October 2008 Archives

I'm loathe to return to this subject because it has been done to death everywhere now. But I think a few key things have come out.

1. The two presenters were exceptionally juvenile doing what they did and should have known better.

2. Although they were employed to push boundaries, they are well aware of where to stop. They have to (and to be fair, they have) accept some level of responsibility. They are not children.

3. The BBC was way too slow in responding and getting proper, in person responses and apologies made. They should have known better that in a 24/7 news environment, every day brings a new paper, every hour a new bulletin on rolling news channels. "Get your retaliation in first" someone once said. If the BBC had got in first with fully fledged apologies, there'd be nothing to attack them about.

4. The BBC has lost a very good radio controller.

5. Blaming it on producers alone is still not enough. Of course at time of writing, I don't know who the "senior" individual was that passed the programme as fit for transmission, but if you're a producer working for a big-name talent, saying "no" to them can be next to impossible. And if you do say no, you might find yourself shifted off their show, and possibly out of work, because the talent complains that they don't get on with you.

6. The suspension of Ross is very likely to affect others with the cancellation of various shows probably meaning various freelances will no longer have a gig. As well as staff members of his production company, many of the technical crew - camera operators and so on - are employed on a freelance basis. Let's be a bit creative, and get someone else to present Film 2008 next week rather than just cancelling it altogether.

React fast, and react smart. Not doing that cost BBC1 its controller, and now Radio 2 its controller as well.

So the Ross/Brand things has blown up out of all proportion. Seriously. The scale of the media frenzy is in no way proportional to what actually happened. When I wrote about this the other day, I did so in a way that discussed something that would be of interest to people who read Media Guardian.

Reporting the number of complaints that the BBC or Ofcom or whoever has received is facile and meaningless. It only invites comments about why those people aren't complaining about more important things.

If you want to find worse things that are happening in broadcasting in the UK, I suggest that you subscribe to Ofcom's Broadcast Bulletins. They send around a neat weekly email which runs through them. This week, they fined a TV station £15,000 for broadcasting some guy who claimed that his homeopathic remedy cured cancer. That's outrageous.

It's clear that the likes of Sky and the Mail are egging on the debate in a massive way, but frankly that's irrelevant. Similarly irrelevant are the media aspirations of Sachs' grand-daughter. Anybody who says otherwise is on a dangerous road towards the "she was asking for it with those clothes on" type defence of attacks on women. And Sachs' age is also irrelevant.

Sky News' coverage would lead you to perhaps not realise what's going on elsewhere in the world right now. The Congo, US interest rates, umm, David Tennant quitting Doctor Who. That sort of thing. I'm surprised they don't have the Sky Copter up hovering over Brand's house. This is on a scale not seen since Maddie went missing. Just to be clear, the coverage of that was abhorrent and unnecessary too.

It's clear now, that both Ross and Brand have realised they've done wrong and are sincerely sorry. Brand's quit his show - which frankly was wrong for Radio 2 anyway, and curiously placed on a Saturday night at the precise time that many of his prospective listeners would not be around (Prior to Humphrey Lyttleton's death, his 11pm Monday jazz programme got a bigger audience than Brand's 9pm Saturday show).

Of course Brand still has his stand-up, his new C4 series, a new hardback book, a new paperback book, the odd presenting gig and a burgeoning film career. He won't be destitute.

So where to now? Well Ross will be off the TV and radio for a while. A producer will be fired. I doubt anyone senior at Radio 2 will have to walk. Everyone at the BBC will have to attend some new course like they did for running competitions. And that'll be that.

It's fair to say that this has been poorly handled by the BBC. As soon as someone senior had listened back to what went out - ie. last week, before most of the press got into the game - they should have carried out their suspensions and investigations. Leaving things to drag on this week has helped nobody.

And I really don't understand why politicians - beyond perhaps, those at the DCMS - or anyone else really, are getting involved. They really ought to be asking why ITV is no longer providing a proper local news service, and is getting rid of all its PSB remit. Serious issues.

I do despair of our media sometimes and the ignorant coverage we get. I really do.

I'll write more about this perhaps at a later date, but it suitably scary and a thoroughly enjoyable piece of drama. Obviously influenced heavily in style by 28 Days Later, but still excellent. How many times did I find myself saying "If only... If only..."?

I see that it got a very strong audience of 1.19m. But I do wonder about the sense of E4 not to run a trailer for part 2 or let the audience know that Dead Set is airing every night this week.

The Spooks-like lack of credits, and the disappearance of the E4 DOG were ordained by the producers. So it's quite possible that the no-trailer idea was also theirs. But still...

E4 scheduled Dead Set in a one hour ten minute slot. I somehow suspect that it'd actually comfortably fit into an hour slot, but they were packing their biggest show of the night with ads. C4 and its spin-off channels are making a habit of the "long" hour. The Neil Morrissey vehicle tonight is scheduled to run 1:05, as is Desperate Housewives tomorrow. This is a show that happily fits in a one hour slot in the US, so as I've said before, we see more ads on these shows that US viewers do.

In the last couple of days we've heard plenty about a "prank" that Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross played on actor Andrew Sachs a couple of weeks ago on Brand's Radio 2 Saturday evening programme. As part of a pre-recorded show, when Sachs didn't answer his phone for a pre-arranged interview, Brand (new book - Articles Of Faith) and studio guest Ross (new book - Why Do I Say These Things?) made what can only be said to be insulting comments to Sachs' answerphone about his granddaughter.

For whatever reason, it took a while before the story reached the dizzying heights of the Mail. Brand "apologised" on his show the following Saturday (just gone), although tore into the Mail for its support of fascists during the thirties.

Now the BBC has formally apologised to the 78 year-old Sachs.

The whole incident really does leave a nasty taste in the mouth and is only the latest in a series of "stunts" where highly paid DJs have used their microphones to malicious ends. Up until now, none of them has been publicly chastised. They're big stars, after all, and they're unlikely to face fines that a commercial station might.

It would be unwise to get into any legal ramifications of this particular case, although it's notable that Sachs is probably quite reliant on the BBC for much of his voice and radio work.

This reminds me of a dark period of Chris Evans' history when he worked on Radio 1. He spent a week broadcasting from Scotland, and in an especially petulant episode he mocked Moray Firth's Tich McCooey, mocking the DJs salary compared to that of his own team. The details are to be found in the excellent book about Radio 1 of the period - The Nation's Favourite by Simon Garfield (Did I lend you my copy? I can't find it). The whole episode left a nasty taste in the mouth.

