November 2008 Archives

We seem to be going through a significant period of remakes at the moment. Actually, that's a little unfair as television has always remade successful programmes. How many Agatha Christies or Robin Hoods have we had over the years? And when isn't there another Austen, Dickens or Hardy production on the cards?

But recently we've had a remake of Survivors for which the jury's still out in my view, and now we hear that The Day of the Triffids is also being remade.

I've not seen the original version of Terry Nation's Survivors, but I'm told that it's broadly the same story as the remake. But Survivors is obviously already following in the footsteps of 28 Days/Weeks Later and even Dead Set. A plague/virus/flu has spread and there are few humans left.

The Day of the Triffids, based on the novel by John Wyndham, the story has already been made into an enjoyable TV series as well as a good radio dramatisation. There's also a film version that I've not seen from the early sixties. I suppose I'm a little concerned that it's being made by Power, who's recent Crusoe leaves a little to be desired, and their Flood was simply appalling. Still we'll wait and see.

I suppose the timing is what's a little off, with this version coming so soon after Survivors. Perhaps some rights were about to expire?

Mind you, another curious remake perhaps coming soon is a BBC/Showtime reimagining of Camelot. Isn't there already a Camelot series running on the BBC? Ah, but this is a contemporary retelling - so it'll be a bit different.

But the remake I'm really looking forward to seeing is the ITV remake of The Prisoner with Sir Ian McKellan. I've only just discovered there's a blog covering its production, which has now nearly finished.

It's due sometime in 2009 and I for one can't wait.

For whatever reason, I've recently ended up on a few PR companies' lists for "Bloggers'" events. I've been invited to a few film screenings here and there - although I've not been able to make disappointing number of them. That's more the shame because screenings tend to take place in and around the West End, and that's where I work.

Then, recently, I was invited to the launch of an interesting new 3 handset which I wrote about here.

Then last week, I got an invitation to a bloggers' screening of the new 24: Redemption two hour TV-movie. The screening was to take place the following Thursday.

Er - hang on. It was going to be shown on Sky One on Monday and it had aired on Fox in the US on Sunday.

Ah. But this was to be the DVD release which was an extended cut, and would feature a trailer for series/day 7 coming in the New Year.

So should I just watch the Sky One showing on Monday, or wait until Thursday to see it in a nice screening room?

Decisions, decisions.

Because I was a little slow in replying my place wasn't secured until the last minute, but circumstances meant that I hadn't had a chance to watch my Sky+ recording anyway. So I headed off to Soho House to watch the screening.

Recent series of 24 have swung wildly between good, and very bad. The most recent series - season/day 6 - began well although it was clear that by the time they'd let off a nuke, they were going to struggle. And the plot involving Jack's own dad trying to kill him was dreadful. The writers looked like they'd struggled for ideas - seemingly repeating storylines that had appeared in previous series.

When the writers' strike go under way in autumn 2007, it knocked production of 24 completely out, and the producers and network decided to skip a year and return in 2009. Early story ideas were going to see Jack Bauer in Africa, and these have ended up being used in this film. In the meantime, behind the scenes Joel Surnow, one of the series' creators was kicked off the show, and we began to wonder whether the over-reliance on torture ("It doesn't work" said Leonardo DiCaprio's character to Russell Crowe's in the recent Body of Lies).

And so to Redemption which takes place in the fictional Sangala in Africa. Jack is holed up in an American sponsored school for local African kids run by the Irish (!) Benton (Robert Carlyle). We're told that Jack and Benton know one another from the special forces, but it's unclear why and how and they might have met.

Across the border from Sangala, a vicious warlord is rounding up kids so that they can be armed and sent into battle - effectively as cannon fodder. In perhaps the film's best scenes, you find kids holding AK47s quite chilling.

The real time concept is kept and we're told that the action takes place between 3pm and 5pm. Meanwhile in Washington, the new president is being inaugurated seemingly without a great deal of help from the outgoing Powers Boothe. 24 of course gave us a black president, and now that we have Obama in reality, they're giving us a female president in the shape of Cherry Jones. We also meet her son, and his friend. But the Washington aspect of the story is really all set-up for the forthcoming series 7.

Back in Africa, the rebels still need more kids despite the fact that they have no time to train them as their attack on the country is imminent. And guess which school's kids is in the firing line. Fortunately there's a hidden cellar where they can hide out - along with the cowardly UN guy who, of course, is French.

Can Jack save the kids with Benton despite the US government having a warrant for his arrest? What do you think?

The build up is quite nice and measured. Despite the short running time, it doesn't run at the same lunatic pace as many episodes of 24 can do. Quite why the rebels would get so worried about Bauer is a little unclear (he kills someone's brother, so there has to be revenge). But in an attack on the school, the soldiers are still after a dozen kids, even when about a dozen adults have been killed in the attack. It doesn't seem worth it!

What was a bit disappointing was the terribly clunky product placement. Seemingly US network Nextel is available in fictional African countries - the phones are held up to the camera just a little bit too long to make sure we can see. And when the US president conducts video chats on three monitor set-ups, he or she sees a massive Cisco screensaver whenever they switch off the video conferencing system. It's a bit clunky.

We also saw a 15 minute preview of day 7 - essentially the first fifteen minutes of the first episode. It begins with a terrific stunt involving the kidnapping of someone. Then we cut to Jack Bauer who's giving testimony about his torture. It seems that all that shooting people in the legs to get information is finally catching up with him.

It's no surprise to learn that Tony Almeida is back - Carlos Bernard's name is in the credits. Yes - I know we thought he was dead. But could he really be working for the other side? We'll have to wait until next year to find out...

Let me first apologise for mentioning Christmas while we're still in November. I take no pleasure in bringing forward a retailing period that's already appearing far too early, and is very occassionally considered a religious festival (for goodness sake, a man died today in a stampede at 5am in Walmart in New York).

As someone who does more and more of his shopping online, I usually don't mind if the retailer emails me regular updates of special offers, perhaps based on my previous shopping habits. But I've noticed it getting worse and worse of late. Last year, in the run-up to final postal deadlines to receive goods in time for Christmas, all the major retailers were sending me at least one email a day. This is overkill.

This year, as a recession looms (unless we're in it already), it's already getting silly. My inbox is daily filling up with mail advertising that day's offers. More often than not, they're not really targeted at me based on any previous purchasers. The retailers effectively see it as free non-spam. I've elected to receive their email and they're going to make sure I receive it.

Well let me tell them that they're walking a very fine line. There is no reason for them to send quite the quantity that they are, and if it significantly increases from the current level, I'll be unsubscribing. At that point - they've lost me.

Email is not a replacement for other forms of media. It's more intrusive, but it's also something I can control, when I turn on the radio or television, or buy a newspaper, there's little I can do to determine whether or not I see the ads (PVRs excepted). But I can and will take too much junk email into my own hands.

So HMV, Argos, WH Smith and even Amazon - you better watch out. I'm sure I'm not the only person who's getting fed up with the bombardment.

Here's an interesting question related to the Ross/Brand affair. Yes, I know I said I was bored of the whole thing, but this is genuinely interesting.

Did Russell Brand actually cost Radio 2 listeners when he was on-air with them? (Or perhaps more reasonably, did he cost them listening hours, when regular Radio 2 listeners just tuned out until his show had finished?)

This starts from a piece in the BBC Trust report. It notes that Brand's Saturday night 9-11pm show "attracted an average audience of around 400,000 listeners. Their average age was 50 and more than 40% were over 55. Just over half were women."

Looking at the RAJAR data for the most recent show, I see that Russell Brand reaches 382,000 listeners - close enough to the 400,000 the BBC quotes. The report states that the average age was 50, although I make the mean age (from reach with a base of adults 15+) to be 52. This is interesting because the mean age of the station overall is actually 50.

So Russell Brand's listeners were slightly older than the station average! I'd suggest that this comes of the scheduling of his show. Overall, 37.9% of Radio 2's audience (based on reach, base - adults 15+) is aged under 45, but for Brand's show this falls to 35.2%.

Put simply, younger people are more likely to be out at that time.

This explains to a large extent, the numbers that then follow in the report:

"The programme was made available on the BBC iPlayer for seven days after broadcast. The edition of 18 October 2008 received 33,000 requests from UK-based users and a total of 44,000 around the world. It was also made available as a podcast for seven days from Monday 20 October and was downloaded 130,000 times in the UK and a total of 168,000 times around the world."

It's fair to assume that these podcast and iPlayer listeners are younger than average. Let's assume their average age was 30. That'd mean that the overall average age of Brand's listeners would still be relatively high at 45. It's worth noting that Brand's weekly podcast was second only to Radio 4's Friday Night Comedy.

You might be sitting there thinking - well that's not that old (Ross is 48 after all). But a mean is only the average. A very significant proportion of those listeners are likely to be 45 or older. As the Trust report notes, over 40% of the RAJAR live listeners were over 55.

But let's return to that 400,000 - or 382,000 anyway. How does the same 9pm-11pm slot do between Monday and Sunday? (I've put shows in brackets, but Radio 2's schedule does change fairly regularly, so I've listed programmes from the start of September which will be included in these RAJAR Q3 2008 figures).

