January 2009 Archives

(Needs to be seen large)

Lots of live streaming (now over obviously) of Chris Martin from Coldplay at work.

Strictly speaking, I shouldn't have been taking photos, but I was standing behind non-performing band members, and couldn't really resist. Most of the other photos have him gurning or are otherwise unlikely to be cleared by his PR, but they're on Flickr nonetheless.

Anyway, listen out for an interview with Christian on air from Monday, when you'll also be able to watch the whole 30 minute set. It'll also be available to view online.

Everything happens at once. Yesterday, saw the publication of Q4 2008's RAJAR results, and the eagerly awaited Digital Britain report.

They're not really related, but I should probably say something about both. From close to home, my employer, Absolute Radio, published its first results, and they clearly don't make for comfortable reading. The numbers show significant falls in most measures, but it's to be expected. As James Cridland notes, RAJAR diaries require recall of station brands, and that's not something that's easy to do when a service has been on air for such a short period of time. In spite of marketing, it takes time for a new brand to seep into public consciousness.

There's a lot of rebranding happening out there at the moment. Global has rebranded most of its FM services in the East of England from the start of this year. Broadland, Chiltern, SGR et al are now called Heart. And at the end of March, the next tranch of services will get the rebranding treatment - this time in the West of England, from 2-Ten and Fox FM to GWR and Plymouth Sound. Again they'll form part of the Heart network. It'll be worth watching RAJAR results for these services too in coming quarters to see how figures change. I know what I think will happen.

But there were some very positive signs to be found in RAJAR. Despite continued negative press surrounding DAB, the news is encouraging. Ownership of DAB digital radios has increased to 29.7%. So getting on for one in three homes has at least one DAB radio in it. That's a great start, but I don't think anyone believes that it's anything more than a start. That's in line with the 32.2% of the population who've listened to at least some radio via a digital platform (DAB/DTV/Internet), accounting for 18.3% of all radio listening.

The disparity between those figures is explained by the vast number of radios that still need replacing.

I should at this point also point out that Absolute Radio is doing enormously well in the digital sphere, which explains why my employer remains a very keen supporter of digital, and DAB in particular. Let's face it - you don't want to listen to a music radio service on AM do you? Our national service now has 45% of its listening via a digital platform compared with that All Radio average of 18.3%.

And that digital listening is predominantly DAB. Of that 18.3%, 11.4% is DAB, with 3.2% DTV, and 2.0% via the internet (the other 1.7% of hours aren't stated). In other words, roughly two thirds of all digital radio listening is via DAB.

The same is true for Absolute Radio. For our national service, that 45.0% is made up of 32.0% DAB (71% of all digital listening), 6.8% via DTV and 5.8% via the internet. Even if you look at our overall service which includes London and so has lower overall figures since the service is also available via FM, digital listening overall still accounts for a very impressive 28.8% of all listening. That's made up of 20.6% DAB (72% of digital listening), 4.4% via DTV and 3.8% over the the internet.

If that jumble of numbers has left you a little confused, it just shows that DAB is by far the most popular digital format to listen to the radio. And for Absolute Radio in particular, it's a vital service accounting for a very significant proportion of all listening to the service.

And the DRDB has just released data indicating that by the end of 2008, the total number of DAB sets sold had reached 8.53m.

I've highlighted DAB to this extent because yesterday saw the launch of the draft Digital Britain report. I somehow expect that you know this already, because there's been lots of coverage of it all over the place. Stephen Carter used to head up Ofcom, but he was enobled and now he's been tasked with the job of building a blueprint for ensuring that we have a fully digital economy. With our manufacturing industry growing more defunct by the day, digital is an opportunity too good to miss. Indeed the report makes clear that if we don't do something, countries like the US and France will overtake us.

Obviously the major story is about the provision of broadband internet access to "every home by 2012" with a speed of at least 2 Mbps. Seemingly, this will be paid for by the £130m a year "digital switchover surplus."

Anyway, more of this anon, but let's get back to radio, and see what the Digital Britain report has to say about a medium very close to home for me at least.

Last year's DRWG report was fed directly into Digital Britain, so unsurprisingly this new report speaks of DAB as having become "the platform of choice for digital radio listening."

In truth, I'm not sure that the Digital Britain report really goes a great deal beyond what the DRWG report before it suggested. But those plans are now to be implemented.

Specifically, the actions the report outlines for radio are as follows:

We will take action to support DAB digital radio in seven areas:
a. We are making a clear statement of Government and policy commitment to enabling DAB to be a primary distribution network for radio;
b. We will create a plan for digital migration of radio, which the Government intends to put in place once the following criteria have been met:
- When 50% of radio listening is digital;
- When national DAB coverage is comparable to FM coverage, and local DAB reaches 90% of population and all major roads.
c. We will create a Digital Radio Delivery Group which includes the retailers, the Transmission Networks, the BBC, the Commercial Radio Companies, the Car Manufacturers, consumer representatives and the device manufacturers whose role would be to increase the attractiveness, availability and affordability of DAB and to advise on the Digital Migration Plan.
d. We will work with the BBC to explore how they could extend their digital radio coverage to replicate at least current FM analogue coverage.
e. As recommended by the Digital Radio Working Group, we will conduct a cost-benefit analysis of digital migration.
f. We will consult on new legislation to allow a one-off five-year extension of existing community radio licences, to bring them in line with other radio licences and recognise the important role they have in delivering social gain. We also intend to re-consider the rationale for the current restriction of 50% of funding from any one source.
g. We will commission an independent expert examination of the economic viability, continuing social contribution of, and most effective delivery methods for, local radio services and existing localness legislation.

a and b above are directly from the DRWG report. The creation of a Digital Radio Delivery Group is to be welcomed, although we've had a number of groups over the last few years. We do need the will of all concerned to drive this forward.

Extending DAB coverage to meet current FM coverage is essential - especially for BBC licence payers. But as the population gets more spread out, the harder and more expensive this becomes. Nick Piggott has a great explanation of how DAB was launched in the UK and why this has been made harder, and therefore more expensive than was perhaps necessary.

One key area that still needs addressing is how some of this will be achieved. As mentioned before, the only cash "swilling" around is the BBC's switchover surplus, but broadband is getting this.