More recently, we've had Chris Moyles escape censure for using the word "gay" in a derogatory manner. Seemingly, because kids use it in the playground, it was harmless. Playgrounds are full of unpleasant racist and homophobic language. That doesn't mean that it's OK to use it on-air.

And in a less well reported episode, that Sony award winning doyen of 6 Music, George Lamb, acted like a school bully after legendary Kinks frontman Ray Davies decided that he didn't want to get involved in a specious "interview" - sample questions "what's your favourite vowel." When Davies thought better of the interview and tried to use the excuse of a poor line to get out of the interview, refusing to continue it when called back, Lamb used it as an excuse to blast Davies and make feeble jokes at the man's expense.

In all these incidents, we've got people irresponsibly making use of their fame and audience to brow-beat others into submission. Just because they think that the radio equivalent of kids playing knock down ginger is funny, doesn't mean that it is, or is fair.

But is it funny?

Well that really isn't the point. If I pour paint on you, some people might find it funny. You might not enjoy it. Particularly if you weren't a willing participant in my "pour red paint over you" stunt. So even if I promise to replace your clothes after the event, you shouldn't have to put up with my juvenile prank.

In the Brand/Ross incident, the programme wasn't live and therefore someone thought it was OK to transmit it. The BBC is promising an inquiry.

But will any of the DJs responsible have their knuckles rapped in a meaningful way? Ross is the BBC's highest paid entertainer, and Brand is the up and coming star. Moyles is the leading light of Radio 1 and has avoided censure, and I've not heard a thing about Lamb getting told off.

What I really hope that it's not just the "editorial" figure who approved this that gets the blame. It's the easiest thing in the world to blame some producer. Should they accept some blame? Absolutely. But when you're handling your network's top talent, it's not as simple as that. We've seen producers get fired before over some of the faked competitions. But they're not the only ones responsible. Presenters must also take responsibility, and it doesn't matter how feted they might be.

Will DJs be fined or suspended for a meaningful period? Will Brand or Ross make a proper sincere apology without concerning themselves with the political views of a paper seventy years ago (I detest the Mail as much as the next person, but that's irrelevant in this instance)? Next time Radio 1 tackles bullying will they have a leg to stand on if DJs on a sister network are getting away with precisely that?

The real shame is that they're both reasonably talented individuals. Ross can and does make good documentaries. Film 200x is well worth watching. Ross's radio programme can be funny. I must admit I find his chat show persona wearing. The nadir was surely his cringeworthy "interview" with Gwyneth Paltrow earlier this year. It really didn't come across as funny in the slightest, and while Ross went down in my estimation following that episode Paltrow's professionalism increased my respect for her.

Brand meanwhile is someone who had previously left me cold. I admit that I was beginning to warm to him slightly, but this episode has has significantly decreased that.

I expect to see some firm and appropriate action - something beyond just a producer being reprimanded. And some sincere apologies.

A great little gig at the wonderful Union Chapel in Islington with Julie Fowlis singing and playing some superb music in Gaelic. It was real toe-tapping stuff.

And the support from Emily Smith was excellent too. I picked up her most recent album at the back of the hall on the way out. More photos here.

Far too much has been written about Kerry Katona and her behaviour on This Morning a couple of days ago. I can't be bothered to go into it, and if she is ill, I'm not about to link to YouTube clips of her being ill on national television. That's despite whatever I might think about someone who lives their life in Heat and Zoo magazines. If you feel that your interviewee is not fully with it, curtail the interview and either go to a pre-recorded piece or a commercial break. Don't dwell on it.

But I think some of the post-rationalisation has been interesting. First of all we had Philip Schofield defending himself and ITV on Chris Moyles because she'd actually arrived at the studio really late.

I don't doubt that Schofield is an honourable man, but I find ITV claiming to care about Katona's welfare somewhat questionable when my weekly ITV.com email dropped in my inbox today:

"Watch Kerry Katona on This Morning..." said the subject line.

"Watch Kerry's dramatic interview.

"Kerry Katona caused a stir on This Morning this week.

"Did you see the controversial interview? Watch it and see what all the fuss was about."

For which read: it's not fair that YouTube gets all the traffic. We want some of that action.

That's clearly the most important thing happening on ITV this week, because it's the only headline story on the email.

I expect that even now, executives are eagerly poring over their analytic programs seeing what kind of uplift the Katona footage has had.

It's been an interesting week or so for Digital Terrestrial Television in the UK - or Freeview as it's better known.

SDN has somehow been able to squeeze a little extra space out of the platform and put another channel up for auction, and it was won by Discovery.

Before everyone gets too excited thinking "Woo-hoo - Discovery Channel's coming to Freeview," I should point out that it will be a new, so far un-named channel, that will be coming Freeview's way. Expect to see repeats of programmes previously shown (and reshown) on their main brand services.

It was illuminating to read that only one third of Discovery's revenues actually come from advertising. Allowing for some sponsorship cash, some DVD sales etc., and some digital media revenue, that still means that upwards of half their revenues come from subscriptions. Perhaps somewhere in the 70p to £1.00 of your monthly Sky or Virgin Media subscription (I'm guessing). That's not revenue that anyone will give up lightly.

But the bigger Freeview news is the Ofcom announcement that HD is ready to roll on the platform. It looks quite exciting - there'll be a BBC HD channel, an ITV one and a C4/S4C one (depending on whether or not you live in Wales). This essentially means that all those people with HD Ready TV sets who don't currently subscribe to Sky HD or watch movies or play games on their Blu-Ray/PS3/Xbox 360 consoles, might actually have something to watch.

[An aside - it's somehow very funny to hear about people who have a Sky HD or Blu-Ray player and then hook it up to their TV with a SCART cable, and then perhaps extol the virtues of high definition!]

Interestingly, the commercial broadcasters are looking at subcontracting space on their HD channels in off-peak hours. Channel 4/S4C will either offer an "on-demand" service overnight, or sub-let their capacity, while ITV will simulcast between 1800 and 2300, but may also offer "on-demand" services or sub-let its off-peak capacity.

This whole endeavour will require new boxes for everyone who wants to receive the channels to allow for the MPEG-4 and DVB-T2 standards. And I'd guess that it'd be in most people's interests to heavily promote PVR devices rather than simple £20 decoders. If ITV and C4 are going to sublet capacity then viewers will need to be able to record their services. So I'd look out for a "Freeview+ HD" badge on any box I'd buy.

