December 2008 Archives

Wow. Channel 4 has an interesting and incredibly timely programme on next Monday. I assume it'll detail how to survive on the Gaza Strip when you're being bombed daily by the Israelis.

Wait a minute... My mistake.

It's actually called "Surviving Gazza", and is about the famously off-the-rails footballer.

Of course this is scheduled after an episode of the returning Celebrity B** B******. The fact is that Channel 4 can't survive without the ratings that this garbage gives them. We all know that they're in trouble, and are desperately short of cash. BB doesn't rock my boat. The people they sign up are "celebrities" in the loosest sense, largely doing it to reignite their waning careers (there's no other real reason to go on). But as I've said before, the downside is that C4 is effectively off limits for me for the next x-weeks - I neither know nor care how long it lasts.

So what's the answer? C4 needs BB to at least attempt to balance the books. E4, More 4 and even Film Four are appreciated by their respective audiences, but overall the station is haemorrhaging cash, and has recently made quite a large proportion of its staff redundant. It's unable to really benefit from international sales or DVD revenues because it doesn't its own programming - it's all made by independent production companies. And its news is facing problems as ITV cuts ever back, perhaps even leaving news behind altogether. As it is, the channel relies on ITV's regional news divisions.

Is it time for the end of Channel 4? I'm not sure that its is, but I worry that the direction it's headed is doing it no good in the long term.

Well one article and two blog posts really.

First off, Alan Rusbridger, editor of The Guardian, writes at length about how the media is effectively now unable to examine things like whether corporations are avoiding tax legally. We know that the UK's libel laws are absurd and encourage libel tourism (everything is effectively "published" in the UK either via the internet or through online booksales), but even more scary are the vast sums that journalists must pay tax lawyers to write articles. The piece itself cost "several thousand dollars" just to be cleared to publish. Nobody else followed up Private Eye's stories about Tesco in the summer, not because it wasn't a story, but it's just too expensive (and Tesco is a major advertiser, who nobody's in a hurry to annoy).

Charles Arthur on what a devastating effect Zavvi and Woolie's closures (or imminent closures) are likely to have on the music industry, with the supermarkets taking control of physical sales. Their tastes are somewhat blander than might be liked...

And finally author Max Barry on the stupidity of Warners who have somehow prevented purchasers of The Dark Knight on DVD from playing it on their PC. Such is their concern about anti-piracy, that they make pirates out of honest consumers. Film companies really need a kick up the backside.

In just four days, we could begin to see the first of Cliff Richard's singles re-released without Richard himself either profiting or having any say over what's released.

That could happen, although as I write, I can't see any forthcoming releases at Amazon. Indeed he's recently released a celebratory 50 years anthology, and gave away an album with the Mail on Sunday recently covering much the same.

His first two singles came out in 1958 and were Move It and High Class Baby.

Because copyright on current performers extends over 50 years, those songs drop out of copyright from Jan 1 2009.

Richard's problem is that he performed, but did not write most of his hits. Move It, Wikipedia tells me, was written by Ian Samwell (Aaron Schroeder wrote the B-Side - Schoolboy Crush). Samwell died in 2003, but his estate continues to profit from the song he wrote, and will do so until 2073 under current UK copyright legislation.

But Richards isn't happy, and he's not alone. In 2012 early Beatles songs will also go out of copyright, and thousands of other songs are going out of copyright every year.

There's a massive push amongst the UK music industry to get this period increased from 50 years to 95 years.

The reason is simple. These songs currently earn money, and with recorded sales declining, the industry is trying to recoup every penny it possibly can from wherever it can.

Is this a problem? Doesn't Cliff et al deserve a few quid for their work? Well in fact, Cliff's profited quite nicely. The major problem the industry has is that all the people who stand up for them seem to be well-known multi-millionaires. I can look at my own work in 50 years time and know that it won't be earning me any cash. But then I know that because I went in knowing it. If I perform a song today and it's in some way successful (I know this is a stretch, but stay with me), then I know that I have but 50 years to recoup some cash. A struggle I know.

Andy Burnham recently stood up in front of the music industry and gave a speech which suggested that the UK government was backing down from the conclusions of its own report.