The report rejects a proposal to allow an automatic further extension of analogue and multiplex licences, but will keep this under review if the industry is able to come up with a compelling and agreed "drive to digital" plan. In other words: it's up to the radio industry to show Ofcom what it can offer for this incentive.

But Ofcom is carrying out a cost-benefit analysis of digital migration, and it's some of those costs that still need addressing.

The full Digital Britain report is now in due in May, and there are likely to be changes before then: not just in radio, but in some of the other industries it covers. I'll try to put together a wider summary of my thoughts coming out from this report later.

What on earth is going on in the States?

As UK readers will almost certainly know, we're currently embarking on digital switchover. That's to say that by 2012, nobody will be able to watch TV in the UK without some kind of digital box. Sky hopes that will be via their system (and they posted excellent results today), Virgin Media through their system, but for perhaps the majority of people (if not TV sets) it will be via Freeview.

According to Ofcom, 88.2% of households currently have digital TV in some form or another, which is a great place to be, but 40% of secondary sets like those in bedrooms, kitchens and offices, have yet to be converted.

It's a challenge, and one that's concerned me for a while. But the plan has been to roll full switchover out on a channel by channel basis, region by region. It started in the Borders region which is lightly populated and allows time to take learnings from it before attempting big metropolitan areas. As far as I'm aware, everything remains on track.

In the US it's a different story. Many more people receive their TV via cable, and that's relatively unaffected by digital switchover. Far fewer homes use rooftop aerials or set-top "rabbit ears" to receive over-the-air pictures. But those who do still use such methods are inevitably older and poorer.

The method the US decided to take was to set a single date, February 17 2009, for the whole country to switchover. They put in place a coupon system: you could apply for a coupon with a value of $40. This could then be put towards a digital converter box (effectively the equivalent of a Freeview box) which plugs into your TV as normal. Of course, like Freeview, many recent model TVs have this receiver technology built-in, although that information doesn't seem to be as widely known as it might.

But there were some problems. First, when the coupon system was introduced, no cheaper boxes were available. Consumers were expecting some boxes to priced as low as $40, effectively making them free. But the cheaper boxes came online relatively late.

The scheme also had finite funding. Coupons expired after 90 days, so you had to buy promptly when you received them. And now, as D-day approaches, the scheme's run out of money. Upwards of 100,000 people are on a coupon waiting list. They're waiting for unused coupons to expire before the cash set aside can be put towards new coupons.

The date set was in February, and of course TV stations have been preparing for this date for a long time. One problem with the February date was that it falls in a "sweeps" period.

The US TV market isn't able to measure all stations in the country all year around - overnight data is only available for larger markets. So four times a year, a diary method is used to measure every station's ratings. These are the sweeps periods, and key to them is desperately ensuring that you have your best and newest programming available during them.

[As an aside, to my mind this is a fundamentally flawed system. The ratings that come from these periods are used as the basis for vast advertising sales, yet stations have used every trick in the book to maximise their ratings during this period. They might have saved up new episodes of series that had otherwise been in repeats, and they have special guest stars and events that aren't representative of other times of the year].

Such is the concern over digital switchover that the February sweeps period this year has been moved to March. And big events like the Oscars were considered for moving. Broadcasters were concerned that a significant proportion of its audience simply won't be able to see its programming.

Estimates of how many people are unprepared vary, but it's clear that the number is in the millions of homes.

Criticism has been widespread.

Then on Tuesday, the Senate voted to delay the switchover until June 12.

So all of a sudden, something that was going to happen in just over two weeks, is getting a five month delay. Obama was said to be in favour of this. More time would be available to get those last homes converted: as I always say, who wants to be the politician that takes away someones TV?

But now the House has voted against this delay.

Digital transition will take place in two weeks' time after all.

Confused? You will be... after this week's... digital switchover.

I'm not sure that anyone could have made a bigger mess over this if they'd tried. Will it happen on February 17 now? We'll just have to wait and see. But you can be sure it'll be the poor, the minorities and the elderly that will lose out.

(Oh, and of course this isn't the biggest story in US media - they're more concerned about adverts in this Sunday's Superbowl...)

You do watch Flight of the Conchords don't you?

What do you mean, you've been meaning to? Stop wasting your time on the internet and either go and look it up on YouTube, or better still go and get the DVDs of the first series right now (and the Radio 2 series, and the album).

As well as Jemaine and Brett, the series features a fantastic set of secondary characters - especially Rhys Darby's manager Murray, and Kristen Schaal's somewhat stalker-ish and not to say psychotic fan, Mel.

Schaal has a wonderful face for some extraordinary expressions, so when I read the other week that she was appearing with fellow comic Kurt Braunohler, I had to get tickets.

What a brilliant night. I really just can't begin to describe the bizarre and eccentric nature of the show. We got a play in reverse chronological order: Double Down Hearts. There was phone sex featuring Pocahontas, and a remarkable song featuring the unforgettable lyric (with accompanying dance): Kirsten Schaal is a horse. There's some terrifically uncomfortable sections, not least the member of the audience who wins a date with Schaal.

All round, it's brilliant. I suspect it's thoroughly sold out, but do see these two next time you have the opportunity. I know I will.

Doubt is another "Oscar" film adapted and directed from his own play by John Patrick Shanley. And up front, it's fair to say that it feels very much like a stageplay adapted to film. It's claustrophobic and has powerful set pieces that scream "play" at you.

Meryl Streep is a strict nun who's principal of a Catholic school in 60s New York (I'll be honest - I had to look up whether it was New York, Boston, or somewhere else on the north eastern US seaboard. It wasn't immediately clear to me). She begins to suspect that Philip Seymour Hoffman's priest might be behaving inappropriately with one of the boys.

Given the recent history of the Catholic church in the US, and the number of awful cases of priests who were indeed behaving like that, you might think that either this piece is about the unmasking of such a priest, or a role-reversal film - perhaps he's the priest who's not stepping out of line.

Because we follow the action from Sister Beauvier's point of view, we're not sure. And that's really the point of the piece.