I'm interested in the idea of "On Demand" though. Sky has something called Sky Anytime TV which has never worked on my Sky+ box, but records and saves choice Sky programming for me to watch "On Demand". I'd imagine that it's this kind of thing that ITV and C4 are thinking about. I may not have realised that I wanted to watch Jamie Oliver last night, but C4 knows better and has recorded an overnight version of the show for me to watch at my leisure on an "un-used" part of the hard-disk on my PVR (it doesn't record the peak-hours version because I'm more likely to be using my PVR to watch/record other channels). These on-demand services needn't be HD either. Ofcom was happy in its invitation to apply, to consider multiple SD services to be offered in off-peak hours.

I just hope that sub-letting capacity isn't a backdoor into offering premium rate programming on a subscription or pay-per-view basis.

The other interesting aspect of this is that the new technology that'll need to be employed for HD is exactly that which Sky was wanting to put through with its "Picnic" proposal. To re-cap: it wanted to replace its three current free-to-air Freeview services (Sky Three, Sky News and Sky Sports News), with four premium channels (e.g. Sky One, Sky Sports and Sky Movies - yes I know that's only three). Sky got in quite a bitter row with Ofcom over who was prevaricating and who was providing what information.

With the technology that Sky wanted to implement likely to be built into all Freeview boxes post about 2010, perhaps they'll renew their interest in the scheme? Of course their capacity is not enough to provide HD programming, but they could undoubtedly broaden their offering to Freeview households. While I appreciate the news and sports news channels, I get the feeling that Sky isn't really trying with Freeview. Sky Three is an afterthought that is only very occasionally used well. It's true that you can watch repeats of superior acquired programming like Deadwood on the channel, but with a 0.6% share in September compared to 1.0% for Sky One, you know it could do a lot better. Don't forget - Sky One is not available to Virgin Media or Freeview customers after all!

The one thing that still concerns me about this move to HD is what impact it's going to have on channels that are already being broadcast in that space. To make it clear, Multiplex B - the spectrum being handed over for HD use - currently carries all the BBC radio services, BBC Four/Cbeebies (time sharing), BBC Parliament and the BBC interactive channels (two full service channels, plus the news on-demand channels).

All this has to be packed into Multiplex 1 (currently used by BBC One, BBC Two, BBC Three/CBBC, BBC News, and by regional radio services in Scotland, Wales and N. Ireland), and Multiplex 2 (currently used by ITV1, C4, ITV2, ITV3, ITV4, C4+1, More4, E4, and a radio service). Anybody who watched the coverage of Arsenal on ITV4 the other night will realise that the bandwidth on this multiplex is not spread evenly, and some channels have very poor resolution - especially if you put them up on your brand new 37" HD ready TV. Multiplex 1 is on 16QAM and will move to 64QAM which does allow more capacity - but I'm worried about the quality of the shifted channels, and those already on Multiplex 1, and especially, Multiplex 2.

Ofcom, with its original findings, presented this very simplistic diagram of what would happen:

But I remain concerned that quality is going deteriorate following this shift.

London is perhaps going to get these new Freeview services ahead of much of the country following an announcement from Ofcom consulting over whether a pilot scheme should be held here. But this looks like utilising additional spectrum which means that even if it works fine, we won't know how things will work out when we're limited to the six DTT multiplexes currently in existance.

Of course, post analogue switch-off, there'll be plenty more spectrum around, but Ofcom looks to be trying to make as much cash from that as possible and not simply handing it over for more Freeview services - HD or otherwise.

The Today Programme website has a great audio slideshow from photographer Rankin who's been out to a camp in the Democratic Republic of Congo with Oxfam to photograph some of the people who live there.

There are some fabulous photos which have been taken in a very different way to how you'd normally see such images. The photos are also on display outside the National Theatre on the South Bank. So I shall have to stop by and see them.

There's a fabulous new exhibition of the work of celebrated war photographer Robert Capa currently on display at The Barbican.

It features, in detail, several key events that Capa covered from the Spanish Civil War through D-Day to the end of the war. Alongside Capa's work, we also have that of his partner, Gerda Taro, who shot alongside Capa much of the time.

It's wonderful to see some of the most famous photos of the twentieth century placed in context. So the famous shot of a man being shot and killed in Spain, is surrounded by the shots Capa took before and after it. For some reason, a few people came to question its veracity, but putting it alongside every other photograph that Capa and Taro took that day, makes it clear that it was a horrible accident that Capa caught the moment of the Republican soldier's death.

Incidentally, like many others, I thought that the photo showed the man's brains or skull being blown off, but that's actually a tassle on his cap that we see (I say "we" - but of course the photo's not mine to reproduce here. You can see a smaller representation at the Barbican's website in the top right hand corner, or here at the International Center of Photography).

The other standout images are those that Capa took on D-Day where he accompanied the US troops on Omaha beach. An accident when the rolls of film were being rush developed in London following Capa's return means that we have very few of the photographs Capa took left, and what we do have are not as good as they might be. But they still bring home the horror of war, and they obviously informed Steven Spielberg when he made Saving Private Ryan.

While many papers like the Daily Mail are getting rid of their TV critics, despite the fact that vast parts of their paper revolves around the medium, others provide a fuller service, but I begin to wonder why they bother.

My paper of choice is The Guardian. And they employ one of the finest television critics writing today in Nancy Banks Smith. They also have the excellent Screen Burn with Charlie Brooker.

But then they insist on employing Sam Wollaston as well.

Why should writing about TV be seen as some kind of way to get into comedy writing? We're talking about the medium that is foremost in most people's minds. They spend many precious hours in front of their television, and by and large take it seriously. They care about what they watch - be it Emmerdale or University Challenge. Certainly, people want entertainment, but if they think a programme is rubbish, they don't watch it.

That's why I want to read a critic who can inform as well as occasionally entertain me.

The Guardian also employs Peter Bradshaw as its film critic. Now he may be sneeringly supercilious, seemingly hating most films that he watches. But he does care about them, and even if he only gives Burn After Reading two stars out of five, he at least believes in it, and it's because he takes the medium seriously.

Wollaston on the other hand, reviews an episode of Timewatch, largely concerned about how attractive he finds the presenter.

Phwoar, new TV history totty. She looks like a cross between Boticelli's Venus and Meryl Streep's French Lieutenant's Woman. And she's brainy as hell and writes books.

Yes - I know he's saying it for effect. But over time, you wonder if that's really not all he's thinking about. Was the show any good? Is it worth me watching on the iPlayer?

He then goes on to discuss a programme on Ian Fleming, largely on the basis of how attractive he finds Joanna Lumley. Only a review of the US edition of Wife Swap do we learn anything vaguely interesting - basically that they make stuff up for it and reshoot scenes.