Monday: 655,000 (Radcliffe & Maconie/Big Band Special/Jamie Cullum)
Tuesday: 643,000 (Radcliffe & Maconie/Nigel Ogden/Various)
Wednesday: 573,000 (Radcliffe & Maconie/Trevor Nelson's Soul Show)
Thursday: 559,000 (Radcliffe & Maconie/Mark Lamarr Reggae)
Friday: 509,000 (Friday Night is Music Night/Various/The Weekend w/Claudia Winkleman)
Saturday: 382,000 (Russell Brand)
Sunday: 511,000 (Russell Davies/Malcolm Laycock)

So clearly Saturday night is Radio 2's lowest night of the week for that time-slot - by a significant margin.

But hang-on. Is that Brand's fault, or is it just because Saturdays are a poor night for radio listening in general because we're all out, or watching X-Factor/Casualty or entertaining or whatever?

Brand joined Radio 2 in November 2006. So let's choose Q3 2006 - covering the period just before Brand started at Radio 2. Sadly, I don't have listings for who precisely was on the station at that time, but nonetheless, I do have the numbers:

Monday: 636,000
Tuesday: 600,000
Wednesday: 581,000
Thursday: 581,000
Friday: 491,000
Saturday: 358,000
Sunday: 586,000

So poor Saturdays aren't Brand's fault. There are simply fewer listeners to be had on a Saturday night at that time compared with any other day of the week.

But the average age back then for a Saturday night was 56.

I think that this, in the end, is the most important thing. While the difference between 52 and 56 might not seem all that great - shifting average ages by even a single year is actually very hard to do. This is particularly the case with a large station with a loyal audience.

An older listener who doesn't want to hear speech (Radio 4/Five Live/talkSPORT) or classical music (Radio 3/Classic FM) only really has Radio 2 aimed at them on a national scale. Certainly there are services like Smooth or even Magic that also target that audience to a certain extent. But nobody else does it quite so well.

So why not serve that audience with something they want at 9pm on a Saturday night rather than desperately trying to attract a younger audience?

Now Radio 2 would probably fairly point out that Russell was bringing new listeners to its station. But I still wonder if he wasn't better suited to 6Music whose average audience age of 35 is closer to Brand's - he's 33? Or maybe even Radio 1 (average age... er, 33 - base: adults 15+)?

You shouldn't solely concern yourselves with demographics of course. Older performers can be perfectly well be appreciated by younger viewers and listeners (witness all the crooners who find a new lease of life when they perform at Glastonbury), but let's not forget the service remit of Radio 2:

"The remit of Radio 2 is to be a distinctive, mixed music and speech service, targeted at a broad audience, appealing to all age groups over 35."

If I'm aged 70, and don't want to listen to classical music, then Radio 2 remains the service for me.

Perhaps when the BBC next looks at its statements of policy, it should take account of the older audience to a greater extent. There are already more pensioners than there are under-16s, and the fastest growing age-group in the UK is 80+! This age-group has grown from 2.8% of the population to 4.5% of the population in the last 25 years. Sadly, pensioners have little spare income, which don't make them an attractive audience for most commercial radio operators (witness the decline of Saga Radio which attempted to target 50+). So it's almost certainly going to need to be the BBC which picks up the slack and reaches out to this growing audience.

Yesterday I was about to go into a newsagent, when a couple of kids stopped me just outside. If they gave me the money, would I go in and buy them a packet of cigarettes?

"Sorry, no," I replied.

It's a moral thing - I'm not buying their cigarettes for them. They're under-age, and I'm not helping them out.

The same thought came today, when, in response to a request for present ideas, someone suggested buying the Mamma Mia DVD as a Christmas gift (no names - no pack drill).

Just like I'm not going to help feed some youths' nicotine addiction, I'm not going to support someone's terrible taste in celluloid - even if it's ironic.

I have to have standards. I'd feel dirty just buying a copy. I'd have to explain to the shop assistant that it wasn't for me. I'm feeling a cold shiver down my back just typing these words, and thinking about quite how appalling the film might be.

When I give a gift, however much the recipient desires the gift or has asked for it, the fact that I've given it is a reflection of me and my tastes.

So no Mamma Mia DVDs, no Mariah Carey CDs, no Martina Cole novels, and so on.

Another year - another Ridley Scott film. Scott is responsible for some of my favourite ever films. They tend to be earlier films like Blade Runner and Alien than later ones, but American Gangster last year was superb, while 2006's A Good Year (also starring Russell Crowe) was abysmal.

So where does Body of Lies fit? Well it's not had wonderful reviews, and while it feels a little workmanlike at times, the story is interesting and it certainly feels contemporary. Crowe plays the Hoffman, a CIA director who runs Leonardo DiCaprio's Ferris - an agent in the Middle East. When we first meet him he's based in Iraq, but he moves on to places such as Jordian, Dubai and Syria at various points during the film.

Ferris is trying his best to nurture agents on the ground, but Hoffman, who inhabits a suburban Washington DC lifestyle and seems to permanently have a mobile headset wired to his ear, is in a rush to find the operator of an Al Qaeda cell currently causing misery in Sheffield, Manchester and Amsterdam.

The real intelligence of the piece turns out to be the Jordanian head of intelligence, Hani (Mark Strong), who's men are everywhere and really understand the geopolitics of the region.

We continually see surveillance imagery taken by drones high in the sky, although the Al Qaeda operatives know how to stop the drones tracking them, with a clever desert manoeuvre.

Others have taken against the immorality of most of the film's characters, including the otherwise likeable Ferris. But that's not really a problem in a spy film. I suppose the bigger problem is the speed with which the conclusion of the film's reached. It's all a little too neat and tidy - but then a film has to have some kind of resolution.

So worthwhile? Undoubtedly. But like the Coen's and Burn After Reading, it's not as good as the film that came before it. I just hope that the next film Scott makes is The Forever War and not Monopoly The Movie.

This morning, the BBC Trust rejected plans for a local BBC video news service.

Concurrently, Ofcom published the results of its Market Impact Assessment and concluded that the plans would have had a significant negative impact on commercial news providers.

The BBC proposal would have seen it producing more localised news which would be delivered on demand either via fixed or mobile internet. The BBC's aim was to provide another layer of depth to its current local and regional services which often stretch significantly. For example, if you sit in North Norfolk, the local news will also cover goings on in Watford.

Most commercial news providers were utterly opposed to the plans for understandable reasons. Local newspapers have suffered enormously as they've seen their advertising revenues fall. Traditionally much of their cash came from classified ads, and lucrative property and jobs ads. Yet all of these have - to one extent or another - moved over to the internet. As a result, they have less money to invest in news gathering and we're seeing redundancies, and closures. The one thing they have going for them is their ultra-local news. And they didn't want to see the BBC getting their hands on that.

Meanwhile, local commercial radio operators were similarly opposed to the BBC's plans. As well as their on-air local news provision, the more forward thinking operators have been investing in online local news provision as the newspaper groups have. They want their sites to become the local news portals for a given region. If successful, they're in a strong place to develop new online revenues (seemingly the only area of the UK media landscape that is showing growth).

They make good points, and I think the BBC Trust and Ofcom are probably right. But I think we also need to think forward a little. As newspapers suffer, so their newsrooms are shrinking. Fewer reporters mean that news is harder to come by. As Nick Davies pointed out in his excellent book Flat Earth News, with a retrenchment in journalists, comes a retrenchment in journalism. No longer does either a local newspaper or local news agency have a regular person sitting in the local courts or council chambers all the time.

And we're seeing some local radio news operations being cut back - either by creating news "hubs" for a group of local services, or by even removing the one advantage local radio stations have over other broadcasters, and removing local news at certain times of the day altogether.

Can we really get all our local news online? I'm not sure we can.

If there aren't any decent primary news gatherers - i.e. local news reporters on the ground - then everybody will be republishing the same Press Association copy. And that's not enough. Like elsewhere in an open society, competition is important for news providers too.

I honestly don't know what the answer is, but as budgets are squeezed, plurality of news providers remains important. If we all rely on one source - something that we're getting closer and closer to - then we become less open. Without the concern that your competitor is going to scoop you, a reporter isn't as incentivised to work harder and dig deeper. Who's going to look hard into more difficult stories?

Perhaps beyond that danger is nobody at all covering the news. Local newspapers will have closed down. Local radio will cover things at a very superficial level perhaps having one or two people in the newsroom (including the newsreader). And local television won't really exist and the likes of ITV offers the same "local" news for everyone between Carlisle and Newcastle.

As ever, these are my own opinions and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer.

The BBC Trust reported today on lots of things. Of most interest to the press was the Jonathan Ross/Russell Brand fiasco. But frankly, that's so dull now, I can't be bothered to get into it at all. Tomorrow's papers will be all over it.

Of far more interest, in the same report, is the response to Jonathan Ross' interview with Gwyneth Paltrow.

Undoubtedly Ross was crass, and like "complainant 1" in the report, it wasn't the languarge per se that I found troubling, but the context. Ross was like some juvenile schoolboy, and you got the feeling the Paltrow was just being professional in agreeing to everything and going along with Ross.

Maybe she did find it funny, but I don't agree. And it was seeing this particular episode that meant that I wasn't surprised by Ross' later antics with Brand.

Do I want him to continue to be irreverand? Absolutely. But I don't want to be squirming in discomfort when I watch his show.

A simple one first of all. It seems that the names of the people allegedly responsible for the death of Baby P are being passed around quite freely via electronic media. But for legal reasons, they've not been named publicly in the mainstream media.

It can obviously lead to a lynch-mob mentality that says that we should all go around their houses and... well... probably nothing, since they've been found guilty and will be sentenced accordingly. That's a fairly cut and dried case. At this point, the law of the land will take its course.

