is not quite what it might have first seemed.

Telecoms operators have something called ARPU which they're continually driving to maximise. It stands for Average Revenue Per User, and it refers to all those bolt-on services that you buy aside from airtime and texts. These days there's obviously data, any number of subscription text and video "content" and so on. Music downloads have been a recent addition, although issues based around getting your music from one device to another begin to rear their head and have probably stymied sales somewhat. But music remains popular, and advance access to concert tickets is another key area with all the major operators doing things in the area.

But when manufacturers like Nokia (or Apple) introduce their own services, they can sometimes undercut the telecoms operators, and an impasse can be reached.

So this report is interesting for two reasons. First, it explains that the "free" music is not really free, and that Universal is getting a cut of the handset cost and potentially part of the monthly contract in a similar way to Apple taking a proportion of its users' contracts. That cost might have to be built into the "music contract" that a user will have to sign. Secondly, they realise that without the assistance of the operators like Orange and Vodafone, they can't really get the scheme off the ground.

It still seems to me that it's unnecessarily confusing for an Orange subscriber with a Nokia "Comes With Music" phone has two different mechanisms for getting music - almost certainly incompatible with one another. But then PC users have a multiplicity of mechanisms for buying digital music from heavily DRMd iTunes music to mp3s from Emusic.

The market will have its say in the long term, but I would be very wary of anybody claiming that they're offering free music. We're at an experimental stage where new payment mechanisms need to be tried on for size. Jumping straight to free probably isn't sustainable in the long term.

So what's the deal with Qtrax?

On Saturday, Channel 4 News carried a report highlighting the launch of a new music service. Qtrax, they reported, had signed deals with the big four record companies and would be launching their free music service on Sunday.

Details were a little sketchy, but it was clear that the service would be ad-funded and users would have to register so that ads were targeted on a demographic basis. The service would be peer-to-peer, minimising the load on Qtrax's servers.

The music would work on a number of portable devices, which would also serve the ads (quite how was not clear), and in a couple of months' time there would be a version which worked on iPods.

Consumer listening trends would also be reported back to record companies.

The end of the Channel 4 News piece highlighted the fact Apple's iTunes would have the most to fear (and although it didn't mention it, Amazon announced at the weekend that it's mp3 download service would be rolled out internationally in 2008).

I eagerly went to the site on Sunday, only to read that the "Beta Download" would be available at "midnight EST."

Well I wasn't going to wait until 5am Monday morning, but another look today sees the same announcement still up.

Of course last minute technical hiccups are common enough. But this doesn't smell right.

A story from Australia reports denials from Warners about a deal being in place with Qtrax, and more denials from EMI and Universal. So what's going on?

Qtrax president Allan Klepfisz told AP that Warner was expected to agree to terms "shortly". He claimed that all other parties had agreed to the terms but some deals were yet to be formally signed.

Huh? So they don't have deals currently in place? How were they going to launch at midnight today or any other day?

I'm not the only suspicious person either.

Maybe Qtrax will launch in a couple of days as advertised. But selling DRM-free downloads, or perhaps introducing subscription models might be the first moves to make for a beleaguered industry.

RAJAR has just released its findings from a piece of research into podcasting in the UK. The report also considers usage of "Listen Again" features, as well as Personlised Online Radio (e.g. Last.fm or Pandora (RIP)).

There is, of course, some debate about what a "podcast" actually is. But we needn't worry too much about that as the

So what are the main findings? Well there's a good 20 pages of report to wade through, but I think that the following are worth noting:

4.27m adults in the UK have ever downloaded a podcast. And currently 1.87m people listen to podcasts at least once a week. That's not a bad figure I'd have thought. Indeed 242,000 are downloading daily. Although that may concern a few of the stakeholders who're producing daily podcasts including many radio stations, as when you slice up that 242,000 between those who listen to the Today programme podcast, The Geoff Show podcast, Guardian Unlimited's News podcast and the many other UK and international daily podcasts, there are possibly some slim pickings.

That said, it's early days yet.

Amongst those who listen to podcasts, the survey suggests that people listen for about 54 minutes per week.

Respondents claim that they're by far the most interested in comedy with 55.2% professing an interest, followed by music with 38.5% and TV & film with 32.6%. In terms of what people subscribe to, the numbers are smaller, but curiously, while the top two remain comedy and music, the third most subscribed to genre is technology. This perhaps reflects the current audience to podcasts.

On average, respondents claim to subscribe to an average of 3.16 podcasts. But it's notable that a significant 12.3% of people who listen to podcasts don't subscribe to any!

A big issue when trying to find commercial sponsors for podcasts is the inability to tell whether people actually listen to the podcasts they download.

When asked about what proportion of individual podcasts, respondents listened to, 47.4% said that they listened to all of it, and a further 32.1% listened to most of it. So very nearly 80% of people who download a podcast are actually listening to it.

What's really fascinating is that 80.4% of people say that they listen to podcasts on their PC, while only 60.4% listen on a portable device.

Finally there are a couple of very interesting stats for those who might be considering subscription models for their podcasts.

Compare the ad-supported model:

With the subscription model:

Anyway, this is just a very initial look at the figures. I suggest you look at the RAJAR report yourself for more!

More on the music industry will be forthcoming. But today the IFPI which represents the recording industry worldwide has published it's digital music report. The report runs to 28 pages including front and back covers, a contents page, three full pages of pictures and drawings, and a list of members. But we're all busy people, so there's a summary which runs to 9 pages.

That's less a summary, and more a slight abridgment...

If you're going to produce a print CSS file for your blog entries (nicely formatting a print version, and removing unnecessary page furniture), please include the comments!

The two guiltiest candidates that I've come across - i.e. blogs that I read but don't conform - are the BBC's, and those of Guardian Unlimited. If you try to print the entry out, you'll only get the initial authored piece, and none of the comments below. Yet as often as not, the blog is positively inviting comments, and part of the raison d'etre of having a blog is to allow commenting. Comments very often drive the conversation forward, and are often as important as the original entry.

But I'm not able to print those comments out! Try as I might, short of using a really old browser that ignores CSS code, I'm left to copy and paste comments into a word processor and print from there. I can't tell you how frustrating that is. if someone knows how to disable CSS in Firefox that'd at least be a workaround, but personally I consider it poor design that I can't print comments.

Obviously I know that I shouldn't be killing more trees than need be by unnecessarily printing things out, but the average blog entry and associated comments makes for a far better read than the dreadful free "newspapers" handed out by London tube stations for the commute home.

A couple of weeks ago I noted that the BBC Shop in Norwich had shut down, and it was pointed out to me that all the shops had been closed last year, apart from the one in TV Centre itself - but that's only really open to BBC staff, and those who are visiting (studio audiences perhaps).

Well I'm pleased to say that at least one shop still survives. I was in Brighton yesterday, and the shop inside the entrance to BBC Southern Counties is still there. I actually felt a bit bad when I left not having bought anything.

I was hoping that you might be able to buy a CD celebrating the history of Radio 4 which turned 40 last September. But I couldn't see anything, and a trawl of the web doesn't show anything on-sale except a forthcoming Radio 4: The Constant Companion. But that's not released until April for some unearthly reason. Would a release of this CD been perhaps more timely last September when the network was celebrating its birthday?

You may well have seen the pictures of all the wood that's piled up in places like Worthing beach from the wreck of the Ice Prince which sank a week ago off the Dorset coast.

But the timber's not limited to Worthing. Walking along the Brighton beach front earlier today, I was amazed at the quantity to be found there!

The wood is piled up right along the shoreline.

The local paper has pointed out that the wood is useless since it's been in the sea for a week and therefore won't be too useful if you're planning on decking your garden. And in any event, you can't just go and grab stuff off the beach without filling out a form.

I've got a copy of Bella Bathurst's book on Wreckers in my "to read" pile - and she also fronted a recent Timewatch on the same subject. It'll be interesting to compare and contrast.

I also spotted this sign which might refer to the wood.

But there are some uses for the wood.

This slim volume is a well aimed blast at what should be relatively small proportion of our society who believe in some facile and provably untrue beliefs. Yet, as we know, there are all too many people who follow suspect "nutritionists", waste money on homoeopathy, pay too much attention to 9/11 mythologies, and read "history" books that are quite simply works of fiction.