Gowers, the author of the report, has a fantastic riposte in the FT:

Copyright is an economic instrument, not a moral one, and if you consider the economic arguments - as I did two years ago at the request of Gordon Brown - you will find that they do not stack up. All the respectable research shows that copyright extension has high costs to the public and negligible benefits for the creative community.

Consumers find themselves paying more for old works or unable to access "orphan works" where copyright ownership is unclear. Small businesses that play recorded music such as hairdressing salons and local radio stations face a hidden extra "tax" in the form of higher music-licence fees. Do they really need this at this time?

Gowers goes on to point out that no musician has ever decided not to record a song because it'll be out of copyright in 50 years.

The orphan works argument is also important. Most recorded music is not available today. It was largely disposable at the time, and even if it wasn't, unless it was recorded by a big enough star, it has long gone out of print. It's worth nobody's time putting it back in print if there are unnecessary copyright payments making the project unworkable.

And if you can't even trace the copyright owners, then you can expect the works to remain out of print until that copyright period is up completely. Currently that's 50 years from then, but it could reach 70 or even 95 if we mimic the States where Walt Disney has had such a sway.

As ever, it's the Open Rights Group that looks out for this kind of thing, because the music industry sings from one voice.

As it points out: the record industry will roll out some needy musicians - and there undoubtedly are many. But they won't be the real beneficiaries of increasing the term: many of those performance rights are owned by the large labels. I don't doubt that they're suffering. Look at EMI after all. But that's not reason to tax the public.

[Regular readers may know that I've written a lot on this subject before. Here, here and here for example. These views, are of course my own, and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer.]

As seen on a London Evening Standard billboard today. Perhaps they've had a preview of the Christmas special?

They do know that he's a fictional character don't they?

If Strictly adopted the US voting system as I'd advocated, then it's incredibly unlikely this weekend's incident would have occurred.

This isn't, of course, important. Votes placed will still go to viewers' favourite dancers. So everyone who's saved the BBC or Ofcom's phone numbers on speed dial to complain at the drop of a hat should probably take a close look at themselves in the mirror and ask themselves why they actually voted for the programme.

I heard some fool of a woman on the radio saying that she wasn't going to watch the final next weekend because she was so upset!

So she's willing to watch the first 13 weeks, but a 15p vote that will still count is enough to make her not want to watch the show? (And she's so upset, that she got up really early this morning to head to a studio in W12). As William Shatner once said, "Get a life!"

I took some photos of Lucia yesterday in the London Swedish Church. You can see the rest of them here.

The bloke next to me took some better ones.

I love it when tube stations are being refurbished and old posters are uncovered before the new LCD panels go up in their place. Yesterday evening I saw this wonderful Abbey National poster from goodness knows when (it looks quite old to me even if the colours are quite vivid).

I suspect that Abbey wouldn't use quite those words today in its advertising.

Matt Wells had something of a moan this week about what he called an advert for DAB that he'd heard on the BBC this week. He saw it as a straight ad for BBC viewers and listeners to go out and buy a DAB digital radio.

A couple of things Matt:

The BBC did exactly the same thing last year(That's a link to the Media Guardian site containing the video from last year). And indeed the BBC has been effectively promoting the DAB format since it started. Indeed since their charter requires them to broadcast on DAB, it would be strange if they didn't. The BBC is not promoting a particular brand of radio - they're promoting the format. That's not surprising since they broadcast in the format and have a national DAB multiplex.

Secondly, this is no different to what happened with Freeview where the BBC kicked life into the DTT format. They happily promoted - on air - the availability of the £99 box.

The BBC has also recently been promoting its HD channel. To watch that, I have to go out and buy and HD ready TV. And to watch that I also have to pay for a subscription to either Sky or Virgin Media, or go out and buy a Freesat box.

I know Matt Wells hates DAB digital radio, and he's welcome to his opinions, which we hear endlessly week after week (although it was nice to hear the promotion of his sister company's Christmas programming this week as news), but let's have a little fairness shall we?

And it was entertaining that he enjoyed the Branagh version of Wallander. Last week, sight unseen, he wasn't at all sure and thought that the books, which he hadn't read, were rubbish. He might be interested to learn that the dramatisation was pretty accurate to the books. So perhaps he should try one or two before condemning them unread.