There are some nicely observed sections of the film. Streep's character is feared by all who come before her. She knows when kids are misbehaving and strolls around smacking kids and dishing out punishment without hesitation. She reminds me of a teacher at my primary school (not a nun) who managed to maintain a similar fearful hold over all who faced her.

And the sections where the boys act as altar servers also reminded me of my own experiences. They even dressed the same as we did.

Everything is nicely observed and the performances throughout are excellent. I liked the development of Amy Adams' Sister James who's told to pin a framed picture of the Pope on her blackboard by Sister Beauvier. "But it's the wrong Pope," she complains. "He passed away."

"You can use the refelection in the glass to see what the children are doing behind you when your back is turned," she's told. "They'll think you've got eyes in the back of your head!"

Amy Adams is up for a best supporting actress role for her performance which is fine, but I'm much less sure about Viola Davis who's in the same category. She has a couple of good scenes and that's about her total contribution. Yes, they're important and powerful scenes, but others who have less obvious "drama" are equally as good - if not better. With Penelope Cruz in Vicky Cristina Barcelona the only performance I've not seen in the category, I'd have to give it to Marisa Tomei for The Wrestler; a much deeper and more polished performance.

Overall though, it's another good, if not great film.

I saw a preview of this at the weekend, although it was a close run thing. When I turned up at the cinema at 10.30am on Sunday morning along with a hundred and fifty or so other people, my local multiplex seemed to know nothing about it.

Cue lots of delays and uncertainty about whether we would see this film, another, or any. But they managed to get it sorted out, and so we saw one of the award season's most nominated films.

But I've got to ask why it's so nominated. It's certainly a decent film, and it's very unusual. But award winning? I'm not so sure.

It's about Brad Pitt's character, the aforementioned Benjamin Button, who is born as an old man and as he gets older, his body gets younger. In other words, the plot's utterly bizarre. But you fairly quickly forget about that and get into the interesting ideas the film presents, as he falls for a family friend who's the same age as him in years, if not in body. That means that there's a sort of "sweet spot" somewhere in the middle of the film. But it'd be a shame to spoil the story any more.

I've no idea to what extent this film really is based on an F Scott Fitzgerald story, but it's interesting if a tad long - it's getting on for three hours.

Cate Blanchett plays Daisy, the aforementioned friend, and a fine job she does too. While Pitt's is pretty decent. But I'm just not sure that these are the best performances that I've seen in the last twelve months. They're assured, certainly, but I'm really not sure that's enough.

The most interesting part of the film is that set in Russia as Button meets Tilda Swinton's somewhat more interesting bored diplomat's wife. The relationship the two have is much deeper than anything else in the film, but in reality it's just a sideshow to the main story.

To be honest, this film has been better made by the French. It has the feel of either Amelie or A Very Long Engagement - the playfulness it sometimes employs.

None of this should put anyone off seeing the film, but it's just not as strong as some of the others.

Oh yes, and it's nice to Julia Ormond on the big screen again? Where's she been for these last few years?

Given the general lack of science programmes on TV, it's a bit of a shame that when they do come along - they clash.

Last night Horizon returned with an edition entitled "Why Are Thin People Not Fat" (I'll just leave that there...) while at the same time on BBC Four we had the first in a season of Darwin programmes - What Darwin Didn't Know.

OK - I realise that the BBC Four programme will get about fifteen repeats across the week, although sod's law says that the edition I record will have signing. And at time of looking Horizon is going to be available on the iPlayer for just another 84 days!

Sense prevails next week when Horizon moves to Tuesday nights.

And while I'm talking about television science, what happened to the popular BBC 1 science programme that we were due?

In the meantime, the BBC has announced some bigger science programmes: History of Science, Seven Wonders of the Solar System and Professor Regan's... [insert one of four subjects here].

Sky emails me to tell me about the "Exciting New Improvements" they've made to the Sky Player (aka Sky Anytime - but since the success of the iPlayer, everything has to be similarly named). I can now watch if I have a Mac (or "MAC" in Sky-speak - isn't that something to do with WiFi?), and they've added extra channels. They've also removed the previous restriction allowing it to be used on only one PC.

But it's still fairly useless when the single thing that I'd like to be able to do is the one thing I can't - I'm not allowed to stream Sky Sports. Now while I'm not saying that I'd waste valuable work time watching the cricket of Masters tennis, I'd like to be able to make that choice myself thanks. But Sky won't let me unless I either take out a multi-room subscription (I live in a flat on my own so, no thanks), or I take their Broadband Max package. I already pay Sky a considerable amount of money a month, so no thanks.

Of course, I could just go out and buy a Slingbox which would do the job for me, but since Sky is worried that someone would be watching Sky One at home while I watched Sky Sports at work without them seeing any more cash, then I can't. Rubbish.

Meanwhile, wasn't the terrestrial FA Cup coverage poor at the weekend. I don't mean the quality of ITV (or Setanta), but the limited number of games. When the BBC and Sky shared FA Cup coverage, the BBC had three matches while Sky had two. And I believe I'm right in saying that the BBC got first two picks as well. That's clearly not the case with the ITV/Setanta deal where Setanta marginally has the upper hand.

On Saturday ITV had Hartlepool v West Ham at lunchtime and the main pick of the round, Man Utd v Spurs (Man Utd is always a channel controller's pick of the round due to inevitable ratings). But that was it. The second choice fixture was probably the Liverpool derby which was on Setanta, as was the Notts Forest v Derby clash on Friday. Finally, Setanta also had Cardiff v Arsenal. I'd hazard a guess that ITV got first pick, Setanta picks two, three and four, with ITV getting the final choice.

All in all, the terrestrial viewer loses out, and I can assure the folk at Setanta that there's no way I'm taking out a subscription with them - I've heard the horror stories of people who wanted to cancel later (you had to write a letter...).

Finally, yesterday's Observer carried a story saying that culls of geese might be needed around Heathrow where they were causing more of a threat recently. This, of course, following the downed plane in the Hudson in New York a week or so ago.

The number of Canada geese in Britain is expected to rise to more than 200,000 by 2010, according to the British Trust for Ornithology, which monitors bird populations. That compares with just 3,600 in 1953.

and

Some scientists claim that they are now choosing to winter in Europe because of global warming.