You'll be unsurprised to learn that I am, metaphorically, sitting in the choir stalls as the author, Damian Thompson, preaches to me. In that respect, it's perhaps more important that a wider audience than "un-believers" like me read this book.

The book starts with a well-aimed attack on Creationists. But interestingly, the author, who as well as being a Daily Telegraph leader writer, is also Editor-in-Chief of the Catholic Herald. So while some areas are familiar to Richard Dawkins followers (homeopathy, astrology, etc), this isn't a full scale attack on religious beliefs. Early on in the book, the author makes clear his beliefs and those of many others, that science and religion can live side by side, and evolutionary theory doesn't really affect those beliefs. Indeed he also takes aim at what he sees as worryingly close dabblings with Intelligent Design by those high up in the Vatican.

While I might be well aware of some of the more ludicrous "history" books that litter our bookshops' shelves like the forerunner to The Da Vinci Code, The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, I really didn't know the story of 1421: The Year China Discovered The World. This is a title I've seen regularly on the shelves of Waterstones and Borders, and while I'd been a little intrigued by it, I'd never picked it up. I certainly won't now, since I've learnt that it's basically all made up. Indeed, when the thesis of the book is laid out, it's hard not to reject it even then. It's clear that all concerned with the book knew of its shortcomings. But it's sold in its thousands, and the since it paints their society in a great light, the Chinese have adopted it with welcome arms.

I was pleased to see that Bad Science's Ben Goldacre gets plenty of credit in the medical and scientific areas of Counterknowledge. I look forward to Goldacre's own forthcoming title.

And the author isn't shy in attacking the worrying tendency of many Islamist societies to adopt many of the same arguments that Creationists and holocaust-deniers have adopted before. While there might seem to be little in common between them, you only have to look as far as the Iranian president to realise the danger of this if it's left unfettered.

The dangers of misinformation from MMR in the UK to AIDS/HIV in South Africa are clearly explained.

The book is all very readable in tone, and written from a knowledgeable viewpoint. I suppose that I'd have perhaps liked a few more original examples, since all those highlighted have been documented previously (even though I hadn't necessarily been aware of them all). That said, it's the lacking we have in our society - and our willingness to accept untruths, that are our real shortcomings. Why does the NHS support homoeopathy? And why does Boots sell the drugs? Why are proper academic institutions getting into bed with the likes of Patrick Holford? Why are major publishers happy to market and distribute books which they know must be complete fiction?

Cash is the obvious answer. And that's really not good enough.

Open your eyes a little and read this book. It also has a companion website which is pretty substantial and worth adding to your blogroll.

Imagine making your first trip to London. You want to see the sights, so where do you go? I'm not talking about shopping or museums - just the sights.

Well you'll probably want to see Buckingham Palace, Tower Bridge and the Tower of London. The London Eye's an essential trip these days if the queues are anything to go by. And then there are the big parks.

But you'll want to walk through Trafalgar Square and quite probably go to Piccadilly Circus which is famed for all its illuminated advertising signs. They've been there for years in one form or another with Perrier having a sign up 1908.

Current advertisers include Coca-Cola with a massive curved electronic billboard, McDonalds (ironically sitting on top of a Burger King), Samsung and Budweiser. All have pretty high-tech and very expensive illuminated signs.

None of these are especially surprising brands to see there - they're contemporary global brands. Indeed, according to Interbrand, they all fall into the top 100 best global brands:

Coca Cola is no. 1, McDonalds is no. 8, Samsung is no. 21 and Budweiser is no. 30.

But as you can see below, there are two other advertisers who have by far the most real estate are TDK and Sanyo.

Now while TDK still makes blank media like CDs and DVDs, and Sanyo still makes consumer electronics devices, neither are quite the companies that they once were.

Indeed, given that Sanyo makes LCD and TFT displays, it's odd that they haven't updated their display beyond the fairly basic and static affair that they currently have. They probably originally signed quite long term deals (perhaps as long as 20 years), but they run out relatively soon - TDK's runs to March 2010 and Sanyo's until August 2013. I somehow can't see them renewing...

So you've got some valuable documents and perhaps some cash that you need to look after. You decide you want to put them in a safe.

Surely, if you're that concerned, you'll want to spend more than £7.98?

It's interesting to note that the BBC is now advertising the iPlayer quite significantly. I've seen ads on the Guardian Unlimited site, as well as search ads in Gmail. On top of both of these there are the TV "ads" on BBC television.

"Pandora's ex-customers in the UK will be wondering why the service they want can't be catered for by the recording industry. And they are not alone - for what are the millions of illicit peer-to-peer file-sharers, but a huge potential market? Internet users are showing the industry how they want their music in the digital age."

From the New Statesman

This week EMI makes between 1500 and 2000 employees redundant.

Is there a link? Discuss.

Rory Cellan-Jones has a pretty spot-on analysis of a certain company's new product announcement yesterday. The argument put to him is that a new model of Ford Focus probably affects more people. I'm not sure that in hard numbers it does, but the point is well made.

Now if Bic launched a new version of the Biro...

(Via John Naughton)

Last night the Radio Academy held an event in London to talk about podcasting. It was interesting to a point, although whether or not we learnt a great deal, I'm not so sure.

You can listen to a podcast of the event at the Radio Academy's website (I'm pretty sure registration isn't required).

Some points we heard:

• A nice lady from the BBC did blurt out a few stats from an upcoming RAJAR podcast survey that are currently confidential - look out for them at the end of the month.
• Matt Wells at The Guardian is awfully annoyed that the BBC has so many podcasts - something like 150, especially considering that some of them have some very low take-up.
• Matt Wells also doesn't consider what he does as being "radio" - others dissented.
• There is money to be made, but advertising agencies are slow in believing in podcasts, and perhaps the more immediate cash comes from podcasts made for clients.
• Some were annoyed that video was considered more.

There was more, but as I say, I didn't come away thinking wow! I did have a short list of new podcasts to try however.

I'd disagree with some of Matt Wells was saying though. To be honest, even working in a commercial radio environment, I wouldn't be too fussed if Radio 4 podcast their entire output. As long as it didn't take a producer/editor too long to chop put the audio together (and much Radio 4 output is delivered as a final 30 minute piece of audio anyway), then there's simply no harm in making it available as a podcast however low the take-up is. If there's one thing that we've learnt from podcasting, it's that quite esoteric subjects can support podcasts because of the global nature of the available listenership.

And while I wouldn't want to get too hung up about the terminology - of course podcasts are "radio." I think we just need to redefine what we believe "radio" means. Once upon a time, it was a live broadcast, with just about everything being done there and then - so no recorded music, just relays of live concerts, live plays and the news read live. Then it became lots of pre-recorded music interspersed with live DJs and live(ish) news. These days, I can Listen Again or download programmes as well.

It stands to reason that the most technically adept podcasts are made by people who've been groomed in radio production techniques, and that includes Matt Wells' own podcasts. One commenter said that we're not fully making use of the medium, and too many podcasts sound like traditional radio programmes. That may be so, but it's because having a structure to what I listen to is no bad thing. There truly is nothing to stop someone with a laptop and a microphone making a podcast, but like television and film, there is a certain language or grammar (in television they'd include cutaways, close-ups, reaction shots, establishing shots) that guide us into the story. If I'm listening to music, it's really useful if someone can somehow tell me what I've been hearing. And at the start of a spoken word podcast, some idea of what they've got coming up is useful.

What I'd like to have heard more about is the inclusion of music in podcasts. Deals have been struck to allow thirty second clips of music into podcasts produced by either the BBC or commercial radio. But these deals are temporary, and only account for rebroadcasts of previously produced radio material. What about original shows? There are plenty of podcasts that use music of course, but the reality is that either they're not paying rights for those tracks, or they're using unsigned bands or having to deals with the composers/performers themselves. I don't see anything happening in a rush - particularly given the recent experiences of Pandora.

And how long should a podcast be? Many of the panel spoke about the freedom they had, not needing to fit into a 30 minute slot. It's certainly true that there's nothing more annoying than listening to an interviewee on the Today Programme only for them to get cut-off just as they're getting interesting due to time constraints. But editorial controls still need to be applied - I don't necessarily want to hear an hour and half of meandering. I find podcasts of over an hour "intimidating" when I see them in iTunes, while others at just three or four minutes could be longer.