As for the Media Talk discussion about Project Kangaroo - well I'm going to get into that in another post. But I was disappointed by the level of discussion.

J. Michael Straczynski is someone best known to me as the creator and driving force behind Babylon 5, a series that was almost certainly ahead of its time.

Now comes Changeling, a superb new film directed by Clint Eastwood and starring Angelina Jolie. Straczynski dug up the story - infamous at the time - based around a mother who's son disappears. The police, in the shape of Jeffrey Donovan's Captain Jones, return a different boy, and then try to shut up Jolie's Christine Collins when she complains.

Then there's the powerful Rev. Briegleb played by John Malkovich, who is pretty much her supporter. But he has a radio station to continually berate the corrupt Los Angeles Police Department.

There are more elements to the story, but I won't mention them here as the really spoil it.

Eastwood does a fine job directing it in his usual manner, and the 30s period is depicted in a way that never detracts from the story. But it's lovely to see the operator manager using rollerskates to move swiftly around the office. Eastwood also composed the music.

A lot has been made of the lack of jokes and seriousness of the film, but I don't think that's fair. So it's not always especially pleasant, but it's always watchable and the incredible story just keeps you going as you want to discover what happens.

A fine cast fills out all the minor roles, but again I don't want to highlight anyone in case I give away plot details. The film certainly headed off in a direction I seriously wasn't expecting although I'm not familiar with the history of that part of California in that period.

I know a lot of people find Angelina Jolie annoying, but just when you begin to think she is, up she pops with something like this to make you forget.

Eastwood, it seems, pretty much used the script as it came without changes, and his next film, hot on the heels of this - Gran Torino - also uses the script as it came to Eastwood. Unchanged. The guy's got class.

So a few interesting things are going on in television at the moment. I'm going to come back to Kangaroo because I think it deserves a bit more detail.

But I'm not exactly impressed by Five's recent hiring of Richard Woolfe from Sky One. But then Dawn Airey herself fills me with dread a bit.

Most visibly, she returned the Five logo to our screens, and in doing so, lost me as a viewer. More than that, she's been busy commissioning "fast-turnaround" documentaries - i.e. worthless tabloid-esque garbage. Out go those worthy early evening arts programmes, and in come filler that might wash for a digital channel that's looking for an occassional hit, but don't really work for a major "terrestrial" channel.

Five's schedule is lazy at the moment.

Sky One is a channel that has never done what it has promised. It doesn't help that it continually shifts gear and can't decide what type of channel it wants to be. At the moment it thinks it's a big entertainment channel, so we have Noel Edmonds and Shane Ritchie presenting big audience shows. And Gladiators is coming back for a second series, although not with all the first series' line-up and the long standing referee.

At other times, Sky One has aspired to be like HBO. But it no longer seems to commission drama. It's been a while since Dream Team was cancelled, and while Mile High and Is Harry On The Boat are regularly repeated on Sky Two and Sky Three, there's not been anything along to replace them for a while. We're now limited to the odd Ross Kemp series which actually isn't as bad as I thought it might have been, and the odd big budget Terry Pratchett dramatisation - most recently The Colour of Money.

For the most part it relies on The Simpsons and big budget imports like Lost, 24 and Prison Break. Fringe is the most recent of these. That's not a bad plan, and they've bought well. But they need more in the schedule. It's not a destination channel. Last week's Media Talk podcast mentioned the programming on FX which is effectively a sister channel that often feels hidden away. I agree that merging Sky One and FX would give it a stronger programming footing. Currently, the Australian miniseries Underbelly, is superb.

Elsewhere Sky Real Lives is getting a vast amount publicity over a documentary it's putting out this evening about someone who commits suicide on camera. I'll leave the rights and wrongs for others, but I'd be very curious to learn about how this documentary ended up on such an obscure channel. As far as I know, Sky Real Lives isn't known for its original documentaries. Surely it can't just be a ratings grab?