But then there's the case of the BNP membership list. As everyone knows, a version of it has been leaked, and the details contained are pretty full with names, complete addresses with postcodes, phone numbers, email addresses and even additional notes accompanying these details. The fallout has begun with a stand-in talkSPORT DJ no longer being employed by the station and at least one policeman facing possible sanctions (the police force made it illegal to be a member of the BNP because it's at odds with their race relations) [UPDATE - The DJ concerned says he joined for research purposes]. Others are likely to suffer repercussions following this publication.

The leak is clearly a breach of data protection, and although our otherwise dreadful Home Secretary Jacqui Smith is fair in asking "I wonder why it is that BNP members are rather more ashamed of their membership [than I am]?" those individuals are entitled to their privacy while the BNP remains a legal political party.

At this point I should probably make clear that I find the BNP utterly abhorent and their beliefs are completely at odds with my own. But we live in a democracy, so the BNP is allowed to exist.

Yet I still feel uncomfortable about it all. Various mashup Google maps have appeared (and disappeared) plotting the data so that you too can see if there's a racist in your street, and I'll freely admit that I've checked out my neighbourhood, but that doesn't mean it's right.

In the US there are sex-offenders' registers, and that's been mooted over here - a parent wants to know if a convicted paedophile lives near them or their child's school. The argument against it is that once News of the World readers have been around to smash all their windows and set fire to their house, they go "off the radar" and nobody is able to keep track of them - least of all the authorities.

Perhaps there's something to be said for all political party affiliations to be made public? But I'm not so sure. It feels at odds with the civil liberties we've been handed down since Magna Carta (More on this soon in another entry).

So while it all seems a fun game to 'out the local racists,' does it really help in the long term?

And would I be happy if someone published a similar list of gay, Jewish or disabled people? (I'm in no way likening them to BNP members, but they're lists that, if they existed, could easily be misused).

So no, I wouldn't be happy. And frankly, I don't want the Government doing it either with their ID card (or big database as it really is).

So John Sergeant has quit Strictly. Don't say that I don't cover the important issues of the day. What's that about Congo or pirates off Somalia?

What I still find perplexing is the lack of openness in whole TV voting world even post the telephone voting scandals we've had over the last eighteen months or so. We regularly hear that more young vote in Big Brother than General Elections, yet unlike a General Election, where the full results are published, we never get that information in TV contests. Instead, we're just told who wins or loses.

In Strictly's case, the judges count for half the votes, and viewers the other half. Of the eight couples dancing, according to the judges John and Kristina came bottom with 1 point, while Rachel and Vincent came top with 8 points.

Suppose the perverse British public essentially voted in the exact opposite manner putting John top and Rachel bottom - both would end up with 9 points (as would everyone else).

But we never actually get to see the final numbers of voters to allow us to determine what the overall results are. All we know are the bottom two couples. So maybe John has been squeezing through by the skin of his teeth, or perhaps he's been "walzting" through unimpeded such has been the strength of his fanbase. Who knows?

Producers are obviously loathe to publish the numbers because it might influence how people vote next time. But that's precisely why we need to see it.

And thet gets me on to multiple votes. There are no obvious limitations for the number of votes any particular line can make. Why not? OK - a family sitting down in a household may all hold separate opinions and want to each vote (thus cancelling out one anothers' votes - but hey...). But a limit of four or five votes per phone line would be easy to implement.

Interestingly, the US version of the show adopts a percentage format that means that a very low scoring couple is at an extreme disadvantage however popular they are. This is much better than the British system where even a big points gap might only mean you're one point worse off than the couple immediately ahead of you.

Anyway, it's all moot now, and frankly I don't even care about it that much. It's an entertainment show and not a dance competition. Although quite why the Beeb hasn't quietly reinstated a regular version of Come Dancing in Strictly's off-season, I'm really not sure. It'd surely be popular early on a Sunday evening. And I'm sure Anton would be happy to present...

There's a new series of The IT Crowd starting this week on Channel 4. Hurrah!

In the last series, one of the episodes opened with Roy and Moss sitting down to watch a DVD. We then saw a brilliant mock DVD piracy advert to warn viewers of how bad the criminals you're supporting are if you buy pirate DVDs.

We all hate these things - and they only ever show up on legal DVDs.

Anyway, I grabbed the video and put it on YouTube. It's 45 seconds long, and it's been there since September last year. Of course it's not mine, and there are loads of other versions of it online as well. Writer Graham Linehan obviously touched a nerve.

So how amusing today to get the following email:

Dear adambowie00,

Your video "Video Piracy" has been identified by YouTube's Content Identification program as containing copyrighted content which Channel 4 claims is theirs.

Your video "Video Piracy" is still available because Channel 4 does not object to this content appearing on YouTube at this time. As long as Channel 4 has a claim on your video, they will receive public statistics about your video, such as number of views. Viewers may also see advertising on your video's page.

As I've said, before, I'm happy that Channel 4 has an enlightened attitude to using YouTube like this.

But I can't be the only person to see the irony of the situation here...

BTW - I do of course own a copy of the boxset of Series 1 and Series 2 of The IT Crowd which are authored brilliantly! I would still advocate that an elightened attitude leads to more revenues in the long term.

A story in Marketing magazine leads me to the Asda site where it has launched a series of own brand electrical items.

These include an Asda DAB digital radio that sells, online at least, for the princely sum of £24.47.

A DAB radio for under twenty-five quid is fine by me, and thankfully, the set comes without any obvious signs of "Asda" branding.

But what I really love in the description. This radio comes with a "Gyro signal DAB module". Ooh. Impressive. I was looking for a radio with one of those!

Even more amusing is the fact that the tuner runs to "2 decimal places." So no longer do I need to listen to Absolute Radio on 105.8 FM when I can listen to it on 105.80 FM!

(NB. Yes, I know having this level of accuracy is useful on things like multi-band shortwave sets, but I don't see it as a feature to be promoted on a bog-standard radio).

It might have cost attendees (or their companies) cold hard cash to attend, but the audio from this year's Radio at the Edge is now available as a series of downloads as well as a summary podcast.

Entertainingly, the one session that isn't available is the Collings and Herrin podcast which they've deemed "uncompliant"!

Happily, this is available via their own podcast - it's number 37a.

These are interesting times for Kanagroo - the BBC Worldwide/ITV/C4 joint venture that, simply put, is supposed to do for commercial (and commercially sold) TV, what the iPlayer does for the BBC.

Last week Ashley Highfield quite the consortium after four months, having moved across from the BBC mothership to take charge. And a long piece in today's MediaGuardian suggests that the project has been ridden with internal politics.

It's also true that the venture has been knocked off its timetable by a Competition Commission investigation which attempts to identify whether the consortium would be monopolistic.

The problem with all of this is that it feels a little like the record companies all over again. I suppose the organisations are at least talking, and know that they have to do something and make some money. But exactly how and what seems to be the question.

In the meantime, iTunes steals a march on video as it has done with music. With its technology being locked to a single, fantastically popular, device line for music, it now has a say so over everything the music industry tries to do. They have to accept Apple's pricing or not be on the platform. They've lost control. Other players have attempted to use Microsoft's format which works with a wide range of non-Apple devices, but they have small market share and are clunky in their usability (see James' piece on his attempts to load some video on a WMV player recently).

The various MP3 offerings might be able to take this on, but they tend to be hampered by not having full offerings - the majors are missing from eMusic, Play.com's MP3 service offers only a subset of what's available on CDs without all the majors on board, and Amazon's MP3 service simply hasn't turned up so far this year despite promises to the contrary.

So iTunes has the whip hand.

And now the same is happening with TV. If you want to go out and download a film or TV show, you really only have one choice - iTunes. Certainly all the broadcasters offer their own services to a lesser or greater extent. But they're messy - usually streamed - and the user experience is not nice. Only the iPlayer can really compete - and it was actually a latecomer to the market with most of the other broadcasters long having since put their offerings live. The iPlayer has been well marketed - with catch-up reminders accompanying every trail on-air as well as bespoke trails for the service.

There's nowhere else to go. It's not even as though iTunes is actually that good for film and TV. The TV is largely US fare with a limited amount of British TV. That's one of the reasons the Competition Commission got involved of course - one gets the impression that ITV and C4 are holding their programming back to a certain extent. And films are slow to arrive on the platform, often only being available to buy in the first instance, with less profitable rentals coming later (This is unlike Blockbuster, who needs to recoup the cost of each DVD - so multiple rentals on release make sense, as well as offering the copies for sale. Apple on the other hand, does not need to "recoup" a download's cost, so it prefers to "sell" at a higher price rather than "rent" a digital download).

For a strong and healthy marketplace, we need more than one major operator, which is why it's important that Kangaroo gets off the ground. Of course, ir's important that programming is not limited to one supplier - I want to able to choose buy the new Indy film (or not) in HMV, Zavvi, Sainsburys or ASDA. But delays in getting the project off the ground just makes Apple stronger. As it did for music, it has already positioned itself in a good place for portable video with DRM attached (and that, sadly, is going to be necessary in the short-term). That's not to say that other deals can't be done - the Sony PSP is an obvious route to market as well as Windows Media video devices. Deals with mobile phone operators would be good, although the manufacturers and networks tend to want you to use their own offerings rather than those of third-parites. But don't mess around - and get cracking!

We do now hear that a trial will launch in January following an alpha next month. This is ahead of possible approval from the Competition Commission in late January next year or early February. The sooner the better...

I never know quite what to make of Children in Need. Simplistically it's simply a fund-raiser to help children in variety of ways shapes and forms. And nobody can argue with that.