That's not enough. Tell me about the programmes please. And if you can't do it seriously, then maybe I should be looking elsewhere for my television criticism.

Now let me chase down a copy of Clive James on Television.

[UPDATE]

Oh dear. Today's Wollaston column is arguably even worse than yesterday's. Shark sex "looks wrong" to him. This is then followed by lots of guffaw guffaw writing about animals having sex. How amusing thirteen-year-old Guardian readers must find it all.

Later on he moves on to The Sarah Silverman Programme. This has apparantly leapt ahead of Fonejacker as the funniest thing currently on television. Now Silverman is funny - although that's probably debateable if you were in the audience at Hammersmith the other night when you got 45 full minutes of comedy for your £50.

But even the idea that Fonejacker was ever the funniest thing is utterly bizarre. It's a rehashing of the decades old art of phone pranking better practioned in the medium of audio by such people as Victor Lewis Smith, The Jerky Boys and even Jon Culshaw as "The Doctor" on Dead Ringers.

With Wollaston at The Guardian and Kathryn Flett at The Observer, it feels like a horrible pincer movement's happening.

In his Guardian column today, Charlie Brooker says that he watched the third presidential debate live on CNN because they had a fancy graph along the bottom showing what some undecided voters thought about what the candidates were saying as they said it.

Now I haven't yet seen the third debate. It's still on my PVR, because I heard it was a little dull, and anyway, I watched the next day's Daily Show (it must be said, that there was that fantastic picture that came from that third debate).

But I did watch the second debate with accompanying graph. But after CNN had heard from all fifteen or so of their panel, they cut to their panel of uncommitted voters who we were told had contributed to that graph, and heard some of their comments. Yet, there weren't very many of them. In fact I paused my PVR and counted - there were 25.

Those lines have had a lot of coverage, and people seem to like them. But are they really the product of just 25 people? That wouldn't make them terribly statistically significant (of course we didn't get a scale either - just a general up = good and down = bad thing).

For good statistical analysis of this election, go to Pollster.com.

I must admit that I've been pretty poor at writing about films of late, and you might think it was because I hadn't seen any. To be honest, I haven't been to the cinema this year as frequently as I have in the past and it's not solely because the experience is so dreadful these days. But then who, besides the cinema in question, should be responsible for the fact that the digital screening I saw of The Dark Knight seemed to flicker the whole way through because there was a problem with the projector.

Speaking of projectors, I actually got to peer into a projection booth a week or so ago (we were showing some ads at a plush London cinema), and there's a fascinating amount of kit in there. It was also obvious that the projectionist who ran all four of that cinema's screens from a single corridor, was a big Jessica Alba fan with a variety of life-size cut-outs and posters in the room.

Anyway - to the films. Jar City is based on Arnaldur Indriðason's novel of the same name. Well - I say the same name - but in the UK, the book was published as Tainted Blood. The film seems to have had a release in the UK mainly because it's directed by Baltasar Kormákur who previously made the only other Icelandic film anybody might be able to name - Reykjavik 101. But it's still taken its stately time to cross the stretch of the Atlantic to reach us, having been made back in 2006. Of course, we barely have diplomatic relations with Iceland these days, but this is very much a worthwhile film.

As Indriðason's novels have begun to gain ground in the UK, it's worth saying up front that this film is an incredibly good dramatisation of the novel. Iceland as we usually see it, is filled with dramatic scenery, yet here we have a somewhat bleaker portrait of the country. Well worth seeing, although disappointingly, I can't find news of any further books being filmed. A US remake does seem to be on the cards though.

Gomorrah is simply fantastic. The praise it has received in the press is fully deserved. I've always hated films like the Al Pacino version of Scarface (which has nothing on the original) that essentially glamourise gangsters. In Gomorrah, two of the characters - a pair of youths - re-enact scenes from that very film before they find a stash of the Camorra's weapons. When you see them playing with the guns in a river estuary, you genuinely fear for them as they mess around with these very dangerous armaments.

The film is a series of stories that don't so much interlock as take place in the same milieu. The squalid setting of the Naples suburb which feels utterly lawless. While some stories reveal the pettiness of it all, as the various factions of these mafia break up causing tensions, and inevitably deaths, others are more revealing. I think many are aware of the dreadful waste industry scandals that have hit Naples. This film makes it clear, as we see a seemingly respectable businessman heading to places such as Venice to sign deals to get rid of waste. In turn it's buried, mostly illegally, with little regard for safety, in farmers' fields. The land becomes toxic. Nobody cares.

The other fascinating story is of a tailor who tries to escape the Comorra, by teaching Chinese workers how to produce garments to the quality required by the Italian fashion industry. At one point a Milanese fashion house representative seeks bids for a batch of haute couture outfits. The various tailors outdo themselves to underbid one another and offer to complete the outfits in faster times. Nobody in charge really cares about the workers who will literally have to work around the clock to meet the deadlines they've been signed up for.

A Coen brothers film is always worth watching - well with the singular exception of their remake of The Ladykillers - which I only finally saw when it was on TV. Burn After Reading's their latest, and it seems to have disappointed an awful lot of people after last year's No Country For Old Men.

To be honest, I went in knowing exactly what I was going to get, and I got it. This comes from someone who found Intolerable Cruelty to be entertaining in its own way, and The Hudsucker Proxy to be an under-appreciated classic. So a nonsense tale of some supposed lost CIA secrets on a disc, is perfectly fine.

Is there much to be said about society in this film? Not really. There are gags aimed at much slighter subjects, but that's not really the point. Everyone here is just having fun. There are brief moments of violence, but that's par for the course in a Coen brothers film.

The showing I saw was the first packed, paid-for showing of any film I've seen in years. And that was for a 6.30pm screening (albeit in Islington). While it's not joke after joke, I came out feeling that I'd had value for money. George Clooney's goofy; John Malkovich's supercilious; Brad Pitt is dumb; Tilda Swinton is overbearing; and Francis McDormand is insecure - at least initially. And the conversations between CIA officer David Rasche and his superior JK Simmons are fantastic. Well worth a trip to your local cinema - assuming it's not too terrible.

[I must admit that this is a revised version of some comments I already posted on a Guardian blog]

Peter Kay is someone I've observed more from afar than anything. I've never watched Phoenix Nights (shoot me now), and I've only caught bits of his various live routines. I enjoyed the Amarillo video enough, but I really wasn't sure what I was going to make of his one-off X-Factor take-off on Channel 4 last night.

Overall, I was disappointed - it just wasn't funny enough.

The programme was brilliantly close to the real thing. And that, for me, was its problem. The original is already a pastiche of itself with over-hyped editing, long pauses, whooping audience, over the top comments and so on.