Screenwipe last night looked at those dreadful "mission" documentaries that clog up too many networks and are often just sleazy attempts to get people to tune in to see naked people. I've never watched a Gok Wan programme in my life, and I'm not about to start now. But The Observer's TV critic Kathryn Flett was one the "judges". This doesn't surprise me, as she's by far the worst critic on that paper, and when she's "away" I leap for joy and read someone who knows about television beyond the world of Big Brother and I'm A Celebrity. Brooker also concentrated on Dawn Porter who makes abysmal television too. I always point anyone interested towards her woeful Broadcast magazine blog entries.

Spooks finished on Monday night, and although the final episode wasn't as strong as the penultimate episode, because we all knew London wouldn't suffer a nuclear attack just yet as it'd spoil the continuity of Spooks: Code 9.

I did wonder how, when escaping Russian FSB agents in the tunnels under London, at the last minute the party broke up with Lucas ending up in Charing Cross, while Ros and Connie somehow ended up at London Bridge. Last time I looked, that was quite a hike. Not as much as a hike as it was starting at Liverpool Street which is also an awful long way from Charing Cross.

But when all's said and done, roll on the next series...

Last week, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) decided that it wouldn't award the EBU the rights to the 2014 winter Olympics and the 2016 summer games. In the past the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) has collectively bought the rights to the Olympics for the past fifty years. All the public service broadcasters chip in and they get the rights between them.

But the IOC is something of a money grabbing beast, and they've decided that they can do much better if they individually negotiate with each of the countries in Europe rather than go with a single deal.

Reports talking about the BBC not getting the rights to the games are probably very wide of the mark. In the UK the Olympics are still a protected event, and as such, have to be made available free to air, to the whole country. So ITV could bid in theory, but that seems incredibly unlikely - they've just decided that even the relatively low costs of covering the boat race are too much and have pulled out after next year. They'd be hard pushed to garner enough advertising to cover the costs. The production costs alone are enormous, with thousands of hours coming from Beijing this year, and even more likely to come from London.

In theory, an operator like Sky could bid for the games, but it'd have to broadcast them free-to-air. That might mean using DTT (the only service it'd have full national coverage with) to broadcast to most people with more on satellite, but that'd probably cause an outcry. That said, I noticed that Trevor East, previously head of sports at Sky and now with Setanta, doesn't see anything wrong with Sky going for the rights. He correctly points out that Sky Italia has the Olympics in Italy. However, Sky Italia is required to subcontract free-to-air rights, probably with RAI (the state broadcaster).

It seems a strange time for the vultures at the IOC to playing fast and loose with their games. We're entering a global recession which means that everyone's re-examining what they're able to bid for, or to what extent they expect advertising to cover costs of future games. And with London getting the games in 2012, the 2016 summer games will almost certainly not be at a favourable time for Europe. We won't know until next year who will be getting the games, but if most events take place in the middle of the night or during the day, that's not going to make European broadcasters want to pay more.

Of course UEFA and FIFA have done the same thing recently.

And all of them would like to see the review of sporting "crown jewels" be reviewed with significantly fewer events on the schedule. David Davies just been appointed by culture secretary Andy Burnham, to review the list. Currently it looks like this:

Group A - must be covered live:

• Olympic Games


• FIFA World Cup finals tournament


• European Football Championship finals tournament


• FA Cup final


• Scottish FA Cup final (in Scotland)


• Grand National


• Wimbledon tennis finals


• Rugby League Challenge Cup final


• Rugby World Cup final

Group B - highlights must be available free to air:

• cricket test matches played in England


• non-finals play in the Wimbledon tournament


• all other matches in Rugby World Cup finals tournament


• Six Nations Rugby Tournament matches involving home countries


• Commonwealth Games


• World Athletics Championships


• Cricket World Cup


• Ryder Cup


• Open Golf Championship

FIFA and UEFA would like only the final, and perhaps semi-finals and other matches involving the home nations to be included on the list. They'd happily sell the rest of the tournaments to Sky or Setanta.

Meanwhile England tests don't have to be broadcast live. Has interest in the national summer game lessened since it disappeared from free to air? I think it has.

The boat race isn't on either list, and Premier League highlights aren't guaranteed either. I'd be surprised if we saw much change. Ofcom recently published the equivalent list for the rest of Europe and they're equally as comprehensive with some events specific to their nations - e.g. The Tour de France or Giro d'Italia, and even the Ialian Grand Prix in Italy (F1 is otherwise free to go where it likes).