But there are the other elements of it, that I always find uncomfortable. It's notable that Channel 4 always gives its comedy programmes a week off when Children in Need is on. This time around it ran Four Weddings and a Funeral.

Then there are the big cheques from large corporations - supermarkets and the like - that all have the companies names on them. With the cancellation of the Jonathan Ross show, bands and artists with their Christmas releases out, have nothing much beyond GMTV or This Morning to appear from. So Children in Need this year gets a big name line-up. They're all doing it for the kids you understand, and not to remind people who only buy one new CD a year that their new albums are in shops now.

Certainly the various soaps compete to outdo one another with either musical numbers or bizarre crossovers with other shows. And then there's the regular news readers song and dance number. They're harmless enough.

But we get West End musicals that helpfully all advertise their availability (do theatre audiences get short-changed on Children in Need night, or do they all hop on limo-bikes to W12?).

I know I always sound like I'm some kind of anti-charity person, and Children in Need is in no way as bad as Comic Relief in the way that commercial sponsors get thirty seconds on the BBC (that truly is outrageous, and I really hope it changes next time around), but I still get a little uncomfortable at the commercial aspects.

I got invited along to the launch of a mobile phone the other day - the INQ1 (pronounced "Ink"). But just calling it a mobile phone is a bit harsh - it's more of a communications device than anything.

It comes from a new company who are looking to target people for who iPhones, Blackberrys, and Nseries Nokias are out of their price range (or desire). These are great, but expensive devices, and that means that the bulk of the market aren't interested in them. (I, of course, am interested in them, and currently quite like my Nokia N82).

What INQ has done is produce a device that serves a purpose and does it well. This, if you like, is the Facebook phone. Indeed we got a pre-recorded message from Mark Zuckerberg (a bit wooden, but then he's not an actor), telling us how much he loved it. Facebook is essentially built into the phone, along with Skype, eBay, MS Live Messenger et al. What is very clever, and has been done nowhere else, is the way it imports your contacts from these social networks into the phone.

So your Facebook contacts are now your phone contacts, along with photo profiles, and other data. The phone grabs similar data from your other networks and then lets you merge the various people together. You have to do this because in one system I might be "Adam Bowie", in another "A Bowie" and in another... well something very different.

The always on nature of the phone along with the built-in all-you-can-eat data seems good value, and it means that your Facebook updates ping the phone as they come through.

This is a basic phone, but at a reasonable PAYG price point or free on contract, it's going to appeal to a lot of people who don't need all the bells and whistles but just want internet connectivity wherever they go.

What is clear is that INQ and Three do seem to understand the market, and where there's a gap in it. I think that this could be pretty popular.

Disclaimer: I was invited to this launch presentation, and was given a memory stick, a poster and a t-shirt. So I think I'm being impartial!

Apologies upfront for the rawness of this text. I'll tidy it up later.

To Radio at the Edge (where there's some free WiFi), to hear about the latest goings on in the audio world.

After introductions from James Cridland, and an opening from Nick Wallis, a familiar face - to me at least - Clive Dickens, presented the changes that have been made as Virgin Radio changed to Absolute Radio.

This included the Google Trends information as well as details about our ongoing advertising campaign.

Finally, Clive talked about Open Mic, a new initiative to talk to the Absolute audience about what the station is doing right, and what it's doing wrong.

DAB - Dead and Buried?

James Ashton of the Sunday Times introduced the session reading out a series of stats about the state of play with digital radio in a basically very factual manner including set sales, and recent things that have happened with Channel 4 Radio and the question over what Global will do with Digital One.

Tony Moretta of the DRDB opened things up with a "defence" of DAB radio - one in three households have a device, with 14m people listening a week. And these people listen to more services.

He confronted what he called urban myths noting that it was the "only" way to hear stereo Absolute outside London (not strictly true if you listen via TV or online, but very important, certainly). He said that 88% of people rated audio quality as good to excellent. "DAB doesn't work in cars" - well it doesn't if you don't have an in-car DAB, he pointed out.

He also said that the internet isn't the future of radio; it'll be part of the ecology, but DAB will be the mainstay. The iPlayer's great, but it won't work in the car, walking around or even in the kitchen.

He concluded that it was very healthy at the moment, and he urged people to focus on things that will appeal to a wide variety of products. Add in colour screens, EPGs, PVR functionality, and WiFi.

Paul Fairburn of Smooth said that GMG weren't "rabid enthusiasts." They'd see how it went, although they saw the costs as very high. He said that they were on all the usual platforms - and indeed they may withdraw from the odd one if the costs didn't add up. But they'd be stupid to drop DAB. 8.5% of his listening comes from DAB. He talked about cars being important, but while screens might be nice, he didn't want to have to stump up to pay for additional "bits."

There were a couple of references to some "machinations" within the digital radio industry - and he wouldn't say what platforms they would come off. The emaill had gone out however...

Mark Friend at the BBC referenced a recent fall in listening off a high in 2004. He said that we can't just rely on internet or similar. He said that contrary to what some people seem to think, the BBC doesn't deliberately degrade its signal online [who's suggesting that?]. There have to be a wide choice of devices and wide choice of listening options.

Multicast and WiMax will be critical in the future, but key is the cost. The killer at the moment, he said, was analogue and digital dual cost. He asked, rhetorically, whether we should pull out of DAB as Finland did, but referred to all the sets in the market. Universality is key to the BBC and DAB is part of that.

He said that a switch off of the national networks on FM was part of a possible future and that the BBC is working with the DRWG to determine whether and when national networks might be moved across.

Ashton asked if the BBC could lead the "Freeview moment" for radio. But Friend said that it had been a unique case, and he wasn't sure what it actually meant in terms of radio.

He said that the BBC's share of digital listening was the same as analogue listening. [That's not quite true - particularly for DAB where it's more like 65% of the market compared with 57% of analogue listening. I think that commercial radio is strong in the digital realm in spite of this].

Peter Davies of Ofcom also addressed the "Freeview moment" and pointed out that there were only 600,000 ITV Digital/OnDigital devices when Freeview launched. DAB's much further down the path. He talked about new launches of digital radio internationally - and acknowledged that different tehnologies were being adopted in places like France and Germany. But these differences didn't matter, because the overall standard that had now been agreed allowed for this.

He said that the DRWG was very important with everyone sitting down at the same table. But DAB has problems structurally, with cost, and the downturn of the commercial radio market. He said that restructuring talks were ongoing and nearing a conclusion, although Channel 4 radio had obviously changed things during the process.

Ashton asked if licencing D2 was a mistake. Davies replied that it had been driven by the market, with everyone except Gcap being keen on it.

Handing back digital licences is tricky, with most analogue stations having taken 12 year rollovers. If a station hands back its digital licence they'd probably lose their analogue licence. He said it would be unfair not to enforce those rules even if lots of people did it at the same time. It'd be unfair on other stations who hadn't adopted DAB.

He said that there were probably structural issues as to where and how services were placed with national stations being carried on local muxes but that perhaps that left local muxes short of services. The picture is not quite how it might at first appear.

He was asked about the possibility of a hybrid national/local multiplex. He said that it wasn't wasy as at the moment nationally you can't offer local advertising opt outs on the national mux because it's a single frequency network. So quite how the restructure might work is not straightforward.

Darryl Pomicter of Ressen Design talked about internet radio from a prepared statement about the strengths of internet radio.

There was then something of a discussion about various numbers - particularly in relation to downloads.

There was a strongly made point from the audience about how the two real reasons for many still being in DAB is the 12 year rollover and the profits accruing from owning multiplexes.

Peter Davies refused to be drawn further, but said that stations didn't have to get into DAB when they had. It was however, argued that the picture had been different five years ago.

Nick Piggott asked about what the costs for IP radio delivery would be. Mark Friend said that he'd not looked at it in cost terms. Peter Davies said that DAB was cheaper nationally than FM, but that the problem was dual broadcasting.

Paul Fairburn said that last time he'd looked at the numbers, it was vastly more costly to reach everyone with a stream than using broadcast technology. Pomicter said that it was more a complementary medium.

Tony Moretta said that we shouldn't hold out hopes on WiMax which will need the infrastructure of mobile phone networks, and few would be investing in that kind of technology.

From the audience, Matt Degan said it was great if you had an FM licence, but hours generate cash, and of all the platforms, hours come digital radio. He said that we should look at some of the Asian services that know their markets very well to make them work.

A commenter said that if you actually look at the more niche services like 6Music, Planet Rock or even Five Live Sports Extra, the numbers at the peak were relatively small and they could use IP as a cost effective alternative.

Mark Friend said that if you didn't use DAB then even fewer would listen to it.

Bits, Bytes and Boats - Kelly Shepherd
BBC World Service Future Media

Shepherd began her presentation with a number of stats: 183m listeners and a combined 13m users per week for the website of the BBC World Service.

They decided last year that they should put audio at the heart of their redesign. This was done by creating a community to help carry out redesign. It was relaunched in December 2007 and removed many of the feeds that the previous site had been a mish mash of.

Currently they offer podcasts of 35 programmes - predominantly in English. They've had a podcast offering since 2005.

[Like Absolute] the BBC WS realises that iTunes is an important place to get podcasts.

An important part of the offering is mobile. All the sites either are, or will be available in mobile form. There is also a JAVA application for updates available in several languages.

And like other parts of the BBC they're embedding video into their sites. Arabic has already had a huge impact in the first few weeks. Persian is next up.