I'm sure that they've simply employed many of the staff who usually work on these shows to get the look exactly right - from the stage set to the choreography and the editing.

But that makes taking the mickey out of it very hard to do.

The main problem was with the players. While the "contestants" were all comedy actors including Kay himself as "Gerladine", the show was held together by presenters, judges and "celebrities" who were all playing themselves and had to read lines that had been written for them. And they just weren't good enough. While those shows are scripted anyway, they're not expecting to be getting laughs. In this instance, they were - it's a Peter Kay comedy after all.

I think it would have been funnier if Kay had perhaps played more characters himself - perhaps all the contestants. Or if he'd had comedians taking the place of the presenter and judges. Instead, we had Cat Deeley, who is a perfectly fine presenter, but who wasn't funny delivering her lines.

And I'd have liked a little more subtlety in some of the gags. There were some nice jokes about how little of the price of the phone vote went to charity. But once we'd seen it several times onscreen, we didn't need Deeley telling voicing the joke as well. Just leave it for those who read it to get it.

Also, it was very odd scheduling to put it up against the Strictly Come Dancing results show. Undoubtedly it would be most appreciated by people who love the shows it's mimicing.

While there were some entertaining set pieces like the two women from 2 Up 2 Down being winched into the air to retrieve balloons and cats in a truly tasteless piece of choreography, and one of them falling out of their chair only to not be rescued by Rick Astley until he realised that his line in the song was imminent and he had to drop her.

But overall, I thought the gags wore thin, and I didn't bother with the second half.

Finally, given that this wasn't live, there were a few bits that perhaps should have been bleeped for a pre-watershed show. "Dr" Fox mouthed an expletive in close-up that definitely shouldn't have been left in, and a blowjob gag really isn't suitable that early on. A week or so ago, Bruno Tonioli made a tasteless gag that got him a swift look from Bruce on Strictly Come Dancing. Not clever, but it was live. I'm no prude, but rules are rules and ours are pretty good. So either it should have been edited or gone out a bit later. And I hear that the language was "fruitier" later on. Again, you can curse and swear as much as you like post watershed, but not in a programme that partially airs before the watershed. I really dislike the idea that a show that straddles the watershed should be acceptable viewing for kids earlier on, but not later on. This show is bound to have had a decent sized audience of kids, so it's a bit schizophrenic to have the final part essentially unsuitable for kids (I know we could get into a massive conversation about whether shows aimed at kids like, say, Skins, are really suitable, but that's for another time). Be one thing or another - not both.

So finally, on Friday, came the news that Channel 4 was pulling the plug on its radio operation.

Let's revisit a little history. Commercial Radio has been broadcast nationally in UK on Digital One since 2002. But of late, the platform has struggled to be filled with the ten or so services it needs to fully utilise the bandwidth it has available. At the time of writing, it just has digital simulcasts of the three national commercial analogue stations, as well as Planet Rock. Several test channels and a Birdsong channel make up the rest of the multiplex.

The other national DAB multiplex is that belonging to the BBC, carrying simulcasts of its five core services as well as the World Service, BBC Asian Network and several digital only services including 1Xtra, 6Music and BBC Radio 7.

It was into this world that Ofcom decided to offer a second national commercial multiplex. It must be said that Digital One did have more services on it at the time, but there was enormous disapproval from GCap who believed that Digital One had been guaranteed the sole national DAB slot.

Ofcom put the slot out for tender and two groups responded: NGW and Channel 4 Radio. From the outset, Channel 4 looked the likelier winner, with the company itself offering three services: the flagship Channel 4 Radio, which was popularly called C4's competitor to BBC Radio 4; the youth E4 Radio; and the more adult Pure 4 Radio. It's safe to assume that the latter two of these were music driven.

Other suppliers would make up the rest of the multiplex, with UTV offering Talk Radio, SMG offering Virgin Radio Viva, and other operators providing Sky News Radio, Original, Disney, Sunrise and Closer. Beyond that, a selection of podcasts from a diverse list would be made available.

When the licence was awarded in July 2007, the multiplex was supposed to be on air within a year - or at least one of the channels should be. But there was the small matter of building an entire network of transmitters. Channel 4 was keen that the network should largely be in place by launch, but this was at the same time as the two main UK tranmission companies were merging, and DTT switchover was occcuring.

As it became obvious that no contract had been awarded, conditions were getting tougher. On a corporate level, Channel 4 was keen to get its hands on a top-slice of BBC licence funding. Indeed, Ofcom has readily admitted recently that Channel 4 has a significant funding shortfall. Meanwhile over at GCap, as the group struggled to avoid an inevitable takeover by Global, Fru Hazlitt announced a massive pullout from DAB. The costs were too high, and the rewards weren't there.

That meant the closure of services like theJazz, which had only been on-air for a little over a year, as well as other national DAB services like Core and Life.

So now we were in a position where Channel 4 was short of cash, and still hadn't launched its new radio service despite time having run out. The country (and indeed the world) was heading into a recession, with the resultant bleak advertising outlook. Finally, current incumbant, Digital One was half empty. Anyone who wanted to get on DAB nationally could - if they could afford it.

Fairly early on, it was obvious that things were never going to be quite how they'd first been described. Radio 4 costs £100m a year. No service - however it's funded can afford that. No service could even get close. Indeed that figure is low because things like news is at a lower than true cost because resources are shared across the BBC.

The reality of Channel 4 Radio was that it'd have been closer to Five Live without the sport. An upmarket talk station with a flagship breakfast show perhaps.

Then there were the problems of other partners falling out including the loss of Sky News Radio and Virgin Radio Viva.

The likeliest solution seemed to be some kind of agreement between Global (with its shareholding in Digital One following its takeover of GCap) and Channel 4. With a multiplex half empty, there seemed to surely be a case for the two sitting down. Channel 4 might have perhaps launched E4 Radio (perhaps branding it T4?), and maybe one other, while the other spaces would be filled with Global brands.

The difficulty with that plan is that Channel 4 wanted to be the gatekeeper of a multiplex as the formula would mean that their services would be funded by fees received from other suppliers. This plan would leave Channel 4 as perhaps a partner in Digital One (and some attendant costs in becoming that), and only partially receiving fees from services the multiplex carried. Even these would be limited as the majority of new services would surely come from the shareholders themselves. Then we have to examine Global's plans. With the Heart brand being rolled out across the country, it perhaps no longer makes sense having Heart carried nationally on DAB.