What's still clear is that if your event relies heavily on sponsors, you probably still want to stay free to air, as the coverage dwarfs anything that paid for television is able to give viewers. Indeed, if I was in charge of a sport, I'd perhaps be thinking more about how I can persuade the BBC or ITV to cover it rather than lusting after Sky's millions and forshortening my sport's future (Yes, cricket, I'm looking at you again).

Two a couple of great concerts in the Southbank Centre over the weekend.

On Saturday it was John McCusker's Under One Sky. McCusker has put together a fascinating group of performers of Scottish and English origin who together make some wonderful music.

So on stage, alongside McCusker we had Julie Fowlis (who I saw a few weeks ago), John Tams (who'd brought a fan club), Roddy Woomble of Idlewild, and even Graham Coxon of the now reforming Blur (tickets onsale this week!).

Emma Reid, a half Swedish violinist was exceptional, as was Jim Causley. Indeed all the performers were, and although I did pick up the forthcoming Under One Sky CD I evidently have much more to look into.

On Monday it was a slight change of pace as I saw the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment conducted by Sir Simon Rattle perform perform the first of two nights at the Royal Festival Hall playing Schumann's symphonies.

It was a terrific concert and it's remarkable that you can get tickets for as little as £9.50. I still find it wonderful to go to a concert and see absolutely no sign of any speakers or microphones. By the way, during the interval I just fancied a glass of water so braced myself to fight to the bar to get a mineral water. But no! The RFH actually lays out dozens of plastic glasses of tap water for anyone who wants one. What a wonderful idea.

Anyway, this all makes me realise that I must visit the Southbank Centre a little more frequently (although I must also visit the much closer King's Place soon too).

Earlier this year, Talksport fired James Whale, their long-serving (and high rating) evening phone-in DJ after he made some comments which were seen to be in favour of Boris Johnson in the run-up to the London mayoral election.

At the time, it was all a little unclear. Whale himself was vague in his accounts. Even at the Radio Festival in Glasgow, it still hadn't been publicly spelt out exactly what he'd said (well - unless you'd happened to have been listening at the time).

Following his dismissal, there was talk of Whale taking his previous employers to court. But he backed out of that, seemingly because of the costs.

Finally, today, Ofcom has announced that Talksport should be fined £20,000 for breaking rules of impartiality.

The transcript is fascinating:

James Whale: Now in the run up to the mayoral election in London, I don't think we're supposed to show any, any preference one way or the other. But in an interview earlier today, I heard Ken Livingstone being championed by the prime minister. Gordon Brown said if Londoners didn't vote for Ken Livingstone, if they voted for Boris Johnson, who I by the way, think would make a fantastic leader of this city. If Boris Johnson was the London mayor, people would have a far better quality of life and would not be ripped off nearly so much, if at all. And for anybody that doesn't vote for Boris, you'll get what you deserve because what you'll get is Ken Livingstone. Now, I'm pretty sure we're not supposed to champion one...

Producer: Yeah, you're not allowed to do that.

James Whale: But I don't give a stuff, I couldn't care less. If the prime minister feels that he can champion Ken Livingstone, and let's face it, Ken Livingstone has been nothing but a complete and utter tragedy for the capital city...I think Ken Livingstone running London again will be a complete tragedy. If you don't walk, you'll be a non-person.

Producer: It's good for some people what he's done.

James Whale: No, not good for anyone. Boris Johnson...

Producer: If you're a roller blader.

James Whale: "Boris Johnson for mayor of London" that has to be the mantra...

Producer: You're not allowed to say that.

James Whale: I couldn't give a stuff.

Producer: You can't do, sorry you can't. He's a nice bloke though, he did the show here when you were off. Really, really, really, nice genuinely nice guy.

James Whale: Vote him in.

Producer: You can't say anything about his politics. You're not allowed to.
James Whale: Make sure that he's the next mayor of London because quite frankly, Gordon Brown...

There's a further section which you can read for yourself.

What's clear is that Talksport was very quickly concerned about what had happened and the seriousness with which it would be taken by Ofcom. They'd had a previously incident with George Galloway. The consequential firing of Whale was inevitable. Indeed, it was used in mitigation of the eventual fine.