So let's see. Global warming causes geese to fly to Europe where they cause a hazard at Heathrow. We cull them, and then... build another runway at Heathrow, thus putting more CO2 into the atmosphere, speeding up global warming... You get the picture.

(But I am quite pleased that my employer will be playing the DEC Gaza appeal on air).

I went to Welney today, and apart from discovering that a simple five mile cycle from Littleport station took far more out of an unfit me than it should have done, I took dozens of photos.

This is possibly my favourite, but there'll be more appearing over at p.

Andy Burnham has today announced the committee that will determine which sporting events will remain "Listed".

At the moment, there are two groups of sports that are protected. That is, they must be offered in one form or another free to air to all viewers.

Group A - Full Live Coverage
The Olympic Games
The FIFA World Cup Finals Tournament
The European Football Championship Finals Tournament
The FA Cup Final
The Scottish FA Cup Final (in Scotland)
The Grand National
The Derby
The Wimbledon Tennis Finals
The Rugby League Challenge Cup Final
The Rugby World Cup Final

Group B - Highlights on "Terrestrial" TV*
Cricket Test Matches played in England
Non-Finals play in the Wimbledon Tournament
All Other Matches in the Rugby World Cup Finals Tournament
Six Nations Rugby Tournament Matches Involving Home Countries
The Commonwealth Games
The World Athletics Championship
The Cricket World Cup - the Final, Semi-finals and Matches Involving Home Nations' Teams
The Ryder Cup
The Open Golf Championship

* Terrestrial's probably not the right term as we go digital, and that might be something that gets re-defined.

We obviously do get live coverage on free-to-air channels of every event in Group A, and some in Group B (e.g. Wimbledon, Rugby World Cup, Six Nations etc.).

This committee will be looking again at that list. I know for a fact, as I've said before, that FIFA and UEFA want to limit which games in their competitions are in Group A, with the rest of their tournament in Group B. The IOC would also like to see their events moved. Indeed, given that you effectively frozen from selling your sport to Sky or Setanta exclusively if you're in Group A, pretty much every sporting body would like to see their events out of Group A.

So what do we make of the panel? I don't personally like Eammonn Holmes as a presenter, but I guess he's knowledgable. However I can think of any number of other Five Live presenters who might be better suited: Mark Pougatch or John Inverdale for example.

We - the public - will be invited to contribute to the review which will report later this year.

In the meantime, The Guardian has the first of a two part series on where the economic downturn will leave TV sports rights, and football in particular. I wonder if we are going to see the end of the stratospheric increases in football rights, although there are still new players who are declaring a hand and joining the fray like ESPN, and perhaps BT.

Great news! The vote called last week by the government to exclude MPs' expenses from falling into the Freedom of Information act, which was to take place tomorrow, has been cancelled.

This superb news almost certainly follows the vast amount of emails that MPs have been receiving, the Tweets and the Facebook group. All inside 48 hours.

Much kudos must go to everyone at MySociety who were able to turn this whole process around in 48 hours.

I even got a response from my MP's researcher acknowledging my email and promising to get back in contact.

Seriously - MPs care about their constituents, especially as we approach a general election.

The government is trying to renege on publishing details of MPs expenses. They introduced some new legislation last week to remove their obligation under the Freedom of Information Act.

This comes after over £1m had been spent collecting the information. And let's not forget that they're public servants.

So write to your MP today. Get them to do something about it.

It's very - just click here and you can electronically send your message.

There's the inevitable Facebook group too!

The vote is this Thursday, so do it today - do it now.

A great film explaining why extending sound copyright is not in performers' interests but just record companies'. And, of course, our worst interests.

More at soundcopyright.eu.

A new year seems to mean that every newspaper worth its salt has to run some kind of promotion, and this Saturday's Independent had a very good offer: a free DVD of David Frost interviewing Richard Nixon about Watergate ahead of the release of Frost/Nixon in a week's time.

That was enough for me to pick up the paper for the first time in a while. You should know that somewhere in my loft I have issue No. 1 of The Independent and always feel very loyal to the paper even if I don't show my loyalty in always buying it. Perverse, I know.

While I think the paper was foolhardy to jump to a pound before anyone else had done - save the FT (granted, everyone else is around 90p - or will be from Monday) - I know that they struggle and yet they do some things well.

But a couple of real disappointments were to be found over the weekend. And they seem to come from making too many cost savings.

Saturday's paper had the results of an "Investigation" that showed the - shock/horror - B&Q's sale prices are not much better than a previous sale that had been held in October. They spelt out the fact that B&Q had sold products at higher prices for 28 days as required by law, but that having put the prices up for November and December, they'd dropped in January to similar levels.

Except that even this non-story didn't hang together. They highlighted a shower bath panel that had cost £100.56 in October, £169 in December and was now £84.49. Well to me, despite the price having increased in December, the price is now significantly lower than it had been in October. If I bought it today, I'd save fifteen quid on the October price. That's substantial on a hundred pound item.

This is not a story. It's as though someone in the newsroom evidently bought that panel in October and thought they'd got a deal. Then they'd noticed the price increase in December before dropping to a new lower price in January.

Guess what? Retailers change their prices a lot!

I can only assume that somebody in the Indie's advertising department has fallen out with B&Q too.

This story took up a full page.

Otherwise, Saturday's paper was OK. John Walsh's tribute to John Mortimer was fine (although a side panel repeated the notion that he'd written the screenplay for Brideshead Revisited - he did write a script, and was credited, but he others wrote the one used), and it was unfortunate that events had overtaken a story about the creator of Mad Men demanding more cash before he signed on for a third season (he now has).

But if anything, I was more disappointed by Sunday's paper. A page three story about the Prime Minister of the Turks & Caicos Islands told us little to nothing about exactly what he was accused of having done wrong. The story just stopped. It had so little detail I thought that I must have picked up Metro by mistake. If there's one thing I want in a Sunday paper, it's detail.

The safety net scheme being devised for UK banks got just a hundred words on page 4. But worst of all was an otherwise excellent article on inauguration of Obama. It started on page 8 where it was accompanied by a photo of his train journey yesterday; it continued on page 10, where it was the second lead after a sister Obama story; and it concluded on page 13. Other stories about Obama were on page 9 and page 11.