The language video content is now also available on YouTube in their own channels.

The audience also wants to know about the presenters and the site has individual video introductions to them all.

Shepherd said that the title of her presentation in part refers to a project based around a Bangladesh river journey looking at climate change, but using blogs, inertactive maps, Twitter and so on.

The BBC WS sites also have user generated elements. There are messageboards in a variety of language, and they even offer virtual keyboards to let people use languages in internet cafes.

There is also a "global conversation" in multi-lingual debates. People have been able to submit audio and video using services like Odeo to capture it. These elements have in turn ended up in programmes.

The BBC WS sees it as important to change as the audience changes.

Getting Intimate with the Audience

Fi Glover's chaired this session with Iain Lee (Absolute Radio), Rory Cellan-Jones (BBC) and Dan Heaf (C4).

Iain began by getting upset (!) when Rory started using Twitter from the stage.

Fi wanted to know what the "hot ticket-est" stuff that Heaf was doing now that he couldn't have done five years ago. He said that it was using data that's now available, and what it now meant to be someone's "friend".

Rory said that it was all working, but said that he didn't think he was working. He's been blogging and putting videos on YouTube. He said that he's been Twittering like mad. He then get out a piece of paper (!) with things that people had said in response to a question that he'd earlier asked the Twitter audience.

But is it a good use of his time to "broadcast" to his thousand followers instead of talking to many millions on the Today programme.

Iain Lee said that he still thought it was worth talking to his audience online rather than using a broadcast on the radio.

Heaf thought that if you have a large audience, you should make sure that you don't give a disproportionate amount of your time to a tiny subset of your audience.

The discussion moved on to paid-for options for podcasts, with discussions around Danny Baker's podcast. Iain Lee mentioned that only Ricky Gervais had made it work although Stephen Fry was moving that way. He said that if he charged for Shindiggery then he'd only get about 10 subscriptions and they'd share it with their friends anyway.

Heaf thought that a Russell Brand podcast might do quite well just now.

Rory says that you have to be cautious with online information. He suggested that you start by disbelieving it, and then see if you can verify it. The BBC also has problems with impartiality. If someone's on Facebook should they talk about their feelings towards political figures.

Iain Lee spoke about how he's learnt his lessons about what you can and can't say on-air, and he can be looser online. He said that you can try stuff that might not work on the radio and if you fall flat on your face, then so be it. It's not "better", it's "different".

Heaf thought that there aren't enough people in the UK creating their own content and we should do more to encourage them.

Fi Glover wondered if there wasn't an element of the emperor's new clothes about it all. Do a small number of people have disproportionate impact? Cellan-Jones said that you have to be wary of that, and there are special interest groups that can try to bias you.

Asked whether it changes the way you listen, most said no. Most people listening to a phone in can't be bothered to text or email in. Lee says that he'll happily shout at an idiot like Jon Gaunt, but he won't bother phoning in.

Heaf said that, for example Twitter, was more about content discovery than what someone else had for breakfast.

UGC, says Cellan-Jones, is a long way in, with the phone-in programme on the radio being the best and most mature example. Perhaps, he thought, there'll be less one-size fits all stuff, but he wasn't sure that there'll be much more in the way of getting more stuff online.

It can be useful for chasing down case studies. But there is a fightback from some staff asking whether they should be using it all the time. Should someone's mobile phone photo be used ahead of a professional image of the same thing.

Heaf thought that the rise of on-demand media is going to change the nature of editorial and also the distribution mechanism.

Glover wondered if this was a generational thing. Most of the audience had grown up like this, but with on-demand media, younger listeners might expect things very differently. Heaf thought that while you might want live news in the morning, the daytime could be very different.

Lee thought that radio stations will be primarily radio stations. He said that Tommy Boyd was trying to set up a radio station that was all pre-recorded for self-scheduling. He said that he listens to a lot of radio on-demand, but not necessarily live. But he thought that there'll still be people who want live programmimng.

Glover wandered if Lee downloaded things he didn't like. He said that he tried stuff and would give it a chance. He talked about people who phoned up and said that they didn't like him. He asked why they listened?

In response to a question Cellan-Jones said that there was a certain crisis of confidence when people spent too much time looking at the most read items e.g. man marries goat.

Are Rory's followers ambassadors to his audience? Definitely. He said he uses at a sounding board and a resource. But it is a promotional mechanism. He'll advertise forthcoming stories and get instant feedback when they air. But it's "dangerously seductive."

Glover wondered about the time constraints on him. He said that it is very time consuming - he spent a lot of the weekend on this.

A respondent wondered about Fi's own stuff - with Facebook profiles and blogs for Saturday Live. Glover said that they'd responded to a specific need. The blog has been less successful but Facebook has worked really well some of it down to the nature of the programme and to "feel the love when we weren't on air."

A question from the audience asked about reaching hard-to-reach audiences using these technologies. Heaf thought that some of these tools offered the single most useful mechanism to allow feedback, but are these organisations listening and engaging.

There was something of a discussion about the Brand/Ross affair, and the difficulty in responding to it, and the level of what would be appropriate.

- Lunch -

Death by a Thousand Cuts: More Choice = More Noise

Nick Wallis chaired this session about personlised music, with representatives of the BBC, Sony (not SonyBMG any longer) We7 and last.fm.

Jonoas Woost of last.fm which, of course, is all about personalisation. He explained how last.fm works and scrobbles your music to determine what you might want to listen to.

Frederico Bolza of Sony has a job discovering how to stay relevant in the new world. He said that his job was to find artists and then to get the music to them. Last.fm, We7 and the radio are all channels for them to get their music out to listeners.

He said that 90% of their revenue comes from the sale of recorded music with most of the remainder coming via PPL from radio. These new areas don't yet pay very much.

"Choice doesn't necessarily help you find things." Discovery is important. Without it, you're left with infinite choice you have no choice..

Steve Purdham of We7, which launches tomorrow, said that it can be like a needle in a haystack. He said that having found something in particular, people then get lazy and want to go back to the radio model. So you get into the recommendation phase via either friends, automated systems or radio producers. He said that We7 were trying to harness those choices. He said that he had to offer something that was better than the pirate options.

When asked how it was better than last.fm, Purdham said that it was a different model. It was up to the consumer to determine what the preferred model of consuming music would be.

Woost said that there were still lots of different methods of delivering music.

We7 works on an audio advertising basis, whereas Joost relies on display advertising. Both sites sell music too via third parties or otherwise.

Chris Kimber of the BBCpointed out that most people still find out about new music via the linear radio. "John Peel was a filter," as is Zane Lowe. It's how to filter this music perhaps using useful web apps. He said that the BBC wanted to be able to tell you more about what you've just heard on air. Until now, you've had to go hunting around the web, and he saw that as crazy. Similarly, if you discover someone online, what programmes should the consumer listen to in order to hear more?

Kimber's worried about staying ahead of the curve. He felt that they've fallen behind it to some extent - there's no personalisation currently.

The currency is still the artist said Bolzo; that's the starting point. The band is the brand. "Don't wait as long as we did" - he said that Sony was slow. He said that the old model was broken - and the bigger part of the challenge now was the mindset and how it can work. Technology wasn't the real problem. He said until now, it's still easier to do the usual radio plugging. Bolzo sees all these technologies as complementary. He'd love the ability to press a button to feed back what the audience thought of a track.

Kimber said that the Now Playing info was easy if you're limited to 300 tracks played on hard disk. 57% of Radio 3 output is non-standard CDs, so without employing people to type in details live, it can be hard to provide up to date information all the time.

Purdham said that radio has to get onto the conveyer belt sooner rather than later. You should be able to get more information about any track you hear online or on the radio immediately. Technology allows us to do that now he said.

Purdham: "We've been doing this for 18 months and we have no idea how we're going to make money out of it."

He said that we don't yet know how large the pie is.

Wallis wanted to know how radio stations were going to get a cut of it. He wondered if Apple hadn't already walked away with it. Purdham said that in some cases it could be easy, but that didn't work on the tube.

Woost wasn't sure what the battle actually was. What pie is commercial radio wanting a slice of he wondered. Where is the Zane Lowe of commercial radio, he wanted to know. He said commercial radio had to take risks.

"I don't trust a single commercial radio station in this country," he said.

Bolza pointed out that the last.fm application was one of the most successful applications on the iPhone.

Kimber pointed out that there was no point to the BBC doing a last.fm type thing. "Zane Lowe is going to give you something that the wisdom of the crowds isn't."

He thought that there was a big opportunity here for doing something more mainstream. Most music discovery services are still quite "geeky." The BBC would be targeting that mainstream.

Wallis wanted to know about futurology. What was going to happen to that great live moment when you know that 4m are listening. Kimber thought not - we'd have both. There are still going to be times when you just want to put the radio on. And there's the boredom aspect that means on demand services don't offer - serendipity.

In the future listeners will listen to on demand and live services thought Kimber. He also said that programmes will have to be broken up so that someone can get, say, everything about the Killers.

Purdham says that they have to chase the fans' desires and "feed" people as they want to be. Technology will make this easier. It all comes back to the consumer he thought.

Wallis wondered how music might suffer from all this as a result. Are all bands going to sound the same - losing regional identities. Bolza said that you can't hold it back. He said that record companies have to work harder and be more attentive. A fan's attention has to be earned and deserved. Fans will go wherever the hell they want.

Woost saw more of the same in the future as they're a media company. At the moment, their audience is still quite geeky but is changing. Amazon is mainstream and that's what they need to be. But the social context of last.fm is important.