Every local service that will become Heart in the next 12 to 18 months is also carried on a local multiplex. This is a result of incentives put in place to get stations to adopt DAB. By going onto local or regional multiplexes, their analogue licences were extended by 12 years. The alternative was having to rebid for your licence at the end of its period. Most stations took the decision to stump up the cash for DAB in return for that guaranteed additional period.

It was only later that owners began to complain about this cost. And it's the reason that GCap, for all its harrumphing about DAB earlier this year, didn't pull out of local DAB. If they had, many licences would have been up for auction.

So Global doesn't want to put Heart on Digital One. What about Choice or Galaxy? Well they also exist in various guises around the country on local multiplexes. And it's not always worth pulling them off those services because they're probably contracted to keep there, and in any case Global has interests in many of those local DAB multiplexes.

So now we're in a position where Channel 4 has decided at a board level not to pursue DAB. That's a tragedy for all those who've recently joined the company as it began ramping up its staff in advance of a launch. But the big question is what does it mean for the future of DAB?

Against this background, we've also had the Digital Radio Working Group sitting all this year. They're due to report in November or December.

DAB is not dead, as there are a significant number of stations on other multiplexes. In London, where there are three multiplexes, all are jammed full with more stations wanting to get on. It's certainly true that minorities are being especially well-served with stations targeting many religious and ethnic groups.

Local and regional services have to stay on DAB for the time being, because of their licences. But it would be better if they wanted to be there.

The costs are not to be knocked; where once you just had to pay for your AM and FM transmission, you now have to find cash for DAB, the internet, and perhaps Sky, Freeview and Cable as well.

I think the big question must surely be with Digital One. There are services that I'm sure would love to gain carriage on the multiplex, but the costs are astronomical. Recent launches like NME Radio and the new Jazz FM have not found places on the multiplex, and one would imagine that it's because of cost. Planet Rock has just signed a three year deal, but it's still not clear whether the new owner Malcolm Bluemel is treating this as a plaything or a real standalone business. The costs that they must be paying for their DAB carriage alone are horrendous, and it's those that mean new entrants can't make their spreadsheets balance. They're staying off the platform.

Now if I was running an airline, and my planes were half empty because the costs are too high, it'd make sense for me to cut those costs to get my fill levels up. That's exactly what happens in that and other industries. But Arqiva has traditionally maintained its high prices and seems not to care whether or not the multiplex is filled. Perhaps that's just my perception.

That's despite the fact that the entire industry will be stronger with a vibrant range of services available to consumers. They'll buy more sets and there'll be more demand.

The Freeview model has been interesting, but for that to work, we need a strong range of services to be carried on Digital One. We're now entering the critical fourth quarter of the year, when more DAB sets are sold than at any other time.

There are national brands on DAB, but they're still largely transmitted via a network of local DAB multiplexes. The reason for it happening that way is not logic, but the needs of local analogue services to have the licences extended. Perhaps now's the time for rethinking and replanning the whole of DAB. As localness deserts ILR, very few stations are truly local any more - certainly not the ten or so that fill a local digital multiplex.

In the end, I don't have an overall solution, but I do know that we're going to have to behave with flexibility if we're going to come out of this with a strong proposition going forward. What's clear is that this isn't a technology issue; nobody really cares whether we use DAB, DAB+, DRM or some new standard. But we do need a strong digital radio. New services trying innovative things is what's going to keep the industry strong. Up until now, listening has held up across most demographics. However there are worrying trends among younger audiences. And while they shouldn't be the be all and end all, new developments in the technology are what's going to be most important in years to come.

The opportunity's still there.

As always, everything here represents my own opinions on not those of my employer.

Third time lucky - today I finally made it into the Hadrian exhibition. When I'd previously popped in to try to see it, I'd gone on Saturday afternoons when all the tickets for the day had already been sold.

I tried to book online for today, but no luck, so I pitched up early to buy tickets in person. I still had to wait an hour and a half before I could get in, but that's not a problem when you're in one of the world's great museums.

What I hadn't quite realised was that Statuephilia was also on at the museum. This is a collection of five "sculptures" by contemporary artists, placed amongst the museum's other exhibits.

They're quite fascinating - and I decided to take photos of them. Well easier said than done. With four of the five, you can take as many snaps as you like - indeed with a few exceptions, you're free to photograph away inside the museum. The Hadrian exhibition didn't allow it, and although I suspect that the reason was partly to ensure that they sold plenty of £25 catalogues, it was very full and taking photos tends to get in the way of the exhibits for other people.

Taking photos of the exhibits in Statuephilia was also fine for most of the exhibits as I say, but there was one for which photography was expressly forbidden. That, of course, was Damian Hurst's piece. Now as it happens, I did take a photo of his piece. It's not very good, and it was before I read the sign banning it.

I've noticed that it's quite common for Hirst to ban taking photos of his pieces. I was in the Metropolitan Museum in New York last year where he has one of his sharks on display. Once again, the museum was happy for you take photos, but his piece banned it.

Perhaps my feelings on the subject aren't too different from those of some others. The skulls on display at The British Museum really aren't anything to write home about and certainly aren't as clever and involving as Tim Noble and Sue Webster's Dark Stuff which was given plentiful approval from those who I saw it with. The relative merits of the vaguely obscene gold statue of Kate Moss are also in the balance, but it's undoubtedly the most popular piece from the unscientific survey I made today. People were taking photos from every angle. The Hirst piece simply had a woman with her daughter sitting on the floor sketching it, which I assume doesn't break the rules.

Now here's a subject that could leave me in all sorts of trouble, because some may have some very strong feelings about it, but it's prompted by something I heard today.

I was in London, sitting in the sun reading the paper. Nearby a father was playing with his son. He was using DSLR and taking photos of his child.

A charming scene.

Then behind me, another man, sat on his own, also with a DSLR took a few photos. The father realised this and came over.

"Did you just take a photo of him?" he asked.

"Yes," replied the other man.

"Would you delete it please... That's fine."

And then he went off with his son.

Now I suppose that there are one or two fundamental issues I have with this.

On the one hand, if you're a parent, you're probably going to be concerned if someone else - a stranger - is taking photos of your children. You've heard all the stories about paedophiles everywhere. You don't want your child being the subject of some pervert with a camera.

But in fact, if you're out in public, anybody can take anybody else's picture. Just about every street corner has a CCTV camera collecting video of you, and your kids, never mind stills.

Would I take photos specifically of someone else's children in a public place? Absolutely not - at least not without asking some kind of permission if the circumstances were what they were today.

Yet I have taken photos of kids in public before. Here's a favourite I took at the seaside:

Kids were mucking around trying to avoid the waves as they came crashing in against the promenade. It's a fun photo.