The layout was utterly atrocious. If the entire piece could not have been contained on a single page, or double page spread, which it easily could have been, it should certainly have demanded no more than one page turn. I wouldn't expect a student magazine to have design as bad as that. Is there anyone left at the Independent working on page layout?

Elsewhere, a weak story noted that lots of films were being made based around toys, and was given a double page spread. Meanwhile, an interesting piece about an ancient Greek vessel being reassembled was given a half page, of which only around a hundred words were devoted to the story. The rest was an illustration and a curious map that showed both where the vessel was found off Sicily, and the location of Portsmouth where the restoration work is taking place. Why did we need a map of Portsmouth? We know where that is. Indeed, to anyone who didn't read the story, you'd have thought that the boat had sailed from Sicily to Portsmouth in ancient times.

Again, that's not to say that there aren't good stories to be found in the paper. And I much prefer reaching international news before I reach the comment section. In too many Sundays - take a bow The Observer and the Sunday Times, international news is hidden away towards the back.

I fear that the real reason for all of this is cost-cutting.

I noted a suggestion earlier this week that the Russian oligarch and ex-KGB member Alexander Lebedev who's thought to be buying the Evening Standard might also want The Independent. Maggie Brown, on the Media Guardian podcast, thought that it was an appalling notion that Lebedev should own even the Standard. She'd be apoplectic ifhe bought the Indie too - a paper she was at launch with. I must admit that instinctively I'm uncomfortable with the notion too, but I'm also aware that the long term prospects for The Independent are not good.

Professional wrestling has always had a strange alure for me. I can't say that I've ever watched very much of it, but the idea that something that was presented as sport, wasn't fairly contested is just something that goes against all my sensibilities. Of course, these days it's presented at "Sports Entertainment."

There's also the somewhat seedy side away from the "glamour" of the WWE. Us Brits of course (fondly) remember ITV Saturday afternoons with Big Daddy, Giant Haystacks et al. And that was seedy enough.

But that's nothing to the town hall circuits that seem to exist all over the place. Stray far enough down the EPG on Sky in the sports section and you'll find the Fight Network which features much of this. Often taking place in small venues with keen fans, you'll occasionally recognise the name of someone who was once on the books of the WWE.

I guess that it's at this level of wrestling that we find Randy "The Ram" in The Wrestler. In a role that surely nobody else could have played, Mickey Rourke is The Ram, a wrestler who was at his peak in 2009. An opening montage shows us wrestling memorabilia from his biggest ever bout when he took on The Ayatollah.

Now he lives on a trailer park somewhere on the east coast, where he struggles to make rental payments. Scarily, he's still appearing in the ring in local town hall bouts. It's clear that the years and the profession have not been kind to his body. The camera, which often follows him around, in a documentary style, is also not scared of showing how he has to practically tape is his body together. It's also clear that the cocktail of drugs he needs to keep the pain at bay would put down a horse.

We know that wrestling bouts are fixed, but the scenes in the dressing room before the bouts where wrestlers determine who's going to do what to who are enlightening. As is the fact, for those who were unaware, that they're constantly telling each other what they're going to do for their next move.

The wrestling feels very real, and given that plenty of real wrestlers were involved in the film's making, that's not surprising. That's despite the fact that nobody is going to come away from this film thinking that the "sport" is in any way glamorous.

One hardcore bout features glass, staple guns, and barbed wire alongside more familiar fare like tables, ladders, bins and folding chairs. In one scene, we see The Ram going around a supermarket picking up suitable kit to throw at one another. Yet when the bloody bout is over, the staples have to be pulled out, and stitches put into some of the deeper cuts. It's not pleasant.

Marisa Tomei plays Cassidy - a stripper - who is beginning to feel, like The Ram, that her best days are behind her, as she struggles to make perhaps as much money as she once did. She's not really his girlfriend - he's a client. But it's a fascinating relationship. As is the one he has with his daughter, Stephanie.

At it's heart, it's a sad film. There's a wonderful scene where The Ram and several other ex-wrestlers are sitting in a room somewhere to meet the fans. Only a handful come through the doors, where they pay a few dollars to have a Polaroid taken with them, or collect a signature. When Randy looks around he sees one uses a walking stick; another is in a wheelchair; and a third has a colostomy bag. Is this to be his future?

There is humour though - a wonderful scene where he works in his local supermarket behind the deli counter, amazed that the manager is willing to put him front of house.

All in all, a cracking portrait of someone who feels real, and I'm certain does exist. Like the professional boxer who goes on too long. Despite the cinema being packed this evening, few were going to see The Wrestler (goodness knows what garbage they were seeing), so catch this while you can. Next week gets another three "serious" films.

I'd been looking forward to seeing Slumdog Millionaire from director Danny Boyle since I first heard about it. It was such a remarkable idea for a story, based on the book, Q&A.

Now despite what you may have seen in the film's own advertising, this is not the "Feel Good Film Of The Year" - at least not unless you're a fairly sick individual. Life is tough for the kids from the Mumbai slums.

The film is episodic with each question basically introducing an extract of Jamal's (Dev Patel) life. He's being interrogated by the police who believe that he must be a cheat for someone like him to have got so far in Who Want's To Be A Millionaire.

There's an amazing sequence at the start of the film with a group of kids being chased from a runway where they're playing cricket by police on mopeds. The visceral thrill of them running into the nearby shanty town whilst being chased by the police is precisely the same as you had when Ewan MacGregor was running down Princes Street at the start of Trainspotting.

There are some tough scenes in this film - and at no point, despite what some might think, are we really presented with some kind of idealised picture of life in the slums. There's religious intollerance, organised crime, murder, torture, kidnapping and more. Life is tough, but the film has heart and I can't recommend it highly enough.

The music, incidentally, is absolutely awesome, and feels very cross cultural. It's a CD that I'll be tracking down.

If you want to know what's going on with the Digital Britain report, forthcoming from Lord Carter as metioned yesterday, it seems that you need to keep reading the Financial Times.