Video is interesting. Yes, you can watch videos on your iPod or in iTunes. But there are different standards for different devices, and while I can listen to mp3s in my mobile phone, enhanced podcasts won't work. Video podcasts probably aren't "radio" because you have to watch as well as listen (obviously!). But then we're living in a world where there isn't any longer a clean delineation between different media types. The same device that lets me listen to TWIT lets me watch Mahalo Daily, so are they the same or is one radio and one TV? Yesterday Apple relaunched Apple TV - a device that does let me watch video podcasts on my TV. So maybe it is TV after all?

Still, all said and done, more has to be done to make podcasting mainstream. It's still too complicated. Lots of people don't understand what the word means, or how they do it. I spoke to a colleague yesterday who'd never downloaded a podcast for his iPod due to it being Mac formated, yet he now has a PC and didn't want to lose the music he has on it. That's more a shortcoming of iPods - why does an iPod have to be formated differently depending on what you plug it into? As Apple sells more Macs, users going the other way face the same issue, even though it can be overcome. Nonetheless, even with iTunes, it can still be made simpler.

2008 may become the year of DRM-free music, as people want to start loading their music onto their mobiles; their PSPs; their Xboxes; their sat navs. But downloading needs to be made simpler still. And we need more opportunities to do different things. Matt Wells spoke about dynamically inserting ads into Guardian Unlimited's podcasts. So when I download Football Weekly might determine what ad I hear. This goes someway towards what should be achievable, but let's go a step further. If we know your sex and age, delivering relevant advertising would be great. UK listeners might get different advertising to American listeners and so on. At the moment, we have one feed serves all, and short of making people register and subscribe to different streams according to their profiles, this isn't really possible. Yet...

Accountability and accurate targeting are ever important in the advertising world, so these are others areas that podcasting should perhaps address.

Mediaguardian reports that NBC has ordered a pilot of Top Gear to be made in the US and hosted by Americans. Now aside from the fact that with the writers' strike now in its 11th or 12th week, the networks need non-scripted programming to fill out the end of the season, could the choice of Top Gear be in any way related to the recent news that it was the second most torrented programme on Mininova in 2007?

Indeed, it was the only non-US and non-scripted programme to make the list. There's obviously a demand for it, so producing a US version is something really obvious to do. Quite who the US version of Clarkson will be should be an interesting decision.

And with a US version, and an Aussie version, I think that we can expect bigger and more elaborate stunts and set-ups since the same thing could be shot three times with different presenters and the same crew, sharing the costs if BBC Worldwide wanted.

In any event, in a country where Nascar and Indy Car racing is huge, and where it's every man's right to drive the biggest, most fuel-guzzelling vehicle he can, a popular motoring show seems obvious.

I spent the ten o'clock hour flicking a bit to see the return of Sir Trevor and News at Ten, and to see what the BBC was doing.

The opening title sequence was actually pretty good, although it felt like there were a few too many bongs. ITV had an exclusive interview with someone related to the Diana inquiry. At which I immediately turned over to the BBC News where John Simpson was reporting live from somewhere in Zimbabwe, a country where the BBC is banned.

The BBC also had the latest in a series of reports from someone on a Greenpeace ship in the Southern Ocean where they were trailing a Japanese whaling fleet trying to prevent them from killing the animals for "science." A good report, but largely a repeat of several previous reports.

Over on ITV they'd gone even further south and sent a correspondent to the middle of Antarctica. The live link when it came was great quality unlike the BBC's videophone, although getting a satellite signal back from a ship in choppy seas must be technically harder.

The "And Finally" was more serious than the skateboarding ducks of old, instead relating the story of a crew rescued from their listing (and now sunk) ship in the Channel.

Overall, it wasn't bad. But I'll still probably end up watching the BBC. Or, in reality, Newsnight.

I was disappointed recently, when watching the Ewan McGregor/Charlie Boorman series Long Way Down, that they reinforced the nonsense about water going down the plug clockwise or anti-clockwise depending on whether you're in the northern or southern hemisphere. Along the border, there's a few quid to be made perpetuating this party trick to unwitting tourists. Michael Palin got similarly tricked in his series Pole to Pole. But it's not true, and you can see it yourself in your own sink.

Anyway, Long Way Down wasn't a news programme. But over the last few days, we've heard an awful lot about a pair of twins who were said to have unwittingly married following their separation at birth. A judge then annulled the wedding. Now while I can't absolutely prove this didn't happen, I'm really not at all happy with the facts of the case as I've seen them so far, and there's no proof so far that it did happen.

Here's the BBC's version of the story. And here it is in The Guardian.

But the story has actually emerged via Lord Alton during debate over the human fertilisation and embryology bill. He said he'd been told the story by an unnamed High Court judge. Yet that's not far removed from the "friend of a friend" basis of most urban myths.

Now while I wouldn't hold the News of the World up as the bastion of truth, their reporters, obviously sniffing a great story if they could get hold of the couple in question, only seem to have got as far as talking to the judge who's president of the High Court Family Division. He's not heard of such a story despite it surely being a cause celebre if it had happened.

So to me, this is case unproven, and really doesn't deserve the coverage it has received until it's been confirmed one way or another. You'd imagine that the couple would be in for a big payday from the News of the World or Mail on Sunday if they wanted to tell their story. But even if they want to remain anonymous, I think first hand proof positive is essential before we can take this at face value.

Until then, have I told you about the friend of a friend who got mugged in London and woke up in Turkey with just one kidney...?

Word magazine is by far the best music magazine around these days, coming with a fascinating cover CD and always having thoroughly interesting pieces inside.

Accompanying the magazine is the podcast which I always find to be worth a listen. This week, the Radio Academy's Trevor Dann turned up for it, and he some strongly felt views on radio today. It's really worth a listen.

My favourite over-used phrase comes from tennis. Whenever a Brit is knocked out of a tennis tournament, they aren't defeated - they crash out.

Andy Murray lost earlier this morning and Google News tells me that there are already 171 articles about Murray that include the phrases "crashes out."

Glad to see that sub-editors remain as original as ever.

My local train station - the one I use to get to work every day - doesn't have any barriers. As a result, there's no real ticket check on the way in and out. To avoid ticket evasion, they have ticket inspectors on the trains, and spot checks. If you travel on the train at the weekend, you have about a 50% chance of being checked. If you travel on a weekday in rush hour, you have about a 1% chance of being checked. I'd have thought capturing the commuter who's evading a £1000+ season ticket is probably of more importance than a teenager avoiding a £5 Travelcard. But there you go.

When the train company carries out spot checks, they send a team of ticket inspectors to the station and check tickets on the way in and out, handing out penalty fares to evaders. But it's important to note that they're employees of the rail company.

So this morning I was surprised to see the police checking tickets. While it's an offence to travel without a valid ticket, I was under the impression that the rail company determines that, and only then do any legal ramifications take place - either a fine, a court appearance or whatever. There might be police officers in attendance to deal with unruly customers who won't pay a fine, or try to run off, but the police tend to be upholding the law rather than enforcing a rail company's rules.

In a post 9/11 7/7 world, that's obviously changed.

Once the police had looked at my ticket, I rounded a corner to be confronted by a collapsible machine that looked something like this:

(Picture sourced from Avanti Security.)

Regaled with green flashing LEDs, I took it to be a metal detector. I had to walk through it.

To be honest, I would have stopped to ask, but my train was departing in about 30 seconds and I was running to catch that. Unusually the "detector" didn't stop me, which considering I was carrying money, mobile phone, iPod, various electronic gadgets, a belt and a metal watch, was a little odd.

Perhaps the device is tuned to pick up large knives? Or maybe it's not a metal detector at all.

What on earth was the point? As far as I'm aware, there haven't been a spate of knife attacks on my commuter service. And while I think someone did get shot a few miles away over Christmas, I'm not exactly on the mean streets of Baltimore (sorry - been watching The Wire DVD boxsets recently).

So what was the purpose?