Should I have asked permission before I took it? Well there were no parents immediately around as I recall, but the image captured something interesting.

Now faces aren't visible in this picture, but then I was at the Mayor of London's Festival a few weeks ago, which features a carnival procession. I took lots of photos (I've yet to process them) and there were hundreds of kids taking part amid the adults. I've got photos of lots of different things. Just about everyone else in the crowd was also taking pictures.

In that instance, you'd be a fool if you didn't think your child was going to photographed. Indeed I saw photographers posing children to get better images as the various groups processed past my point on the side of the road.

Is this wrong? Is it any better or worse than taking a photo of a child playing?

If you think about famous photos taken all over the world, you might think of images of children playing in bombed out London streets during the Blitz, or kids put to work in third world countries. Did those photographers ask permission of parents? Or have they in fact captured some important historical records?

While, as I say, I can understand the concern of the parent, I worry that it's a state of things to come - I'm guilty before I'm innocent.

When I'm out with my young niece and nephew at the playground, I love to take photos of them, but if there are lots of kids around, I put the camera away. That's from fear of being wrongly perceived. And it's worrying that I think that way. This fear will only get worse.

Interestingly, I also visited the Photographers' Gallery today, where they have an exhibition by Dryden Goodwin that features images of Londoners, including a series of people on the top deck of nightbuses. He didn't ask permission; perhaps an image of you is on the wall of a gallery somewhere? There aren't any kids anywhere, but pictures of people shot from public spaces on public transport or in the street can be exhibited freely.

One final thought. Had that gentleman behind me been a paedophile, even if he had deleted the photo he took, undeleting it later would be exceptionally easy. But let's face it, he almost certainly wasn't and just thought that a photo of a child playing on a sunny autumn day might be quite nice.

These seem to be popular, so I might attempt one a week or so as the mood takes me. Best viewed large (or even original).

Think of them as an ongoing comment on the state of British TV.

Here's me defacing a copy of this week's Radio Times showing today's TV. It's part of a very irregular series.

Best viewed large.

Word magazine's website has a great list of things that people find annoying - or the dumbest things in entertainment. It's a great list, and you can't help but nod as contributors add more and more.

Someone halfway down the list mentions half-hour TV programmes that throw-forward to the second 15 minutes just before the ad-break, then re-cap the first 15 minutes when they return from the break before summarising what's going to happen next.

This doesn't happen on just commercial TV either. BBC programmes have annoying habit of doing precisely the same thing, even though there's not really a break in the programme except to trail the next section. Perhaps they do it because at some point the show will appear on UKTV Homes Style + 1, and then it'll need it because the average viewer of that channel only watches 6 minutes a year, so needs to understand what's happening in that 6 minutes.

Anyway, it's become obvious that these things are terribly easy and formulaic to make. Let's use Highland Emergency as an example. This is a Granada produced programme for Five. I've seen several episodes because I have a bizarre fascination for all things set in the Highlands of Scotland.

The show basically follows Scottish emergency services to various accidents and emergencies. In particular, they especially love helicopter emergencies.

The show opens with a brisk run-through of the exciting accidents and emergencies we're going to see in this week's episode as a teaser. Then we get the well produced opening credits with lots of helicopters and dangling winchmen.

Next we're introduced to the crew of a particular helicopter - let's say it's a Royal Navy crew. They're called to Ben Nevis or somewhere where a climber has been injured. The voiceover tells us that the person almost certainly needs immediate medical care, and that it's a thirty minute flight to Ben Nevis. We see a graphic of a map indicating where on the Ben the injured party is lying. The crew search for and find the missing person. But it's too dangerous to land, so someone will be winched down, although crosswinds make this treachourous...

CUT TO: A quick graphic that has a helicopter and the word emergency.

VOICEOVER: Meanwhile in Lossiemouth...

The action could just stay with the injured party on Ben Nevis, but no. In case we get bored, it instead shows us a different crew, somewhere else, who have to rescue someone who's torn a ligament on a remote Scottish island.

The injured person is on a beach. We're anxiously told that the crew refer to tide times. The tide's coming in. It really is urgent!

Then we arrive on the beach, and there's no sign of the incoming tide. Not only that, but local doctors/paramedics are on the scene. There was little danger of anyone being washed out to sea. The tide's still so far out that the helicopter can happily land on the beach, but before they load up...

We get a preview of what happens next. We see clips we've already seen of the helicopter over Ben Nevis, swiftly followed by clips we've just seen of a helicopter landing on a beach. And because there's no hope of stretching these two cases out through another 15 minute (well 10 minutes once you remove ads) segment, we're told of a third case in Aviemore of someone who's, er, twisted an ankle on a ski-run.

After the break, we get more generic graphics of helicopters and the word "emergency." Then we return to Ben Nevis, with another resumé of the previous action, before we see that, yes, the climber was successfully hauled into the chopper. This is intercut with a few interviews of the crew basically telling us what we've just seen with our own eyes, and what a voiceover person has just told us.

The now familiar graphic of helicopter alongside the word emergency allows us to cut to the new story featuring a doctor who looks after injuries on a ski-run. Who'd have thought? A teenager has twisted an ankle. It hurts, and she's cold. She's brought back to some kind of hut where she looks sulky like any teenager - albeit one in pain. But before anything else happens...

We cut back to the person on the beach who's very unlikely to drown. They're loaded aboard the helicopter and returned to Aberdeen hospital where they're treated.

One more look at the graphic and we're back to Aviemore, where stroppy (but in pain) teenager is loaded into another ambulance and sent off to hospital.

A final graphical interlude and we see clips from all the incidents we've just seen, this time with some kind of special effect applied to the footage - perhaps they're now in black and white. The voiceover tells us that each person went to hospital and what they were treated for. They all lived.

Finally we get a sneak look at next week's programme in which some climbers are in trouble on a mountain, someone's hurt at a ski-resort and someone has a threatening condition on a remote Scottish island.

Repeat times 13.

Of course there's a little more to it than that. The producers tie together stories that happen at night with others than take place around the same time. The implication is always that these things are happening simultaneously, when you know perfectly well that they were probably months apart, that's why it looks like summer in once case, but another takes place in snow covered peaks (Yes - I know that snow covers some peaks pretty much all year round). The same goes for episodes set in poor weather and so on.

Now I'm not knocking these series too much, but they really don't add much to the sum of human knowledge, and the A to B to C editing-by-rote is just a bit sad. There's a really good series to be made with these emergency services, but a Five budget for the 7.30pm slot (up against the soaps), is never going to be enough.