There is talk in today's piece about a broader broadcaster that would encompass Channel 4 as well as supplying alternative news programmes to the BBC. The FT suggests that this might include Five, although it's not clear to me why an otherwise private broadcaster would fall under this organisation.

Essentially the report demands that there remain a plurality of voices. It doesn't believe that C4 is able to provide this - hence the need for a wider operation.

Other areas of the report, as reported by the FT, include a wider role for BBC Worldwide representing other broadcasters' programming, the creation of an agency to fight internet piracy, "restructuring of digital radio networks and greater flexibility on possible mergers", a review of competition law as it affects regional press and local radio, an examination of the relationship between independent TV producers and broadcasters, and the fact that 2012 will be our digital transition year (well it will be for TV anyway).

A further piece delves deeper into the internet piracy issue. ISPs would be required to collect data on people who they suspect of downloading films and music. Quite how they'd do this is unclear. This would be yet another burden on ISPs who are also going to be required to retain details of emails sent for a year too. Look to hikes in charges to cover this additional work. And also look to lots of people encrypting their internet traffic so that's it's not possible to determine what, exactly, they're doing online.

There's also a video you can watch here.

(I'd have embedded it here, but the FT doesn't seem keen to allow embedding. If you click on the link that says Put FT Video on your site, it takes you through to a page that talks about reprints, syndication and copyright law. While I can see that pieces from the FT command a premium, you might think that extending video to third party sites in an easy fashion might be in their interest.)

Interestingly, today also saw the publication of a report by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry. The headline from which is that they claim that 95% of downloaded music is illegal.

It's not entirely clear how this figure was reached. According to the IFPI report, they collated studies from 16 countries over a four year period to estimate "unauthorised file-sharing at over 40 billion files in 2008" (p22). They then calculated that globally this accounts for 95 per cent of music tracks downloaded.

I'd really like to see some details of this. Because while I'm sure that illegal file-sharing remains high, some significant advances have been made even in the last year. The report itself points out that legal digital downloads in the UK increased by 45% in the first half of 2008. And with Apple now offering DRM free music, and the December launch of Amazon's MP3 service, that figure is set to increase further.

While I'm sure that the digital gains don't make up for the physical losses, is all of this attributable to piracy? On the one hand, much of that claimed 95% would not have been purchased if piracy wasn't an option (cf. claimed losses of pirated software that nobody would ever have bought e.g. Photoshop), and on the other - we need to consider the interest in owning recorded music when there is so much competition for our leisure time. Are sales in recorded music falling because of growth in video games? Or DVDs? Or gym memberships? Or other things that vie for our leisure time.

There's a shop in Berwick Street that can help...

There's a wonderful story in this week's Broadcast magazine. In a piece that explains how UKTV chanel "Watch" is having a bit of a rethink, it explains that challenging fare like Cranford, Mistresses and Love Soup is too "demanding" for its viewers. Instead they're going to show more Dancing with the Stars and Wipeout (aka Total Wipeout).

To paraphrase something someone else once said, nobody ever got poor underestimating your viewers.

They're saying that their viewers are too thick to understand continuing storylines are they?

Yes - I'm being a little disingenuous. What they really mean is that programmes with continuing storylines don't play as well on a channel that is largely sampled on an occassional basis. But that just means you have to try a little harder.

I think that UKTV just expected Watch to succeed on the basis that Dave had been a success. But then Dave's proposition is clearer, and crucially, it's on Freeview. Allied to top quality BBC2 programming (largely), you know what you're going to get. And fairly shortly we'll be getting Dave+1 on Freeview too. One wag asked why it was necessary when Dave repeats its shows in the course of the evening anyway.

But back to Watch. It's not on Freeview, and perhaps they'd have been smarter using that Freeview slot to launch it on that platform. Evidently the amount of Sky/Virgin Media subscription cash they're getting means that the economics don't work.

Then there's Richard and Judy. They defected from Channel 4 to the station in what can only have been a big money signing. But they went out at 8pm - opposite soaps, sitcoms and popular drama on BBC1 and ITV1. You can only think that R&J's audience was more likely to be on those channels rather than Watch. 8pm is a curious time for a nightly chat show.

The press loves to report how few people are watching the channel on occassion, but that's unfair for a channel that repeats those shows several times over a 24 hour period.

Nonetheless, 6pm is probably a smarter time for the show to go out. It's against news on the main channels, or the likes of Hollyoaks or Eggheads on C4 or BBC2.

In the long run, I can't see that R&J will ever return to their heyday. They're probably banking decent cheques, but they're out of sight and out of mind now. And I still find it amusing recalling an interview that Richard Madeley gave to the Media Guardian podcast when the show launched explaining that jumping to Watch was a smart move because in a few years we'd all be watching digital, irrespective of the fact that Watch is pay channel and Freeview and Freesat are clearly going to be the overall winners.

One of the most interesting documents likely to be published in the UK in the next few months is Lord Stephen Carter's Digital Britain report. The draft report is due to be published by the end of this month, and it's likely to cover things like public service, broadband and digital radio. The recent DRWG report has been passed to Lord Carter's team.

But the leaks are starting now. Today's FT has a report that details what is likely to be the highest profile element of his report: universal broadband access.

Currently 40% of households don't have broadband access, and after years of growth, the increase has slowed.

The Digital Britain report proposes that every household in the UK should have access to at least 2 megabits per second download speed. This would be either via fixed wires, or via wireless 3G technology in rural areas.

What isn't clear from the FT's reports is how this would be funded, and how much it would cost householders. If 40% of homes have yet to subscribe to broadband, many are obviously in areas that can receive broadband currently. So are they not subscribing because it's too expensive? Or do they not have PCs? There's not really a "pay as you go" broadband offering - you're generally tied into 12 month contracts which some find either unaffordable or otherwise unviable. And of course, not everyone owns a PC or other device that would make use of the internet.

Without universal access to the internet, we are already becoming a two-tiered society. So giving access to all is important.

More on Digital Britain once the draft report is published, including much about radio...

A news report announces the fact that CNN launches on Freeview this week - effectively replacing Nuts TV. That's got to be good news for Freeview viewers, giving them an additional news service alongside the BBC News channel (never News 24!) and Sky News (will it remain on Freeview?).