The ticket inspection aspect is fine, but these machines are just supposed to make us feel safer aren't they? We're supposed to believe that the government is doing something about crime. The chances of someone actually being captured for a serious offence is surely remote without prior intelligence.

This report suggests that 50 knives were found when the devices were used in Birmingham. I'd be surprised if much more than a Swiss Army Knife was found in this morning's sweep.

I'd not previously read any James Lee Burke novels, despite him having written over 25 in the past. But I heard him in the book section of the Simon Mayo programme a few weeks ago, and the setting of his most recent novel in and around New Orleans against the backdrop of Katrina was an interesting idea.

Dave Robicheaux is his long standing detective, yet in the early pages of this book, he barely features as we instead concentrate on his best friend, and incidents that are happening in New Orleans. Fairly soon the hurricane hits, but the key incidents which include murder and burglary, don't really occur until afterwards when law and order has just about fallen apart.

While distain for the way in which the authorities dealt with the aftermath is handled well - not overbearing, but fully deserved nonetheless.

I quite liked the flawed nature of some of the characters, and there is one truly nasty individual in here who good give some people nightmares. I may well check out more of his books at some point.

Voices is the third in the Inspector Erlendur series, following Silence of the Grave and Tainted Blood. Erneldur is a fairly dour Icelandic detective, and this novel is set in the run-up to Christmas at a large Reykjavik hotel. When Santa's needed for a party at the hotel, a maid goes to look for quiet old doorman who lives in the hotel's basement. But she finds him dead.

Erlendur is a detective with personal problems - not least of which is his ex-junkie daughter, and the memory of a brother who died when he was young and for whom he still feels guilt.

As is the way with these books, nothing is quite as it seems with the dead man once having been a child star, some dubious tourists, and shifty hotel workers. The Erlendur books aren't the fastest paced, but I still enjoy the bleakness of them. They're well worth reading if you like your Scandinavian crime fiction - and there's plenty of it about!

Today's Broadcast reveals that Channel 4's News At Noon now has a new on-screen touch set that allows the presenter to playout items.

Krishnan Guru-Murthy is able to "play material directly from the ITV broadcast server, including live rendered graphics and flash sequences. He can also play in sound bites and pre-cut pictures or bring up live feeds of events."

So somebody has watched Andy Gray on Sky Sports play around with his technology one too many times and decided that this is what Channel 4's news needs? Playing in sound bites is something that DJs do.

Meanwhile Mediaguardian reports that as part of News At Ten's relaunch, it to will have " state-of-the-art touch screen allowing presenters such as Sir Trevor McDonald to interact with images and objects on screen."

The piece goes on to say that it will feature a new title sequence: "As the famous theme tune begins, the titles will zoom in on the Earth..."

A bit like this then...

It's taken an awfully long time to arrive, but Broadcast magazine this week reports that BBC1 has commissioned a three part series based on Henning Mankell's Wallander novels.

The three novels being adapted are Sidetracked, Firewall and One Step Behind, although Broadcast speaks of them as the "first three novels in the series." That's not really true. In terms of novels, their the fifth, eighth and seventh novels in the sequence. The books were never published in order in the UK, yet there are a few continuing storlines running throughout the series.

The three dramas will each be self-contained 90 minute pieces, will cost £6m and in a bit of a coup, will star Kenneth Branagh as the detective. Branagh, it seems, is a bit of a fan of the Mankell series. They'll still be set in Sweden, and the series is being seen as the "new Morse."

The BBC hopes that the international appeal of Wallander will ensure healthy sales of the series. What the piece doesn't mention is that the series has already been made into two different TV series in Sweden with different Wallanders. The most recent of these series was produced as recently as 2005 and 2006, and unlike the UK, other European territories where the novels are popular, don't have a difficulty with either broadcasting dubbed or subtitled versions.

Interestingly, these new editions are being co-produced by Left Bank Pictures in association with Yellow Bird, Mankell's own company who produced the most recent Swedish series, and Branagh's own new, as yet unnamed company.

So all in all, this is positive news, that's taken 18 months to reach this point. I'd still love to know what happened to the announced BBC Scotland adaptation of Return of the Dancing Master that was first promised for 2006.

[UPDATE] The BBC's press release is here.

If you're interested in this sort of thing, then you'll already know that Pandora is shutting down in the UK. The full email sent to Pandora users is on James' site.

As the email explains, the service has been shut down because they were unable to come to an agreement with the music rights organisations in the UK. Essentially, they want to charge on a "per listener, per song" basis.

Unable to reach an agreement in the UK, they're going to block the service to UK users from next week.

It's a principled decision that seems fair and reasonable. But the people who aren't fair and reasonable are the music collection agencies with whom they haven't been able to deal with.

Commercial UK radio stations have to pay for the music they play on the radio; part of the money goes to the performers, and another part goes to the copyright owners/song writers. That seems a reasonable compromise. They way that they collect this cash is to simply take a fixed percentage of all the revenue that the stations earn - for larger stations it's around 10%. That leaves enough cash over, hopefully for the station to pay its costs including staff, equipment, transmitters and so on, and still leave a profit.

If the station is commercially successful, then the artists and songwriters get more money. Stations have to send lists of the tracks they play, so the cash does go to the relevant artists. It's a win:win situation.

But the flat rate fee doesn't make sense. If it's set too high, as they currently are, then the business is unsustainable. This is what Pandora has found - the advertiser revenue they're generating is not enough to cover the costs. This is the same problem that faces all streamed radio in the US where they're also expected to pay on a per track per listener basis.

Radio services that are "simulcast" in the UK, like Virgin Radio or Heart FM, escape these costs because their internet broadcasts are seen as simply a different broadcast band. Your service might be on FM, AM, Sky, Freeview, DAB or the internet. It doesn't really matter because the more listeners you have, the more money you're able to earn, and the more money artists and song writers get.

It seems to me that like the record industry, which is slowly - painfully slowly really - dragging itself kicking and screaming into the 21st century, the music rights bodies are simply behind the times.

I don't want to give record companies too much credit because they simply don't deserve it. But more of them are finally seeing that selling un-DRMd music is a good thing. And they're realising that if they don't try new things, their CD sales are only going to continue falling without any replacement revenue at all.

Strangling new models for the music industry at birth is surely a mad idea. Here's a burgeoning company that wants to pay for the music it plays but finds itself frozen out by the industry. It's providing a service that we know people want and enjoy. But it won't budge.

So what happens now?

Well what if it were to set-up somewhere legislatively "difficult" - perhaps Russia where it took so long to shut down those mp3 sites. What are you going to do to stop them then?

Interestingly, while Pandora faces closedown in its home territory of the US, the Viacom Last.fm continues to broadcast. Working on a similar basis, they've followed a different route and signed deals with most of the four major record labels. As far as I'm aware, they've not done a deal with the largest of them all - Universal.

Yet is it really as simple as that? An album licenced to EMI in the UK might be on a different label in the US. So how does a global deal work? And then there are limitless independent labels, some of them having bigname bands on their labels. Radiohead's recent physical album release has come on the XL label for example. Last.fm has done deals with a couple of them, but they're the tip of the iceberg.

And even if you do a deal with the label, is that enough? I genuinely don't know the answer to this, but do you still need agreement of the performers, copyright owners or song writers as well?

It seems to me that under the relative safety of a massive media organisation like Viacom, Last.fm can play a little faster and looser than Pandora is able to. Like YouTube, which let's face it, has built its success on the back of other people's content (must stop using that word), Last.fm is in a position where it's waiting for people to come to it to do deals.

Who says the Wild West isn't dead?

A good song, with a very good and very "radio" video...

Via Why That's Delightful

This is pretty important. Back in 2006, Andrew Gowers published his review of intellectual property in the UK. It was a pretty intelligent look at the state of play in this country, although not everyone was happy with what he was recommending.

Anyway, a year has passed and now intellectual property minister Lord Triesman has published a public consultation on proposed changes to law.

The key change that's highlighted is making ripping a CD to your computer legal - as things stand, it's currently illegal in the UK.

Over a range of areas, the consultation is proposing a range of options and seeking views on which it should follow. This is actually a crucial chance to affect UK copyright law. So if like me, you care about this area of law, you need to carefully read through the consultation, and respond by 8 April 2008.