There was a question from the audience about the use of the data. Everyone was concerned about privacy issues.

Another questioner wondered about competition from mobile operators such as Nokia's Comes With Music initiative. Perhaps it'll compete with us, thought Woost, but he wasn't too worried seemingly. The audience can already get it free. Kimber thought that 1m tracks on a mobile phone was scary. Bolza said that it was to do with the editorial controls and filters.

Matt Wells at The Guardian wanted to know about the BBC's personalisation plans. Kimber said that it was about using experts in their fields to provide recommendations. He said that he didn't see the option to listen to specific tracks on demand being on the BBC's roadmap. He said that it wasn't about the BBC offering that track. Purdham pointed out that the links could come out of the BBC elsewhere.

Visualising Radio - John Ousby of the BBC and Robin Pembroke of Global

John Ousby began by presenting something that was remarkably similar to a presentation I saw him give at The Digital Radio Show last week.

But it's a good presentation with demonstrations of TV, online and radio visualisations. He demonstrated a recent experiement the BBC recently had with Scott Mills being webcast from his flat.

He also ran through various other experiments with different BBC networks including Adam and Joe on 6 Music and Radio 4 as well as user generated animations.

He then did a live demo of Radio 1's Band in Your Hand. And it worked - well worth trying yourself if you have a Windows PC and a webcam.

Ousby reminded us of the Lobster - a mobile that was available via Virgin Mobile that for a while allowed you to listen to radio (and watch TV - but few did) on a mobile using DAB.

He talked about the opportunities from Slideshow on DAB devices, as well as what's available on DTT and cable.

Finally he showed us a possible way of pulling in and displaying a variety of information on appropriate platforms.

Then we moved onto Robin Pembrooke's presentation - he trailed an exciting new iPhone application that we'd have to wait to see.

At a tough time for commercial radio, Pembrooke thought that some of the ideas that visualisation brings could be a "game changer."

The key information is still what's playing. He said that the last 10 played tracks on Heart's website accounted for 40% of traffic. "That might say more about Heart's website."

He highlighted some research that shows that audio and the web work well improving clickthroughs. And of course commercial radio is able to monetise those clickthroughs.

But of course commercial radio doesn't have the resources of the BBC. It can be labour intensive (although he pointed out that Chill's data was excellent), but the can also be bandwidth intensive. And it can make things more memorable than we might wish (we saw a still from YouTube of Brand/Ross).

And of course, users don't always want to see everything visualised.

He pointed out that mobile streaming isn't scalable and that it kills battery life. He hopes that DAB will be paired in a slightly more elegant way than currently.

The Pure Evoke - I didn't win one in the draw - is mentioned and the congratulated.

"Black and yellow is a step forward."

But it's still a clunky interface.

"Audience = £" read a big slide.

Pembroke then move onto his new iPhone App. Previously they'd been the first to offer streaming, and now offered additional functionality with now playing, news etc and commercial opportunities.

It looks quite smart and allows tagging to come back to the information at a later date. This allows them to buy the track via information and allow commercial opportunities to link through to advertisers' websites.

Overall commercial radio can't afford the "specials" but there are options for visualisation.

The Chief TwiT Speaks - Leo Laporte

Possibly the most technically challenging thing ever attempted at a Radio Academy event was the session with Leo Laporte session via Skype. Needless to say, all wasn't smooth immediately, but eventually we got online.

Leo began by letting us know who he is and where he comes from.

TwiT reaches 175,000 - 250,000 downloads a week by unique IP addresses. He mentioned the various other shows he produces. Co-hosts get paid and then there's advertising co-op money. In total 470k a month in reach in the US and 50 hours a month.

He said that the advertising was all US only. Although the companies are usually global, they're not able to monetise a third of t he audience as it's outside the US.

Then he spoke about the video service he's launched. They've got as high as 10,000 simultaneous people watching live. Last night's TwiT was 5,000.

He said that it's all relatively cheap with the bandwidth being the most expensive with various dedicated lines for them.

The downloads are the hardest part with 4-5TB of data downloaded a day, but nearly all the revenue would go towards this if they weren't able to do deals. That could be as much as $40,000 a month otherwise.

So far, Laporte says that advertisers are fairly conservative. At first they charged around $35 cpm but it's now closer to $70 cpm. This is big premium over radio which is at around $5-10 cpm (cpt).

Although the prices are high, they're maintaining good usage. They're now earning between $500 and $15,000 an episode in revenues. They know that a downturn is coming. But they know that they're reaching the right audience. And with costs so low, they can continue on, and by the time advertisers are back, audiences will have grown and they'll be in a good place.

He sees NPR as some of the biggest competition at this point. He sees more mainstream media coming into the market. As a result he sees smaller players falling by the wayside.

Asked about how the video is able to make money - Laporte replied that it had grown audiences by about 10%. He said that it also increased the engagement of that audience.

"Our audience take pride [in taking down] any site we mention."

He says that so far they've not charged extra for video. But they've tried product placement. He gave the example of an energy drink which they drank on the show. They've also tried selling clothing.

He pointed out that he has explain the metrics to a lot of advertisers and education is important.

Asked about whether he'd give up his regular radio gig, he said that he wasn't going to give it up as it allowed cross-promotion, and in any case was his primary source of income.

When asked whether or not it would work in other subject areas with non-tech areas, he thought they could. It was all about providing content that was otherwise unavialble.

Finally, when asked about the future of radio in the US, it was clear that it probably isn't HD. He says when asked this by radio executives he gets out his iPhone and demos one of the apps on it from radio operators.

Newspapers are a real challenge; radio less so.

He sees radio over IP as offering a challenge to terrestrial. It won't necessarily takeover. Radio has to create a community, and that's more than request lines and phone-ins.

Overall, it's a competitive challenge and radio could come out better in the end.

Collings and Herrin

I'm not sure it's worth me blogging this, as it's obviously going to be a podcast (as is much of the rest of the day). So I'll leave it there. A very good day. And Ben's asked me to say that his session was best. Where's my fiver?

I love bookshops.

No really. I absolutely love them. Working in central London is great because there are a multitude of them, they open late, there are chains and specialists, and if I find myself with some time on my hands, then they're the obvious place to go.

I like to visit at least every week - if only to see what new titles are out. Now unlike CDs and DVDs which are all released on a Monday, or video games which are released on Fridays, there's no specific day for new books to come out. If there was, that'd be the day I went.

Instead books seem to drift into shops - sometimes well ahead of publication dates, other times well after them depending on how speedy the warehouse operation has been.

Keeping up with new titles is fascinating.

But going to bookshops at this time of year is depressing. We're in the run up to Christmas and some vast proportion of book sales are sold in the two or three months before Christmas. That is, they're sold to people who never otherwise wander into a bookshop. As a result, the shelves are heaving with books by "celebrities" - a number of whom have possibly not even read their own works. Then there are books from TV chefs, the "hilarious" comedy titles all hoping to be this year's Eats, Shoots and Leaves or whatever, Doctor Who annuals, TV tie-in titles, the Guinness Book of Records ad nauseum.

The shelves that used to be full of interesting new fiction or non-fiction titles, are now stuffed with this dross. These books' RRPs are all vastly inflated so that the supermarkets and chains can sell them at 50% discounts and still get a reasonable sum for them.

Gone are the more interesting fiction paperbacks that might otherwise has piqued your interest; something you read about when it came out in hardback that you'd quite like to try. Of the Booker shortlist, only the winner is in evidence, but a stack of Martina Cole books overwhelm it.

Then there are all the calendars. They're all dreadful and hideously over-priced. And they take up valuable real-estate in the bookshop.

I understand that bookshops need to have successful Christmases - indeed the whole High Street sector is suffering at the moment, and I'd hate to see a chain go under. But I do feel that I, as a regular and important customer who spends a lot of money all year round on books, that I'm actually being chased away at this time of the year. Amazon's no better with the same cash-in titles by comedians, most of whom are "penning" autobiographies while they're still in their twenties or early thirties.

Am I a book snob? Probably. Not as snobbish as some by a long shot (Oh, what a shame that there's only one more episode of Ed Reardon left in this series. Series 2 out to buy next week). But I feel that my book buying and browsing has been rudely interrupted. For the next two months I'm going to see the same titles in the same places in all the shops. Then after Christmas, Waterstones and Borders will discount precisely those titles - especially the ones that didn't sell despite the publishers' massive advances, and their appearances on the now little watched Richard and Judy).

Perhaps I need to go somewhere else for my book habit?

Apologies that I've uploaded this so late, you won't be able to catch any of the programmes. "Friday Night With Jonathan Ross" was especially good...

Best read large.

(Sorry too that the pen was a bit thick this time, and the copier I used to scan this in needs a bit of a clean too...)

I like a souvenir as much as anyone. So with Obama getting in, picking a copy of that day's New York Times seemed like an idea. Copies are printed in the UK, but it's a "lite" version and time differences mean that it has to go to press very early.

This evening on NBC's Nightly News, Brian Williams reported that copies were selling on eBay for as much as $30-50 each. Indeed a quick search reveals that I can pick up a copy for over £60 plus another £15 postage.

The I decided to visit the New York Times store which happily sells copies for $14.95 and that includes international postage. Sure, that's a bit of premium over the regular $1.50 price, but I think it still represents good value.

This is a kind of "sister" post to something James Cridland wrote earlier this week on his blog. He was talking about the email that my employer is currently sending out to people who are still using our old virginradio.co.uk domain.