But The Guardian's report (perhaps based on a CNN press release, and illustrated by a picture of very occassional presenter Mylene Klass) is a little misleading:

News channel CNN International is to join the Freeview digital TV service from Thursday, just days before the inauguration of new US president Barack Obama.

The channel will air on Freeview 84 seven days a week between the hours of 9pm and 1am.

It's that last little bit that's problemmatical. While inaugural events are taking place all day, the main address takes place at midday Washington time, which is 5pm UK time. The parade then kicks off at about 7pm UK time. So by the time 9pm rolls around and CNN reaches Freeview screens, most of the key action will have already taken place. BBC One, for example, is carrying live coverage between 4pm and 6pm UK time, while ITV, er, isn't.

Still, four hours a day of CNN is better than none.

BBC Radio 1 is running a week long trial of a beta visualisation version of the radio player for a couple of programmes this week.

I only caught a few minutes of Moyles this morning, but it seemed to work very well, and was a very interesting experiment in what can and can't be done.

You can read more about it here. But I'll share a few of my initial thoughts.

The in-studio webcams which stream live video are good... to a point. The quality is high, and they seem to cut around quite intelligently. I'd love to know if the vision mixing between cameras is being done automatically (via some kind of cleverness that measures which mics have significant levels of sound coming through them, and then prioritising the cameras pointing at those mics) or, more likely, being done by a vision mixer.

I'm sure that in time, more information about the now playing artists could be incorporated into the system. At the moment it looks at Wikipedia, but there must be loads of information about most of these artists on bbc.co.uk already.

The infographic visualisations of various votes are excellent, although I suspect that the swingometer for beer or wine must have been pre-determined. Or maybe there's a graphic artist on hand to knock up quick beer and wine glasses should the Chris Moyles show require them. Although the system has clearly designed to be able to cope with the needs of live radio, it'd be interesting to learn just how spontaneous it really is.

Displaying text messages is also done very well. Commercial operators who make money from texts might want to take special note as this surely encourages shared discussions. Is there room for Twitter in any of this? I'm pretty sure that messages and being manually screened rather than just using an automated filtering system - although both might be in place - before they appear.

Earlier, I said the webcams were good "to a point." Technically they were excellent with high quality streams in sync with the audio. And it's fun looking inside the studio. I'm told that at Absoltue Radio, searches for our webcams are high - people want to see what's going on in the studio.

Yet when all's said and done, it's a bit dull after a while isn't it? I think these cameras really come into their own when you have stars or other guests in the studio. Although whether radio studios will need wardrobe and make-up departments is an interesting question in the longer term (I've not seen any make-up artists do their stuff with bands that have played at Absolute Radio, but given the propensity of videoing sets rather than just recording audio, this can't be far off). Closer to home, the Tim Shaw show would be an interesting case to try something similar with.

It's interesting that the BBC has chosen the Chris Moyles show as the highest profile programme on the service to test visualisation. He obviously has plenty of appropriate material - but I just know that I'd never get around to logging onto a PC first thing in the morning to "see" what's going on. That's why I listen to the radio in the morning rather than watch TV.

I'll be tuning in again to see how it's used.

Lots of areas of the media are getting excited about the annual Golden Globes handed out by an organisation called the "Hollywood Foreign Press Association". I've written about this self-appointed, self-elected organisation before - and the fact that it has very little if anything to do with, well, the foreign press.

Now everyone loves a prize, and I suppose that if I was up for one, I wouldn't say no. At the very least, you get a nice dinner out of it. I believe that they raise money for charity too, which is a fine thing.

But, frankly, the awards might just as well be handed out by the Hollywood Nanny's Association and they'd mean as much to me. While the Oscars are voted for by around 6,000 individuals (categories vary), the Golden Globes are voted for by 90 individuals.

At least the forthcoming BAFTAs are handed out by industry peers like the Oscars, and not a self-serving organisation that's not even representative of the industry it claims to represent.

Last Friday was the last in Clive James' current run of A Point of View (Harold Evans takes over this Friday). You have about 24 hours to download the podcast, otherwise you'll just have to read his words.

James got on to the habit of Hollywood actors promoting products that once they'd never have been seen promoting - having probably signed agreements to ensure that the ads were only played in Japan.

Matthew McConaughey is doing commercials for a certain fragrance. I'm sure the extra money he is making is going to a good cause, but there are two questions that I ask automatically whenever I see those commercials. The first question is: Who wants to smell like Matthew McConaughey? And the second question is, doesn't he looks silly?

...

If I could be assured that the certain fragrance doesn't make Nicole Kidman smell different, but instead smells exactly like Nicole Kidman, I would buy a bottle and drink it. But otherwise I'm convinced of nothing except that she looks exactly as if she's hustling for a buck she doesn't need. Even if she does, is this the way to get it? Doesn't she look silly?

Recently two other adverts have started being screened on UK television that makes you question the sanity of those involved, and wonder exactly how big the cheque must have been.

First there's the Aviva ads rebranding Norwich Union to a meaningless international name. Norwich Union was founded in 1797. If the smart marketing folk think that employing Bruce Willis, Alice Cooper, Elle Macpherson and Ringo Starr to try to persuade us that if they hadn't changed their names, they wouldn't have been successful is laughable - especially in Starr's case. [And yes, I'm well aware that I'm employed by a company that's just changed its name - but I don't believe this is the same thing at all].

That, however, is nothing to the truly appalling Swiftcover advert featuring Iggy Pop. You can see it here - I refuse to embed it.

Do you really need the money that much Iggy?

Is anyone fooled into thinking that Iggy cares about British car insurance?

I don't find some of the fragrance advertisements quite as upsetting as Clive James - they're always ridiculous because it's impossible to advertise a smell that costs thirty quid or more a bottle. But car insurance? Online car insurance? Is this what punk rock was all about? It's much worse than John Lydon's butter ad.

I believe that Iggy is due to be touring again soon. There's good money in that, and I've never seen an Iggy show* where he hasn't put his heart and soul into it. He performs for the money. All the more reason why he shouldn't be making ads like this.

*OK - I've only seen Iggy live once - at last year's Isle of Wight Festival. But I've seen him on TV at things like Glastonbury, and he always puts on a show and works incredibly hard.