I'll return to this in more detail soon, but I expect that there'll be some significant internet debate in the meantime.

Reading Robert X Cringely's 2008 predictions, there's one that I'm 100% certain of:

2) This one is really for 2009 but I know we'll see the effects in 2008. The DTV conversion, where U.S. analog broadcast television stations are turned off in February 2009 and we all have to switch to digital TVs or to cable or satellite or buy those DTV converter boxes, well this whole conversion thing is going to be an absolute disaster. I don't expect technical problems at all, but the public won't understand it, the government will blow it, and at the last moment some politicians will even try to cancel it. But it's still only TV, right?

As I've said before, I know the US is a different market to the UK, and many more people get cable services - all of which will be unaffected by this move.

But there are still the poor and the elderly.

Are TVs in the States sold with the equivalent of the UK's "Digital Tick"? And do consumers understand what it means?

The US has just started their voucher system which will allow consumers two vouchers per household each entitling them to $40 off the price of set-top digital converter box. But one year out, will everyone know about it in time?

Let me suggest that there are going to be a great deal of people left without television in February 2009. That's something that isn't going to help the TV advertising market (particularly if there isn't any programming to show following this sustained writers' strike).

I still think that the UK has hurdles to jump in its conversion to digital - even the relatively straightforward conversion of a single town, Whitehaven, slipped to "red alert" a couple of months before switchover last year. But at least a measured approach to switchover is being progressed based on a region by region basis allowing learnings to be made as they go, and leaving the potentially tricky highly populated areas until the end.

In the US, they simply switch off analogue on a single day across the whole country.

That way madness lies.

Get your pills here!

By now, if you're like me, you'll have bought the 5 DVD boxset of Blade Runner with every version known to man including this new "Final Cut."

But before Christmas I did actually see the film projected in the cinema, and it really was a sight to behold. This film does have a bit of history having originally been released in 1982 in a version that famously had a deadbeat Harrison Ford voiceover. It ended with some outtakes of footage of a green valley that was taken from Stanley Kubrick's The Shining.

Then in 1992 having gained something of a cult reputation, the film reappeared as The Director's Cut. That was before every film ever produced came out with a "Director's Cut" DVD a year or so after the original release.

But this wasn't quite the cut that Ridley Scott had hoped for, and he couldn't spend either the time or the money that was really neeeded. But the voiceover went, and a couple of scenes reappeared including, famously, a scene involving a unicorn.

Now we've got the real director's cut - or the "final cut" - which has seen the film getting a proper clean and spruce up, as well as few more subtle edits and changes. It must be said that the changes really are quite subtle. There's no really obvious new CGI introduced George Lucas-style. New technology has been employed, but the film still feels true to itself. And that's not surprising as it still feels like a thoroughly believable dirty future. So many other films and adverts have taken their lead from the stylings of Blade Runner that it's sometimes hard to realise quite how revolutionary this film and 1979's Alien were.

I haven't really touched upon the full story of the making of Blade Runner and its many incarnations. For a fuller picture, can I commend Future Noir: The Making of Blade Runner which has just had a new edition published in time for this film.

One way or another, now is a good time to revisit this classic.

Now I hear that there's a new edition of the soundtrack out too...

Gone Baby Gone is the directorial debut of Ben Affleck and stars his brother Casey. When you learn that, you're probably thinking that things don't bode well for this film. Well in fact that's not the case. Based on novel by Denis Lehane, and set in a very realistic feeling working class Boston, it involves the disappearance of a little girl from a family. Affleck's character is called in to investigate by the family since the police don't seem to be getting anywhere.

And so begins a very murky story that doesn't necessarily turn out well for anyone involved. It'd be a shame to hint at any of the twists and turns, but this is a worthwhile effort and makes a change from the standard middling thriller fare that Hollywood can produce by the yard.

Casey Affleck is very watchable, and I hear he's also been getting good reviews for his appearance in The Assassination of Jesse James. To be honest, it's been a while since I really enjoyed a film by his brother, but there's undoubtedly some talent in that family.

Sadly, I can't see a release for this film in the UK which, given some of the dross that gets released here, is a bit sad.

Michael Clayton is another film I saw a while ago, but didn't note at the time. George Clooney is a bit of a fixer for a law firm who ends up in a convoluted story involving a major class action lawsuit.

It's another one of those films that's constructed in a non-linear fashion as we start near the end of the tale before jumping back to what happened.

I quite enjoyed this legal tale, although perhaps the ending was a little forced, and I'm not entirely sure that I believed in Tilda Swinton's character who was so insecure despite her meteoric rise to the top.

Having now seen the opening episode of TV series Damages, there are obviously some similarities between the two.

Since it's long disappeared from cinemas, you'll probably need to wait for the DVD which I'm sure is coming any day now.

As with my feebleness in reporting back on films I've seen recently, I've also neglected the printed word. That is to say, I've not listed the books I've read recently here.

Now this may have little to do with media, TV, radio, or any of the other random things I tend to talk about here, but it serves me quite usefully.

When On Chesil Beach came out in hardback last year, I was reluctant to buy it - mainly because it was so slight, and also because although I can appreciate McEwan as an author (Atonement was wonderful), he can be miss as well as hit. For example, I wasn't especially enamoured with Saturday, and Amsterdam was very poor. Anyway, I had reasonable hopes for On Chesil Beach which has just reached paperback, but I'm not so sure.

Essentially telling the story of two characters on their wedding night in the mid-sixties, this novella sometimes felt more like a writer's exercise than a novel. I'd have perhaps been happier if it had been a short story in an anthology. I'm glad it didn't win the Booker, as I'd have been upset if I'd been another author on the shortlist.

I could believe the characters, growing up in a sheltered post-war period, not being aware of the ways of the world. And their lives felt real as we jumped from one to the other. Yet the ending felt rushed with a five page summary of the rest of their lives where perhaps there was a more interesting story to tell. Perhaps the book as it stands could have been the opening chapter in a larger tale?

It's a worthwhile book, but it's just not quite good enough for my liking. Perhaps in his novel, McEwan will write about more than a single day's events?

One of my favourite sections in The Guardian is the Review section - largely made up of book reviews. For about 18 months, the section featured a weekly extract in the ongoing story of Tamara Drewe. Initially I didn't read the strip. Then I realised that I needed to catch up, but didn't get around to it. Then I decided to catch up online, but unusually the full story was not now completely available.

So I waited until this book was finally published. Posy Simmonds has polished it up a little for publication, but it's not that you'd notice.

Beth runs a writers' retreat somewhere in the countryside, but she has her own problems with her writer husband who is serially unfaithful to her as she edits his books and looks after him in general. The cast of characters is filled out with a young gardener who no longer lives in his family home, and an American long-staying writer who's trying to get his book off the ground unconvincingly.

Into this midst comes Tamara who's an arrivist young writer from London who once lived in the area but has now reappeared following some rhinoplasty and with her London newspaper column. She's trouble... at least trouble seems to follow her around.

The book is actually a retelling of Hardy's Far From the Madding Crowd. I say "actually" but having never read the Hardy novel, I didn't know this until I'd read it.

But I did really enjoy it, and the book is lavishly printed and published.

Alan Johnston's kidnapping in the Gaza Strip was one of the more shocking moments of last year, and I think most people were relieved when he finally emerged largely unscathed - physically at least.

This is his book, and unusually it's not a full blown affair like those of other hostages. Nor is it an autobiography like Frank Gardner's book from 2006.

Instead we have the fairly rushed publication of what is effectively a series of pieces that Johnston has put together for From Our Own Correspondenet over his time in Gaza, as well as previous spells in Afghanistan and across Central Asia.

The highlight is Kidnapped which is a straight reprinting of his FOOC from last October. It's followed by a question and answer session which elaborates on a few of the areas Johnston didn't cover himself.

It's an interesting little book and highlights how evenly Johnston reported events in Gaza. The group that took him did the plight of the Palestinian people no favours at all, something which the rest of the population in Gaza well understood.

I know I shouldn't be doing it.

But I am.

Yes, the Daily Mail has another of those DVD offers on, and it's a good one. They're giving away the quite wonderful Brideshead Revisited every day for 12 days starting from last Saturday.