But of course he's only seeing half the story. At work, our IT department has set up the mail system to email us everytime we get an email (and shh, don't tell anyone, but we do actually get copies of the emails even though the bounced mail tells us we don't - it just persuades individuals to update their contacts and start using the correct email address).

In fact, I find those additional emails a little annoying, so don't tell our IT department but I wrote a couple of rules. One to move them out of my Inbox, and another to instead flag emails being sent to the old domain.

But this takes me to the crux of this blog entry. The bulk of the emails that are still being sent to the old domain are automated mailing lists and newsletters. Those bounce-back emails are disappearing into a black hole, and it's up to me to update the lists that I want to carry on receiving mail from.

This should be easy, but of course, it's ridiculously hard. Some email doesn't have any update or unsubscribe options at all. More commonly, there's just an unsubscribe option. That means that I probably have to re-register, which is, of course, time consuming, and also makes it very easy for me to not bother at all - something that most of these companies would rather didn't happen.

Then there are the companies that require you to remember what password you used when you set up an "account" simply for the purpose of registering for their newsletter. If you're lucky, they have a "forgotten your password" option. And if you're really lucky, you'll actually get an email back from them with either a reminder or a reset option within the same hour. Top-tip - make sure these services send out email instantly, otherwise you might lose me as a customer altogether.

Some of these emails come from trade publishers who offer a wealth of newsletters for a variety of magazines. It's far easier if I can make one change that affects their entire portfolio rather than lots of separate changes. Ironically, many of these magazines cover marketing, yet their list management software is poor.

Google Alerts are actually more annoying than they should be. I have a number of alerts (including the obligatory vanity alert) that are sent to my Gmail account. But I also have a set of work-related searches that I have to adminster "outside" the environs of Google because there seems to be a single email address for all. Perhaps their recent RSS feed option for these searches is the way to go? My only solution is to delete all the current alerts and re-create them with my new email address, ensuring I'm logged out of Google at the time.

Changing addresses is never easy at the best of times. The Royal Mail has a forwarding service for you to use for snail mail - but that's not always possible if you move jobs or ISPs. So given that we're all going to want to change our details from time to time, there's really no excuse for making it hard for the user to administer.

CNN's Election Night "hologram" was truly the most pointless graphical mechanism I've ever seen on any type of broadcast.

I say get Max Headroom as a pundit for 2012.

The Boston Globe's "The Big Picture" is a fantastic that I visit everytime it's updated. They've got some stunning photos of Obama taken over the last few weeks. The shots in the rain are awesome.

F11 to maximise and then J and K to navigate.

(A few photographers really need to clean their lenses/sensors though!)

You'll get better, more accurate, and more timely information in a thousand other places online tonight, but I'm still blogging the election.

10:21 GMT

So after I watched Obama speak, I did finally go to bed.

But here's the map as it now stands with two states still to be added.

4:57 GMT

Still awaiting Obama.

The Minnesota race with Al Franken standing is terribly close. The Fox TV coverage is now - quite frankly - morose.

Alvin Hall is quite emotional. But I flipped over when Gore Vidal was being interviewed. We also heard from Tracey Chapman - what happened to her?

The BBC has a lovely interview with some Obama supporters in Culpepper, Virginia.

4:31 GMT

I've got to say that McCain's concession speech was very respectful and very gracious.

Looking forward to Obama's now...

04:15 GMT

With a handful of states yet to be added in, here's a near-final map:

The celebrations in Chicago really are wild. And there's are a few celebrations going on in Kenya where Obama's father came from.

Fed up with Fox: "don't forget, he's not just black, he's mixed race..." and then lots of stuff about whether he can bring the country together.

04:05 GMT

Jubilant scenes in Chicago!

Still plenty to add to the map. But America has a black president!

(Fox News still calling it a "right of centre nation.")

04:01 GMT

Obama wins! (Assuming all the results called so far are actually correct)

03:53 GMT

The Beeb's talking about making it final after 4am when the next big states come in. I still want to find out how Virginia's gone.

Jacob's Creek Three Vines Semillon Sauvignon Blanc going down very nicely thank you very much.

03:46 GMT

I love it when Dimbleby gets bored of something. In this instance, Nancy Pelosi was giving a speech which he cut off with, "yah yah yah yah yah yah."

Now we're getting details of how and when McCain will make his concession speech which, traditionally has to come before Obama makes his acceptance speech.

Somehow I feel a little anti-climactic as 4am approaches. We know Obama's going to win. We're waiting for California's polls to shut very shortly, and once those votes are added in, the concession may come.

03:35 GMT

Current discussion: what did McCain do wrong?

Bring back Christopher Hitchens!

Nebraska is one of two states where they break out the votes in a less straightforward manner. The Beeb is giving McCain three of the five votes. Updated map below:

03:30 GMT

Earlier on we heard that Oprah's been "pulsating all day" and is now in "full vibrational mode."

03:22 GMT

Actually - CNN's touchscreen display is also pretty good.

Why is CNN so far behind everyone else projecting states? They've only just projected Texas as going to McCain. I think I could have told you that about two months ago. The BBC had it quite a while ago.

It sounds truly depressing in the hotel in Arizona where McCain's camp are based.

03:10 GMT

You've got to love James Carville on CNN. I always wondered what happened to Pierluigi Collina, but I never realised he had a southern accent.

CNN are projecting Arkansas to McCain which isn't the biggest surprise of the night (Indeed - so unsurprising is it, that I already coloured it in below and added in the votes. CNN, overall, is much more conservative than BBC/ABC).

03:06 GMT

I actually quite like Fox's interactive screen. It works pretty neatly. Sadly their online version of the map isn't nearly as good. They're pumping a truly ridiculous quantity of numbers on screen however.

Updated map:

Eddie Izzard, of all people, is in Times Square on the BBC. I think he trumps Jon Culshaw (who seems to have disappeared from ITV - although to be honest, I haven't been checking).

02:55 GMT

Florida is "very close." I've heard those words somewhere before...

Oh dear - Jeremy Vine is "morphing" his map of the US again. It doesn't add much.

02:40 GMT

Simon Schama calls Dimbelby a "wuss" for refusing to yet call the election for Obama. Dimbleby's response is that Scham is a "very curious historian."

Texas goes red, New Mexico goes blue.

02:36 GMT

Oprah's been "pulsating all day" and is now in "full vibrational mode."

"If you believe in the tooth fairy he [McCain] can win California."

Seemingly Arizona is tied - McCain's home state!

The debate on the BBC is - how shall we say - robust. Simon Schama is giving as good as he gets over whether or not the US is fundamentally centre-right.

02:29 GMT

A few technical difficulties for the BBC's news round up - the sound is all over the place. But sometime after Fox called Ohio for Obama, the BBC (for which I think we must read ABC) are now also calling it.

So here's the updated map:

02:15 GMT

Long chat with my sister in New York about the election on TV. She noted the long faces on Fox News.

I fear that my "interactive" is now way behind. I think I was too dazzled by Jeremy Vine's touchscreen technology.

01:38 GMT

01:30 GMT

Fox News: "We're now calling Pennsylvania for Barack Obama. This is a very hard one for.... the McCain camp to swallow tonight." I'm sure you weren't going to say "us" were you Fox?

01:28 GMT

Ooh. Fox really don't want to call Pennsylvania for Obama despite other networks doing so. They claim it's because they don't have full data yet to compare exit poll data with actual voting numbers. It might be worth at this point highlighting Pollster.com where Mark Blumenthal has some fascinating stuff about the intricacies of exit polling. An American research company we use at work, Edison Media Research is one of the two providers of the exit poll data that all the networks in the US use for their election coverage. The networks do, however, retain their own analysts to interpret that data themselves. About 3000 people across the US are doing the exit polls today.

Doing a bit more channel surfing and strangely a channel I've never watched NDTV is showing an MSNBC feed which is different to the MSNBC feed that CNBC is offering. Strange.

France 24 (due to close at the end of the year?) is live at the US Embassy in Paris, but seems to have a CBS deal for footage. Al Jazeera's numbers match the BBC's. They seem to have a reasonable number of people on the ground. But the driest coverage surely comes from Russia Today who are reasonably indifferent to it all, although CCTV are ignoring it completely.

01:20 GMT

Over on CNN - Wolf Blitzer is still excited by all the technology they have at their disposal. This time around he's liking the microphones they have. In particular those over the ear and round to the mouth jobs. He obviously doesn't do a lot of online gaming...

At "Camp McCain" the Phoenix Boys' Choir are singing relatively sombre songs.

Overall CNN is a lot more conservative than the BBC only giving Obama 77 votes compared with the BBC's 134 at the moment.

Fox is giving Obama 81 but they've also got a few more votes for McCain that nobody else has given them yet.

01:10 GMT

Results are coming thick and fast. I've updated my "interactive" map:

David Dimbleby is worried that Democrats in Chicago are getting "early voting figures" from Florida that he's not seeing.

01:01 GMT

Ooh. Pennsylvania to Obama. We've just seen some balloons with 21 written on them in the Republican camp. Someone get a pin.

00:58 GMT

Another state's been called (by the BBC, at least), so I've updated my map... The previous one has had at least 11 views up until now!

00:48 GMT

Richard Bacon on Five Live talking about the propositions that various states are also voting for: "...and in California they're also voting about gay se... - gay marriage..."

00:42 GMT

I'm wondering whether all the "too close to call" states are really that, or whether the US networks are being very conservative about "calling" states too early on, when in previous years they might have?