Fringe is Sky's big new import, and one of the first US shows of the new season to get the full order of shows commissioned.

But it's basically The X-Files isn't it? Were it not for a bit of Googling, I'd have even thought that it was shot in Vancouver like early series of that show were. In fact it's set in Boston and shot in New York. Make of that what you will. Personally I kind of like shows being shot in the cities they pretend to be set in. Sitcoms are about the only real exception to this.

So we have Anna Torv (an Aussie) as FBI Agent Olivia Durham, who's got involved in some kind of weirdness involving events that together make up The Pattern. So we have an ultra-conspiracy at the heart of the show. This being a J J Abrams show, that's not surprising. But it's also a little concerning. The X-Files ultimately got caught up too much in its own mythology. Abram's previous series, Alias, was sillier, but by the end, the story arcs made little to no sense - especially to the casual action/adventure viewer. And Lost cannot possibly answer all the questions its set itself.

I really hope that this time, the writers have a big whiteboard or book or something where they note down all the conspiracy and unexplained elements, and then tick them off as they're answered. It's too been too much of a problem in recent years that the nature of US TV commissioning allied to ongoing stories has led to too much dissatisfaction overall.

I quite like the inclusion of an enormous corporate entity rather than just government at the heart of the matter. So we have Massive Dynamic (of course it has a web presence!) at the heart of things. And given the way that big business has finagled its way into things like defence, that seems a good route to travel and explore.

The worst part of Fringe is surely that of Dr Walter Bishop, who is played as an archetypal mad professor. Indeed, he'd put Back to the Future's Dr Emmet Brown in the shade on the scale of madness in mad professors. The character needs reigning in if he's not to become incredibly dull. This job falls to his son, Peter Bishop played by Joshua Jackson - Pacey from Dawson's Creek. He's a grizzled character who has his own issues - i.e. backstory, that'll be later explained - involving Mafia. We meet him in Iraq.

Incidentally, in Fringe, we always know where we are, because massive 3D lettering appears "welded" into the landscape to let us know. It's a stylish gimic that reminds you of the letter-zooming that used to happen in Alias. The only problem is that the device is massively over-used. Once we've seen Harvard once, we know where we are for the rest of that episode, and we don't need to see it again. That said, I was interested enough in discovering how it was done to find VideoCopilot.net which is a fantastic resource teaching you how to use things like Adobe After Effects and various 3D packages. Indeed the site's tutor, Andrew Kramer, worked on Fringe's opening credits, so this is top-level stuff.

At least Fringe gives a new role to Lance Reddick - Lt. Cedric Daniels from The Wire.

Meanwhile, Five has bought the UK rights to another intriguing show also starring an Australian in the lead - Simon Baker. The Mentalist is not some kind of outrageous slur on the handicapped (although a country which happily uses the word "retard" to describe people without approbation is to be questioned), but a series about a reformed psychic performer. This comes from the hand of Bruno Heller who most recently was responsible for the HBO/BBC production of Rome. It has X-Files connections too in that regular X-Files director, David Nutter (how could you ever forget his name) has directed the first two episodes. But it really shares a pedigree with CBS's Numb3rs, the series that features a maths genius solving pretty much all the FBI's crimes on the West Coast.

Baker plays Patrick Jane, a man who used to pose as a psychic and appear on show similar to ones that fill up all too many hours on Living TV. Then one day, a serial killer (who's still at large) murders members of his family, and he changes tack. He's now admitted that he's not a psychic but a mentalist, and he's using those skills to help solve crimes.

Like Monk before him, he's really just a reincarnation of Sherlock Holmes who used amazing feats of observation to deduce truths. It's not played for laughs as much as Monk is, but it quite happily fits into a procedural mix. Robin Tunney (from series 1 of Prison Break) plays Watson to Baker's Holmes, but aside from worrying that there won't be enough mentalist tricks to employ to keep the stories flowing is my only real concern. That and the fact that we're not totally let-in on some of the tricks Jane is employing. It'll be interesting to see this show develop, assuming its ratings hold up and it's not cancelled.

A cracking article from New York magazine on product placement and it's implications. Well worth a read.

We made a video for work the other day at Abbey Road studios. I thought I'd share it here too:

Click through to Flickr for the full size image.

Right - lots of good news on the Ed Reardon front.

First of all, this coming Monday (6th October) sees the return of Ed Reardon with a new series on Radio 4 at 11.30am. I would imagine that we've got another six epsiodes in this new series. Let's hope so anyway.

So set your alarms, tape recorders, iPlayers or whatever.

"The Last Miaow. By Christopher Douglas and Andrew Nickolds. Ed has rekindled his relationship with fellow author Mary Potter and they are in a record-breaking second month of partnership 'bliss'. Elgar, however, is none too pleased."

Second, I meant to say that the first series of Ed Reardon is now, finally, available to buy on CD. It comes on three CDs with two episodes apiece.

And series two is coming out on 13th November.

Throughout the year, there's a never ending series of conferences around the country on all sorts of subjects. It's not surprising as they make lots of money. Fees from delegates easily pay for the conference room facilities and a buffet lunch leaving lots of cash in pure profit. Speakers aren't usually paid with perhaps only their travel and accommodation paid for. But enough of that.

I've had several recent invitations to another conference - The Media Festival. Sounds important doesn't it? Perhaps I should go?

"We have delegates from TV, film, advertising, online, music, interactive, mobile, games and beyond. Join us today for an unrivalled networking opportunity!"

Umm. Well of course advertising, online, music, mobile, interactive and "beyond" are relevant. But isn't there at least one major media missing? In fact there are at least a couple. No radio and no press. Perhaps the festival might better be called The TV With A Bit Of Online Festival?

Now I don't want to sound too overly defensive about the media that I work for. But the trade magazine Broadcast behaves the same way. "Broadcast" refers really to only two media - TV and radio. Everything else relies on different distribution methods. Of course TV is more glamorous and sexy, and there's more news about it as well (although the fact that UK TV Style has commissioned ten episodes of some makeover programme is on a par with finding out that LBC has changed it's overnight weekend presenter). But you do have to turn to page 12 of the magazine to reach any radio news this week.

And, er, that page is it. The magazine runs to 36 pages.

Perhaps it's just the industry we're in.

Still, it can't be easy working for Broadcast. The Letters column regularly runs to a single letter which suggests that nobody actually ever writes to the magazine.

At least this week we do get the pleasure of a double page interview with BBC3's controller Danny Cohen - the man who's just cancelled the only decent sitcom he's got left, Pulling.