I know that there's no excuse, especially from a paper that tries to make a non-story out of the fact that Jools Holland's Hootenanny, widely reported as being pre-recorded, is in fact, pre-recorded and not live.

But I do have to give it to their marketing department - for £5.40 I can get one of the best British TV series ever made.

I saw this on a recent trip to New York, and I've been meaning to write about it for a while (I saw a few other films there that'll I try to note in the next week or so).

The Coen brothers are always worth watching, although recently their run of form has gone off the boil a little. Intolerable Cruelty wasn't wonderful (and hasn't been worth another viewing for me), while The Ladykillers remains their only film that I haven't seen.

Well No Old Country For Old Men is a fantastic return to form. It's based on a Cormac McCarthy novel that I've yet to read, and details what happens when Josh Brolin's character stumbles across a drugs deal gone wrong. With men dead and dying everywhere, he simply walks away with the cash.

This leads off what effectively is a chase movie; but a chase with one of the nastiest and most vicious film villains you've seen for a long time. Javier Bardem's character is someone who kills for fun. Literally.

Everytime he's on the screen your heart is in your mouth wondering what he's going to do, and who the innocent victim is likely to be.

Tommy Lee Jones is the local sheriff who gets an idea what's going on but has his own issues to face.

The rest of the cast is good; I liked Woody Harrelson's brief appearance as someone else searching for the missing money. He was cocksure of himself. And I realise that I've not seen Kelly McDonald in anything recently, although he she has a nice turn as Josh Brolin's wife, who's kept out of the loop.

I want to go and see this film again. It's a great piece with a fascinating ending.

In my review of Juno the other day, I mentioned that I hadn't seen the film that I understood to be Ellen Page's breakthrough film, Hard Candy. Well now I have, having picked up a copy of the DVD.

Wow - what a film. In essence, it's about a paedophile played by Patrick Wilson, who tries to tempt Ellen Page's character into meeting him having groomed her via the internet. So far, so sleazy. But it quickly becomes apparent that this girl is not quite all she seems, as she turns the tables and drugs her prospective attacker.

What plays out is sometimes painful to watch and very well written. Sometimes the piece feels as though it could have been written for the stage, with nearly all the action taking place in a single home. There are twists and turns and the piece even has some very definite acts.

The film is the feature debut of David Slade, who has since produced a zombie movie - 30 Days of Night. It looks fantastic with some fabulous focusing at times.

The DVD also comes with a superb "making of" documentary that's way ahead of the usual rubbish that you get on DVDs. If you're interested in the process of how this film came to made and indeed how a small independent film is put together, then this is invaluable. Slade also talks us through some of the technical aspects of movie making meaning that you end up learning things.

Overall a fantastic little package and I thoroughly recommend a viewing.

I moaned the other day about how Hollywood movie studios seemed more interested in awards than the piracy of their films - hence the existence of "Screener DVDs" which inevitably end up being made available on the internet.

Anyway, one positive side effect of this scramble to win awards is that all the studios put together sites promoting the awards you think their titles should be considered for. And these sites now include PDFs of the films' screenplays. So you can download free and legal copies of most of the big films 2007 (and early 2008 in the UK).

So here are a few sites you might want to visit, although be warned, you don't want to spoil films like Juno or No Country For Old Men by reading the scripts in advance.

Miramax - includes No Country For Old Men and Gone Baby, Gone
Paramount - includes Sweeney Todd and Beowulf
Foxsearchlight - includes Juno and Waitress
Universal - includes American Gangster and The Bourne Ultimatum
Focus - includes Lust, Caution, Atonement and Eastern Promises
Paramount Vantage - includes The Kite Runner and There Will Be Blood
Warner Bros - The Assassination of Jesse James and Michael Clayton (note - Warners don't seem to have scripts or indeed much information beyond screening location details)

I couldn't find a link to Fox's awards website.

You've got to love Ang Lee don't you? He consistently makes some fabulous films. The first of his that I saw was The Wedding Banquet, but before you knew it, he'd turned his hand to Jane Austen and made Sense and Sensibility (now re-appearing in a new "sexed up" Andrew Davies TV production). Then there was the wonderful Ice Storm set in a remarkably real feeling seventies. Ride With The Devil followed - another period drama but this time against the backdrop of the American Civil War. Then he went back to the Far East to make a phenomenally successful Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Next he turned to The Hulk - the only Lee film I've yet to see, before returning to form with Brokeback Mountain.

Now we have Lust, Caution which is drawing lots of attention because of its sex scenes.

Wei Tang plays Wong Chia Chi who is part of a student group who decide that they must kill Tony Leung's character - a Chinese sympathiser with the Japanese during the Japanese occupation of Taiwan.

The murder attempt goes wrong and we jump forward a few years where the resistance takes Wei Tang's character into its heart to have another go at killing the politician.

The film jumps around a little as it tells its wonderful little tale at a stately pace. It was quite surprising to walk out of the cinema and discover that I'd been in there for well over two and a half hours.

As ever with Lee, you really feel that he's got the period detail spot on. The students are naive yet believable in their hatred of the Japanese oppressors. While Shanghai is beautifully rendered during the second world war, with English speaking establishments that somehow wouldn't have been out of place in England during the war.

The relationship between the two key characters is what's at the heart of this film, and it's crushingly believable. This is an exceptional piece and well worth seeing. I can't wait to see what Lee turns his hand to next!

Oh, and I don't understand the rules of mahjong, so the opening scene took me a while to get into.

I missed one other programme that I should have mentioned the other day - this Saturday's Archive Hours is called God, Pirates and Ovaltineys.

"Sean Street investigates the history of the cultural battle between the BBC and commercial radio, which predates the pirate music stations of the 1960s by several decades."

That's got to be worth a listen!

Oh, and it might not be radio, but don't forget that this Sunday sees BBC Four repeat the Simon Bolivar National Youth Orchestra of Venezuela Prom. Don't miss it!

Like books, I'm behind in writing about which films I've seen recently. So lets try to catch up in reverse order, starting with the film I saw last night - Juno. I know quite a few bloggers saw it at a special screening that I couldn't make before Christmas and the reaction to it was pretty positive.

I'm going to agree with them because I thought it was a wonderful little film. Juno is a 16 year old girl who's a bit of an outcast at school, but who's managed to become pregnant. A visit to Women Now doesn't inspire her to have an abortion - perhaps less for moral reasons than the general awfulness of the place. A classmate acting as a lone picket outside the clinic tells her that her baby already has fingernails. This doesn't really make a great deal of difference to her.

Having decided to keep the baby, she and her friend go through the freesheet newspapers looking for a likely set of adoptive parents. The perfect couple turns out to be Jason Bateman and Jennifer Garner who are desperate to have a baby.

That's the bare bones of the plot, but it doesn't really scratch the surface. The dialogue is punchy, fizzing with aphorisms, lending it a very "quirky" humour. Sorry. I like to avoid that word. But it's pretty appropriate here. Indeed it'll definitely be worth seeing again on DVD for the dialogue alone.

And the casting is exceptional. Ellen Page plays Juno, and I've not come across her before, although I do know that I need to see Hard Candy. Her maybe-boyfriend is played by Michael Cera who's best known as George-Michael in Arrested Development. Filling out the cast are JK Simmons and Alison Janney who play Juno's father and step-mother.

A subtle comedy like this could easily become schmaltzy if it wasn't careful, but this has a deft lightness of touch that keeps you smiling all the way through.

Thoroughly recommended. It opens in a month's time.

Evidently a few people complained about the Christmas special of the Catherine Tate Show on BBC1 which was broadcast on Christmas Day. Their complaints were about the language, even though the programme went out at 10.30pm. My complaint would simply be that Tate is unfunny. She does have a handful of amusing characters, all of whom are worn out in sketches that overstay their welcome enormously. In other words, like the similarly over-rated Little Britain, you get the same jokes again and again every week.

But I do have a bad language complaint. This week BBC Two broadcast Three Men In Another Boat. The first episode went out on New Year's Day at 8.00pm - in other words before the watershed. Now the programme sees three comedians - Griff Rhys Jones, Rory McGrath and Dara O'Briain taking Griff's 50ft yacht from the Thames around to Cowes on the Isle of Wight to take part in a race. It's a follow up to their recreation of Jerome K Jerome's characters' trip up the Thames a year ago. All amiable fare. Except that there is a bit of swearing here and there.