I suspect that Talksport are pretty pleased with the overall outcome. But, they're going to need to be very careful in the future - that much is clear. So perhaps that's why Jon Gaunt recently got fired over a much less important incident (the rights and wrongs of which I won't go into).

As for James Whale? Well he's back at work on LBC where one of his fellow presenters is Ken Livingstone. I suspect for them, it's water under the bridge because in the end, a one-off rant on a single station doesn't determine who wins an election. But it doesn't make it right either.

[As always, these opinions are my own and don't represent those of my employer.]

Over on the BBC News website, they have an audio slideshow with Eamonn McCabe detailing what he's found out in his Writer's Room project. Over the last couple of years McCabe has been busily photographing the rooms in which novels are written. They've been published in the Guardian Review, and are now the subject of an exhibition.

It's fun looking at them, but it's also interesting to hear McCabe mention that he tries not to shoot more than two rolls of film per room - 24 photos. In other words, this isn't digital, and he's using a medium format camera.

This was interesting, because so much photography is digital these days. Two other recent exhibitions have piqued my interest. The first was the Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibtion at The Natural History Museum. This year was the first time I'd visited, and what a fantastic exhibition is is. The way they've displayed the photos is amazing with lightboxes behind transparencies of the photographs.

There truly are some stunning photos, and the exhibition really is worth a look. What I especially liked was the fact that full details of every photo taken were listed. So you could see which camera the photographer had used, the lens, and quite often, even the brand of tripod.

Of course you find a certain amount of jealousy comes out.

"If I had that camera and that lens, maybe I'd be able to take such awesome photos!"

That's not entirely true. What's evident is that these people had been to some remarkable places and often taken extraordinary amounts of time over getting the photos.

The overall winning picture of a snow leopard took literally months to get. The photographer, was working for National Geographic, so he could probably afford to spend that amount of time on assignment, but even then, his winning photo(s) were actually shot using a bottom of the range Canon DSLR. It's just that he used quite a lot of them and left them with automatic triggers to attempt to get the shots.

I must also admit that I was jealous of some of the junior entries. There are categories for all sorts of young children, and some of the shots they've captured are amazing. But again, they're quite often borrowing mummy or daddy's lenses. Either that, or they get significantly more pocket money than I did.

So essentially, I came away from the exhibition jealous... But what I really meant to mention was that barely any of the photos were taken using film cameras. There was one honourable exception from a photographer who took panoramic shots of Namibia, but that was really it.

Over at the Royal Festival Hall they have the World Press Photo 2008 exhibition. The photos are presented here on boards, and are often larger than the images presented at the Natural History Museum. What I find is that this really shows up when photos are digital and have perhaps been over-enlarged. That's not by any means the case with all of them, and since many are "action" photos of news events, you get what you can as safely as possible.

Disappointingly, the full photographic information is not displayed alongside each print. But this free exhibition is worth visiting if you're down by the Southbank in the coming weeks.

Just a word of warning. If you're bringing young children, you might not want them to see Time magazine's portrait of Vladimir Putin taken for their Person of the Year 2007 cover story. I know that I'm going to get nightmares.

You do listen to Clive James' A Point of View don't you?

Go away and subscribe to the podcast immediately if you don't!

A little while ago, I mentioned that I was seeking a DAB digital radio with recording facilities (ideally to SD card), and WiFi.

You can buy a DAB/WiFi radio. And you can buy a DAB/SD radio. But you can't buy one with all three. What a shame.

But because new sets are always being designed, I thought I'd write to the major manufacturers - in particular Roberts, Pure and Revo, all of whom make devices, separately that do the things I was looking for. Were they planning, I asked, to produce a device of this nature?

First the good news. The customer service or enquiry departments of all three companies replied to my emails quickly and politely.

Roberts told me that there was nothing on the drawing board, "but never say never." So we can live in hope.

Pure told me that they didn't offer such a device at the moment. The person who replied said he wasn't aware of anything in the pipeline either.

Reevo told me that there wasn't a device on the market that met my needs. I pretty much knew that. They also said that due to podcasts and listen again features, there isn't seen as being a requirement to add recording facilities.