McCain was getting all misty eyed about missing the reporters who've been travelling around the country on his plane in the last weeks and months.

Hitchens on Palin again: "...ludicrous contemptible figure..."

00:38 GMT

ITV has Jon Culshaw on its panel. Bring back Bingo Night Live! But they also have Bob Worcester who used to elections for the BBC. But then ITV is anchoring its coverage from London.

"30 Rock" is lit up in red, white and blue. No sing of their map of the US on the ice-rink though.

00:32 GMT

CNN are checking their "math" because their Florida numbers don't add up. Maybe the Nader vote came out?

00:26 GMT

On Palin: "Believes in witches... [and] cannot tell the difference on the phone between President Sarkozy and Inspector Clouseau" - Christopher Hitchens.

Pic. of CNN's "hologram"

00:19 GMT

Fox News has a ridiculous amount of information on the screen.

On CNN, Wolf Blitzer is telling us "You're about to see something you've never seen before..."

They've pointlessly (and badly) blue-screened their Chicago correspondent so that she appears in the Atlanta New York studio. What's the point?

The caption reads "via hologram."

Seemingly, the conversation can be more intimate if the correspondent can be "beamed in."

We're told that there are 35 different cameras pointing at her. They love the technology. It's utterly pointless - really pointless.

00:08 GMT

Genuinely interesting news that CBS is projecting Virginia to Obama. That'd be amazing. As seen on Bloomberg of all channels.

00:04 GMT

How exciting! The first results are in, and I've updated my map!

23:58 GMT

How UK TV "called the election" tonight (thanks to Andy in the comments for the idea):

Click on the large version.

23:53 GMT

"You're obviously voting for Obama. It says so on your badge."

23:41 GMT

Hmm. John Simpson's in Chicago. Who does the BBC expect to win then? David Dimbleby obviously wasn't sporty at school and seems to be confused about whether Obama is out playing basketball or baseball. He decided that it couldn't possibly be baseball because of the time of year - obviously oblivious of the World Series ending a week or so ago.

23:34 GMT

Rupert Murdoch on Obama: "I like him personally... but..."

It must annoy Murdoch that his NY Post backed McCain and it's looking v. dodgy for him. He'd never let The Sun back the wrong candidate.

23:28 GMT

Jeremy Vine is "morphing" his US map again complete with OTT "glooping" sound effects.

23:11 GMT

The BBC seems to have chosen the noisiest balcony they could in the whole of Washington. Sky News is on a balcony somewhere in New York. France 24 is, er, in Paris. And Jeremy Vine is in Tron. Well he's surrounded by virtual maps, and even virtual railings, that occasionally block out the numbers on the virtual map.

Fox News is taking apart some of the duller exit poll questions coming up with stats like "38% of voters approve of Sarah Palin" which sounds a little low to me.

CNBC is relaying MSNBC coverage but has cleverly replaced MSNBC's ticker with their own ticker with share prices. Haven't the markets closed yet?

The C4 documentary on Neil Morrissey's new beer was quite fun, especially as I unknowingly tried it last week in a pub in the city.

22:00 GMT

Since everyone else is blogging it, and I'm nursing a foul cold, but have booked tomorrow off to specifically stay up tonight and watch the election, I'll be damned if that's not exactly what I do.

Anyway, every media organisation of note as a funky interactive map. Unfortunately, my Flash skills aren't up to much, but I do have the map below which I almost certainly won't be keeping updated all night:

(I did look for something appropriate to draw with in Hamleys but they didn't seem to have any Etch-A-Sketches in stock).

As America votes, there were a couple of fascinating films on TV recently which had well-timed screenings.

On Friday there was a cracking film on BBC Four which isn't available to watch on the iPlayer, so I can only recommend picking up the DVD instead. CSNY Deja Vu followed Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young on tour across the US in 2006. This documentary which appeared to have pretty full access and was made by an ABC journalist, showed that many people thought that when a band in its sixties tours so many years after it had originally been behind the protest movement, it might have mellowed. Those people were wrong as became clear when they begin a song with the lyrics "Let's impeach the president..." I hold not particular candle for their music, but their beliefs are heartfelt, even if some of the disagreeing crowd had the perfectly valid opinion that if they were paying $200 for a ticket, they shouldn't be preached to. But CSNY always preached, so more fool them.

And speaking of DVDs, if you missed Recount on More4 a month or so ago, and the Channel 4 screening on Saturday night, then you'll have to wait until January to buy the DVD of that excellent film (or import the US edition). I trust that this evening's procedings will be completed somewhat more speedily. If the polls are anything to go by, that's the case.

A heavy cold means that going out to an election party is out the question, so I shall be taking in supplies this evening and settling back in the sofa with a remote switching between the BBC, Sky, CNN, even Fox, and possibly CNBC if they're carrying NBC programming through the night. Sadly there's no way to watch the Daily Show/Colbert Report show until tomorrow when the result will be known.

A couple of weeks ago, I started playing with Geode - a Firefox plugin that allows your browser to use geolocation technology to determine whereabouts you are.

When you reach a Geode compatable site, a bar at the top of the browser asks you how much information you want to pass to the requesting site - Exact, Neighbourhood, City, Nothing.

When I tested it, I decided it could have my exact location. Now I was trying this using a WiFi laptop sitting at home. A Google map appeared and I was shocked to discover that it had my location within perhaps 10 metres.

My laptop has no GPS to position me, and it isn't connected to a cell-network for triangulation via cell towers. So how did it locate me?

Geode currently uses Skyhook who essentially maintain a database using GPS, cell tower locations and, importantly, a reference list of WiFi websites that are geocoded.

Mine is not the only wireless network in the flats where I live. I can see eight or ten other networks to one extent or another. And my neighbours are technical enough to have security enabled their networks (I discovered this when I was between routers and tried to find someone to leach from before my replacement router arrived). It's entirely possible that someone else's router is registered to Skyhook.

I assume that this is how my location was determined. I have a fixed IP Address and my ISP does know where I live, but it doesn't know whether or not I have WiFi, so I don't think that there's any data it could be selling on about me. In any case, if I beef up my WiFi security to the maximum, there's no way to discover my IP Address simply by sniffing my router.

But I would like to know for certain that one of my neighbours has registered their router, and my location is not somehow coming from my own router. While I'm sure that Skyhook's privacy is strict, I like to be in charge of my own data.

I was thinking about that when I was looking into another technology - satnavs. At the weekend, Something For The Weekend, the Tim Lovejoy vehicle, had their regular gadget review. A lady came on to demonstrate a couple of new pieces of technology. One was a TomTom satnav that included the usual mapping and traffic information, as well as things like local petrol prices.

Lovejoy asked a very fair question: how did the satnav know the prices? "From the satellites" came the answer. He tried again: he understood how the device knew where it was, but where was the petrol price information coming from. Satellites was again the answer. Eventually he gave up and moved on.

It was a fair question, because of couse, the only information coming from GPS satellites is location information - or more to the point, information about the satellites' positions to allow the device to triangulate its position on Earth. GPS satellites do not transmit UK petrol prices.

So how was it getting its info? Many devices have traffic information - usually provided by Trafficmaster. This is broadcast in the UK using RDS TMC technology on the FM network. Classic FM, the only national commercial FM operator carries the data and so as long as your satnav can receive Classic FM, it can pull that data down and use it to plot alternative routes etc. A separate system

But that's not how TomTom is getting either its traffic info, or its petrol price info. The petrol price info actually has to be downloaded via your home PC. I guess you just plug your device in regularly to keep it up to date. You're not storing your satnav in your glove compartment are you? TomTom buys the data from a third-party company.

But it's their HD Traffic I'm more interested in. Devices with this technology have SIM cards fitted, and we're told that the system uses 16.7m anonymous mobile phones. By capturing location detail from these phones, the system is able to monitor traffic flow - and you can be sure that these devices also contribute to that information. TomTom is, of course, keen to point out that this is an anonymous service, and you can't be tracked with it (there are mobile phone tracking services out there elsewhere mind you).

But given that the technology is fairly new, whose 16.7m phones is it using, and do the owners of those phones know?

The initial Dutch data utilised the Vodafone network, and it's that network that's also being used in the UK.

So if you're a Vodafone subscriber, did you know that Vodafone is monetising the data they collect about your location? To be clear, that's essentially data about which mast or masts your phone can see when it pings them. I'm sure that buried away in the terms and conditions you signed when you took our your contract, you agreed to let them use said data. But I feel uncomfortable about this.

Finding poor journlism in the Sunday papers isn't really hard, but The Observer had this story in yesterday's paper. It begins:

Media regulator Ofcom warned BBC bosses about lax editorial procedures on Russell Brand's BBC 6 Music show over a year ago, it emerged last night. In a ruling published 15 months ago, it criticised the corporation for failing to follow its own editorial procedures and allowing Brand to broadcast a quiz won by a member of his production team posing as a listener to the digital radio station. [My emphasis]

Hang on. Nothing "emerged last night". Basically, this story seems to have come about by someone Googling the Ofcom website in the hunt for material on Russell Brand or Jonathan Ross.

What The Observer has simply dug up is the small matter of all the competition faking has now been fully [un]covered over the last 18 months. This didn't so much "emerge" as hit newspaper front and inside pages a year or so ago now. This isn't new news. Every single interested reader already knows about this.

At the end of July this year, the BBC was fined £400,000 by Ofcom including £17,500 for the Russell Brand show. At the time, the show was still being made by the BBC and not Brand's ind