Being broadcast before the watershed, the first part featured the odd bit of swearing, which was either bleeped or amusingly "honked" from the soundtrack. As it should have been given the time it went out.

But the second and final part went out on Wednesday 2nd at 9.00pm and was thus, by the rulebook, allowed to have swearing. And so it did, with the grouchy McGrath being the number one offender (the writer in the Telegraph who said that if he was the producer he'd have been tempted to push McGrath overboard was right).

Individually, I have no problem with shows having swearing or not depending when they're broadcast (and if someone can explain why a show like Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe has some language bleeped and other parts untouched, the please write and explain).

Where I have problems is with programmes that jump around the watershed between episodes. There should be continuity - either both pre- or both post- the watershed. There are some early evening repeats coming up that will have been completely cleaned up, but it seems to me that episode one of this two-parter should have gone out at 9.00pm un-bleeped in the first place.

Channel 4 sometimes pulls even worse tricks by introducing swearing at 9pm mid-programme when shows have started earlier - it's done this with Big Brother and The F Word. If we're to have a watershed then it's surely for parents (or viewers of a very nervous disposition) to make informed decisions about whether or not to let their kids view a programme. And that has to be the whole programme or none of it. Otherwise we might as well scrap the watershed and broadcast a warning at the start of programmes.

I'm really not sure what to make of the news that US album sales fell by 9.5% in 2007, and down 15% on 2006. Digital sales increased by a whopping 45% but only 10% of them are albums. Basically, as we know, most people only buy the tracks they want and not the whole album. This is the problem that record companies need to address as some artists now begin to only release singles.

We all know that once upon a time, single sales were all important and money-making devices. Then they became loss-leaders for albums (as marketing and video costs increased). Finally we're now at the point where albums are just devices to sell concert tickets and merchandise.

But what explains the malaise? Well obviously a generation is now being brought on "tracks" rather than "albums." But I'd also suspect that in the US they may have some other issues.

The top three albums of last year were Noel by someone called Josh Groban who I'd not even heard of. It's a Christmas album. Second is the soundtrack to the Disney TV movie High School Musical, while third is the comeback album from The Eagles which was available exclusively in Walmart in the US.

Now compare that with the UK's best-selling albums. At the top is troubled yet talented singer Amy Winehouse. Back to Black has sold 1.65m copies to date (including a "deluxe" version) compared with Noel's 3.7m copies. That's actually not that bad considering that the UK's population is around 20% of that of the US.

Second in the UK was Leona Lewis, last year's X-Factor winner, who sold a massive 1.27m albums in five weeks (and there were a few more shopping days until Christmas when these figures were compiled, with Lewis a likely stocking-filler album). Compare this with High School Musical's 2.9m. Both are arguably TV spin-offs, although the musical value of the UK title is probably a bit stronger than the US one. 13 year-olds may argue that point.

A slight word of warning - I may well be comparing physical US CD album sales with UK figures that include full album downloads as well as CDs. But I think the comparison is still worth making.

The BPI hasn't reported overall 2007 album sales as far as I'm aware, so it'll be interesting to learn what the overall decline (if it is a decline) is compared to the US. Interestingly downloads have shown a 50% increase in the UK compared to 45% in the US, but 95% of album sales remain on CDs (which explains why Radiohead still went ahead and released a physical edition of their new album last week).

I think the problem in the US is perhaps more to do with the quality of music, the lack of decent radio stations (who are ridiculously stymied from broadcasting online), and overall malaise in quality not especially helped by an endless procession of TV talent shows. I dont' really think filesharing is the big problem. I had a cassette to cassette recorder in the eighties, and CD burning has been around for ages. So copying your friends album has never been a problem. It's more likely to be simply spending cash on other non-musical purchases - especially DVDs and video games.

You know that there's that "trendy" way to way a scarf - ideally a striped one?

The picture above clearly explains why I'd never wear a scarf like that.

Does anyone know of an offline blogging program that will run on the Asus EEE without the need for me to install a different OS?

I've used Windows Live Writer on XP successfully in the past but would really like something that I can install on my EEE. And some instructions about how to do it would be useful too.

I know that programs like QTM, BlogTK and Drivel exist, but I don't know if they'll run on the Asus. And I'm a Linux newbie so don't really know how to tell.

If anyone out there knows, please do drop me a line or comment below.

Aside from Fred and Ginger films on BBC Four and Doctor Who on Christmas Day, I probably spent more time listening to the radio than watching the box over the festive period. Here are one or two radio programmes I enjoyed; they're all BBC programmes I'm afraid, and very few of them are still available to listen again, so you'll have to use your own inventiveness (*cough* UKNova *cough*) to hear them. But they're worth seeking out.

When Hollywood Went To War - Humphrey Lyttleton, the jazz trumpeter and presenter of I'm Sorry, I Haven't A Clue, presented this two parter on how Hollywood studios supported the Allied war effort both before and after America entered WWII. Lyttleton could also be heard on the very funny Christmas edition of I'm Sorry, I Haven't A Clue recorded live at the Lyric Theatre.

MR James at Christmas - Five adaptions of MR James' ghost stories introduced by Derek Jacobi. OK - I haven't actually listened to these yet, but I will soon - I've also got lots of BBC Four repeats of dramatisations to watch too. Interestingly, BBC Audio released a double CD of MR James Ghost Stories "Volume 1" which contains readings (not dramatisations as here) of a further five stories. I've yet to listen to these too. By the way, when did all the BBC Shops shut down? I knew the one in London shut a while ago, but was surprised and disappointed to see the one in Norwich had also been replaced by a very similar, but not-quite-the-same shop. It had effectively become a Doctor Who store, with an amazing variety of merchandise including, incredibly, some original Target Doctor Who novelisations from the eighties were on sale which they were selling at the original prices - i.e. £1.50 each. Sadly the BBC Audio shelves were quite bare, and I had to go to Waterstones to get my MR James. There's also an afternoon play about a film-maker who's producing a documentary on James that I still have to listen to - A Warning To The Furious. It's on Listen Again until this Friday.

Jeeves Live - Exactly what it says on the proverbial tin. Martin Jarvis - he of Just William audiobook fame - reads a couple of Wodehouse's Jeeves stories live to an audience at the Cheltenham Literary Festival. You've got to love Jeeves don't you? Episode two is on Listen Again until next Monday. And a boxset of the Fry and Laurie TV version is available awfully cheaply at Amazon and in the HMV sale at the moment. One of my New Year's resolutions is to tuck into Wodehouse via the wonderful Everyman reprints of his works that have been published since 2000. I've got six, but another 48 still to go, and they continue to be published.

Just A Minute - A fortieth anniversary special presented by Nicholas Parsons and including some of the greats from down the years. It was fun hearing Kenny Everett take part on his debut many moons ago, as they let him talk for 90 seconds out of meanness (Kenny Everett: The BBC Local Radio Years from Radio 7 awaits a listen by me).

The New Year's Day Concert - Live from Vienna. I always listen/watch this despite the stuffiness of the Wiener Musikverein where the concert takes place. The Blue Danube always seems the perfect way to see in the New Year. This year they couldn't help but celebrate the fact that Austria co-hosts the European Championships in the summer, although it was probably a mistake to have a male ballet choreagraphed around the theme of football. Most of the performers had obviously never seen a football in their lives before the first rehearsal!

There's plenty more still stored up for me to listen to on various hard disks and PVRs at home including some gems from Radio 7.

There are also a few interesting sounding productions coming up in the next week or so. Underneath the Lintel is this Saturday's play on Radio 4. It stars Richard (The West Wing's Toby Ziegler) Schiff stars as a lonely Dutch librarian... On Sunday Martin Freeman stars in The Picture Man on Radio 3, We Need To Talk About Kevin is the new weekday Radio 4 serial, Alison and Will from Goldfrapp are on the Mark Radcliffe and Stuart Maconie show next Wednesday ahead of the release of their new album in February, and the brilliant Down The Line begins its third series next Thursday with the wonderful "Gary Bellamy" answering the phones. Finally, Iain Lee starts his new show on Virgin Radio this coming Sunday at 10pm.