That's not true, as you can rarely podcast music-based programming, and even speech podcasts have an annoying habit of disappearing after a week if they come from the BBC. Listen Again facilities are likewise limited in time of availability, and you simply can't transfer them to your portable mp3 player without some very awkward workarounds.

Now perhaps it's only radio anoraks like me that are interested in this kind of technology. But I had a couple of comments from other people who were also interested.

Manufacturers tend to keep quiet about new products for competitive reasons, so I'm hoping that somebody somewhere is developing such a device.

More or Less has returned for a new run. Well worth subscribing to the podcast if you want to understand a little more how numbers really relate and their general misuse in the broader world.

That probably doesn't do a great deal to explain what the show's about, but it's well worth a listen - honestly.

BBC One took an appalling decision this week. They cancelled an episode of Little Dorrit to show a "fast-turnaround" episode of Panorama. Thousands of viewers have rightly complained.

Now I have no problem with current affairs programming taking precedence over drama, soaps or comedy, but there were two major problems this time around.

1. They're not rescheduling an episode of a serialised drama. That's right. Because the schedules are already so tightly woven up before Christmas, they can't squeeze it in. So instead, viewers will have to watch the Sunday omnibus. They'll either have to watch the whole thing, including Wednesday's episode, or come in roughly around half way through and hope that they don't miss anything. I've been using Series Link on Sky+ and as I type this on Sunday morning, no new entry for the Sunday omnibus has been put in my planner. I would have missed this altogether. Continuity announcers telling you to watch at approximately 6.45pm on Sunday just aren't enough.

2. The tabloid nature of the Panorama that replaced it. We got an hour long primetime show on something that frankly isn't all that important. It's tabloid fare. A stupid couple effectively kidnap their own child because of something they saw on an episode of Shameless. The story does not warrant the exposure. The reason that the episode was rush-released was because the court case had ended and the people concerned had been found guilty. The only "rush" was to beat the tabloids (and, sadly, broadsheets) who'd next day be printing page after page of nauseating detail.

Do you honestly think that if the night had been jam packed with Eastenders followed by Strictly... followed by Spooks, that one of those shows would have been postponed? Too right they wouldn't.

The only reason the BBC did this is because unlike the previous attempt at doing something like this - Bleak House, a couple of years ago - the viewing figures haven't been that great this time around. So suddenly, a ratings hungry BBC will piss off 2.5m loyal viewers, and instead hope to grab 6m viewers for a one-off Panorama.

I sort of expect this kind of behaviour from a commercial channel, but there's no excuse for the BBC. It's lowest common denominator scheduling of the worst kind. It was poor editorially, and frankly if there are any apologies being made by the BBC, they shouldn't be for stupid things that happened on the radio with John Barrowman. They should be apologising to viewers who've invested in time in watching a 14 part drama series.

(PS Happily, viewers in Scotland were able to watch the missing epsiode on Friday as originally scheduled. It seems to have been beyond the wit of anyone at the BBC to at least tell my Sky+ this. It could have easily recorded the episode. That still doesn't help other viewers though).

So the long awaited Amazon MP3 store is finally here - with just days to go until the end of the year deadline. They've got quite a lot of music on it with a claimed 3.5m tracks on there at the moment (so they've been busy).

Tracks are recorded as 256 kbps MP3 files - usually variable bit-rate. That's not bad, although Play.com uses 320 kbps. And eMusic uses a disappointing 192 kbps (again VBR).

Apple's default AAC is at 128 kbps, so a like with like comparison isn't direct - contrary to what you might glean from the BBC News report.

There's plenty of variable pricing which is sensible, but one thing that Amazon, like iTunes is bad about, is allowing you to re-download music you've later bought. Since they know who you are and what your buying history is, quite why I can't download music again after a hard disk failure or similar is beyond me. Piracy can't be the answer, because once I've got the MP3, I can do anything I like with it anyway. Obviously there may be watermarks within the audio files - I don't know.

That's one area where eMusic has the upper hand. I can download music I've already bought again and again. Anyway, nothing's taken my fancy just yet, and being an old fogey, I in any case prefer the physical comfort of a CD to a large extent (That said, if there was something I wanted in their £3 offer, I'd be downloading it right now).