And lastly a plea. Can we please have more original programming on the live stations over Christmas? I'm fed up with "Best Of" programmes, and other pre-recorded fare. I want something new and fresh. Christmas can be - how can I put this politely - a trying time for some people. And escaping to the sounds of the radio can be even more imporant than normal!

In Charlie Brooker's television resolutions he ends with:

6) Stop squashing end credits and shouting over them

I'm going to keep banging on about this until it happens. Which it won't. But I like a fruitless yell at the void, me.

I suppose I've sort of stopped shouting about this myself, having pretty much given up the ghost. Top-tip for all TV execs reading this - I flip as soon as you try to plug the next show, credits or not. I'm not interested. If you won't go away, then I will. And that means I miss your trailers. It's your own fault. It also means that I missed Boy A on Channel 4 because I never saw a trailer for it.

Anyway, I saw The History Boys on BBC2 the other day, and do you know, they ran the full credits on it, unsqueezed and with no voiceover imploring us to watch "The Most Annoying People of the Year" or whatever over on BBC Three. They didn't even make that subtle cut you usually get in credits of films between the cast list, and the music listings. They played it all.

The film was made by the BBC of course, not that this would stop them bastardising their own programming. And the film did end with Rufus Wainwright singing a wonderful version of Bewitched, which would probably make any continuity announcer stop and think before ruining it. But I was pleasantly surpised!

Now if only BBC Four would drop their DOG during their drama programming as they once did...

A recent entry on Boing Boing pointed to an article in Rolling Stone magazine which highlighted the fact that producers mix tracks so that they sound good when they're ripped to an mp3 player, at the same time, removing the subtleties that a wider dynamic range allows.

Boing Boing's Cory Doctorow comments "...it seems to me that as a society, we're happy to sacrifice fidelity for ease of use, flexibility and low-cost (see, for example, the trend from landlines to cordless phones to mobile phones to Skype). Designing for that, as opposed to lamenting it -- is a damned good and realistic thing to do."

But has he read the full article? If he has, then he'll see that engineers and producers aren't happy with this trend. What we're getting are tracks with dynamic range compression to make them sound loud, thus removing some of the subtleties of the original sounds.

When you rip a CD to mp3 or similar lossy compression format, you're losing some of that range. We're often told that this compression simply loses audio beyond our hearing range, but it's really not as simple as that - an mp3 does not sound as good as a CD track when you play it through some decent speakers.

If all you're going to do is listen to your track through your iPod listening via the terrible ear buds that came with it, then you probably don't care. But give the crappy compressed version of the track to people who buy it from iTunes if they're happy with that. I still buy the majority of my music on CD because I want to hear the full range. I've got a rather nice stereo system with big floor standing speakers, and I can very much hear the difference.

Most FM radio stations also use lots of compression to make them sound "louder" and clearer than other stations on the dial. The music suffers.

You really can't just design for the lowest common denominator, otherwise we might as well design music to be optimised for those kids who listen to it from the speakers of their Nokia mobile phones at the back of the bus.

It really is strange that at a time when in the A/V world, we're all being persuaded to upgrade to HD TVs and high end 7.1 surround speaker systems to watch our Blu-Ray movies on, the CD world is going the other way.

But it's not just CDs - there are plenty of other areas where quality is losing out.

In the digital broadcast arena, poor quality seems to be accepted. Look at TV channels on Freeview and compare, say, BBC1 with ITV4. The latter, even with recently made programming looks terrible in comparison because it has a much lower bit-rate. ITV4 is on a multiplex that uses a more efficient compression technology, but it's still significantly worse. What that means is that channels look more "blocky" - something that's especially apparent as we all get larger and larger TVs (you can see a range of bitrates here).

A recent Deloitte & Touche report into the efficient use of spectrum by the BBC even recommended that the BBC should reduce its bitrate to squeeze more channels on. Viewers don't care they claimed. The BBC has promised to look into it.

In the run up to a full digital TV switchover in 2012, we're now looking at the resulting over-the-air pictures being worse than the previous analogue pictures. Yes, plenty of households had ghosting on their sets due to misaligned aerials, or coat-hangers stuffed into the back of their portable units, but that's not a reason to accept lower standards.

Satellite and digital cable are better but have their own issues. There's not a bandwidth shortage (at least for satellite), and those channels that are obviously lower in quality are so because they output in that format, or they're not prepared to spend enough on decent bandwidth on those platforms.

I am surprised that so few channels are broadcasting in widescreen - yes I'm looking at you UKTV and Virgin Media. Just about every TV sold these days is widescreen, yet even when a good proportion of their programming is now originated in 16:9, they persist in cropping it. There really is no excuse in 2008.

I'd love to say that my industry, radio, is better. But it's not is it? DAB can sound fine, but unless you invest in up to date codecs (ahem, Digital One), or don't overcompress, then it really doesn't beat a good analogue signal. Ask a Radio 3 listener or a DAB listener to the mono Radio 7.

The industry would argue that listeners don't care. They'll point to the fact that most DAB sets sold are "kitchen radios" which natively come with a single speaker. So there's no problem if they broadcast in 128k stereo (nearly every station), or even mono. Last Christmas, GCap launched theJazz and it's been pretty successful, in audience terms at least. Yet it's broadcast in mono. Now I'm no jazz aficionado, but surely this was a mistake. Jazz fans that I've met tend to be very particular about their listening environments, and high end kit is part of that. And maybe theJazz isn't really aimed at those hardcore fans (in the same way that Classic FM isn't really aimed at the die hards who prefer Radio 3), but it's telling that they even answer the mono question in their FAQs (and there is some space on Digital One these days...). Stereo was first broadcast in the UK in 1925 yet over 80 years later, we're not seeing greater dynamic range and more channels (5 or 7), but fewer.

If you look at the newspaper industry, they're continuing to upgrade presses to allow full colour on all their pages, and trying to ensure that ink doesn't rub off on your fingers. The technical quality is improving. Your local cinema probably sounds better than ever, and many screens are slowly becoming digital, meaning that we're seeing fewer scratchy old prints, instead getting pristine copies as we tend to see on recent well-mastered DVD releases.

But in so much of the broadcast arena, we're seeing declining quality. I'd argue that it was only recently that TV technology has improved to match a decent tube from ten or fifteen years ago, not displaying motion blur when showing sport, and handling dark pictures with lots of greys and blacks without "jaggies" appearing everywhere.

Quality really does matter. There are still many more stereo CD players in the world than mp3 players. At a time when record companies are facing a bleaker future than ever before, they might want to consider maintaining a quality product.

[UPDATE] Well what do you know? theJazz has just become stereo! Only 128kbps stereo - but that's still a vast improvement! Well done GCap/Digital One for finally getting that sorted.

And while we're talking about DAB - it's a shame today to hear that Oneword is effectively being closed down as Channel 4 pulls out of it. Oneword has always been a troubled station since there was never any real investment. Ironically they did have some decent programming, but it was just packaged badly. There'd be an unabridged adaptation of, say, Oliver Twist, that would run to forty episodes. Nobody is going to follow a series that long apart from one or two very real die-hards. Radio 4 rarely run a daily serial over more than a couple of weeks, and their hour long Classic Dramas tend to be between 1 and 4 weeks with very occasional "epics" that might run 13 weeks. But getting a producer to edit down the readings to more manageable lumps from the original unabridged audiobook versions was obviously expensive. And in any case, they filled time, and filling 24 hours a day with non-music programming is not a cheap thing to do.

There were some good shows like "Between The Lines," which felt almost unique in that it was book programme not presented by Mariella (Open Book on Radio 4, The Book Show on Sky Arts) Frostrop. But sadly it was lost amid the miasma of long form serials.

Of course this is also the problem that Channel 4 Radio is going to have. Widely touted as an alternative to Radio 4, it seems to me that it's bound to be closer to the non sports parts of Five Live. Not for nothing have they hired Five Live's Bob Shannon. They're unlikely to have more than a few serial book readings if they're sensible. Instead, the current affairs phone in is likely to prevail - less adversarial than Talksport perhaps.