It's always wise to pull over before you use the phone - especially when you call a radio station. Unhappily for her, Fiona didn't half an hour ago when calling the Geoff Hometime Show...

Good news - in the lead up to the ITV/AMC remake of The Prisoner appearing on our screens later this year, AMC is making the original series available to stream, free of charge, on their website.

Bad news - it's only available in the US. ITV doesn't seem to have done the same deal (Although it should be said that ITV does have an enormous raft of classic programming available to stream online, they just don't shout about it much).

Anyway, for something like The Prisoner you should go out and get the wonderful Network DVD set.

BBC1 is stripping The Diary of Anne Frank at 7pm this week in place of The One Show, and I must say that after yesterday's lambasting of poor TV, this is a refreshing change. It's fabulous. Ellie Kendrick plays Anne herself, and is wonderfully naturalistic in her performance. After a few exterior scenes to convey Amsterdam, with Anne's parents (a very dour Tamsin Grieg and a practically unrecognisable Iain Glen as her upstanding father) bustling her across the city, stars stitched into their coats, the action moves into a claustrophobic interior set as the family settle in for the long haul.

I'll freely admit that I've never read the book, but you really feel that a teenager is talking to you as life goes on. It may be up against Emmerdale, but this is a finely made drama that I'll be looking forward to throughout this week.

Meanwhile, if you've not been watching Underbelly on FX, you're missing out on an absolute treat. Telling the story of the gangs of Melbourne over a ten-year period, the series is reaching its conclusion. Last night's episode saw an horrific killing of an otherwise nasty piece of work in front of his children. This actually happened.

Underbelly aired in Australia a while ago, but the UK DVD is out in a few weeks if you've not watched this great miniseries.

And if, for some reason, you're not able to use the iPlayer, The Diary of Anne Frank is out on DVD next week.

If there's one thing clear in recent times, it's that ITV really needs to up its drama quotient. So I watched Demons at the weekend - effectively ITV's sister programme to Primeval, and competing with the BBC's Doctor Who, Merlin and Robin Hood. I don't know when that latter programme is due to return, but the early evening scheduling of Demons means that it has the family-friendly Saturday night drama slot to itself at the moment.

But this was a mess. First of all, Philip (Gene Hunt) Glenister has an abysmal American accent that seems to serve no purpose at all. Aside from the haughty air that he carries which could be symptomatic of being an American (at least in the eyes of a hackneyed scriptwriter), his character could have originated anywhere. If, for international sales purposes, there had to be an American in the cast, then get an American actor - we've lent them enough of ours.

At Christmas, I was given a DVD set of Neverwhere, the 1996 Neil Gaiman penned series. Now while I wouldn't say that this was a rip-off of that programme (and subsequent novelisations and comics), there was certainly inspiration coming from it. That's not necessarily bad (I'd probably say that the fine BBC Radio 7 drama, Undone, also shares more than a little with Neverwhere), and there are also aspects of the BBC adaptation of Gormenghast in the make-up and style of the programmes humanesque beasts. But mostly, the show's creators have been watching Buffy. And Primeval. I heard a recent radio interview with Glenister promoting a book he'd helped with (I hesitate to say "written" since it sounded like a Life on Mars/Ashes to Ashes unofficial cash-in), and he managed to barely mention this series at all. I suspect that unless things improve, we won't be seeing series 2. I quite liked Zoe Tapper in the recent Survivors, itself a little hit and miss, and she's obviously going places, but here she plays a blind concert pianist. Well - we know that there's no other profession for blind people than music don't we?

Neither of these two are the main character or his girlfriend. But they were perfunctory, yet otherwise forgettable. I can't remember their characters' names, and I can't be bothered to look them up.

The best character was Mackenzie Crook's who had a nice air of menace. Unless he reincarnates next week, they seem to have killed him off in the first episode though. I'm really not at all sure I'll bother with episode two.

Over on BBC1 we got an overlong monstrosity called Total Wipeout. A complete rip-off of Takeshi's Castle (as seen on Challenge TV), this programme saw twenty or so over-hyped contestants attempting an obstacle course, with a high likelihood of falling into mud, water or both. For reasons completely unexplained, the Endemol production is taped in Argentina, in an area with over-green turfed area making it look not dissimilar to the sets of Teletubbies or In The Night Garden. Indeed, the key three to six-years old audience is likely to find this funniest.

The main presenter is Top Gear's Richard Hammond, but he's sat by himself in front of a large screen reading scripting sarcastic ad-libs over the action unfurling in far away Argentina. Indeed, it's not clear whether he was brought in late in the day, because the show has flown out its own presenter in Amanda Byram, who also takes a fairly sarcastic attitude to precedings. That's probably not helped by the fact that each contestant was evidently forced to drink five litres of espresso before being asked to get over-excited on camera. In any case, Craig Charles was much better making stuff up for Takeshi's Castle when you knew that he little to no idea what was going on. Hammond is just snidish, and that's unfair given that this is a BBC commission. Laughing at funny foreigners can just about work, but laughing at people you've asked to do something for you doesn't.

The overall effect is that, all of a sudden, you're looking forward to series two of Hole in the Wall.

There's perhaps a half hour show in here, but instead, the limited obstacle course is seen again and again with all the contestants going through. Then we get slow motion replays and so on ad nauseum. By the time we get to the final where there's lots of fire in the background of the set for no good reason, and enormous towers of scaffolding that similarly take no part in the proceedings, we're worn down. The three finalists compete against the clock, but since the editing is all over the place with HD super-slomos abounding, the clock is on screen for an arbitrary length of time. Thus, the final competitor has no clock at all in-vision, so that some kind of false tension is built up. In the end the last contestant finishes something like 30 seconds after slower than the previous contestant, so leaving the clock on screen would have removed "suspense" in the result.

Still, I'm sure all the contestants had a lovely time in sunny Argentina. I don't suppose that there's any chance of having a new gameshow that - you know - asked questions or something?

[In fairness, I should point out that ITV brought back The Krypton Factor this week, and aside from replacing Gordon Burns with the anodyne Ben Shepherd who wasn't seemingly even able to ask his own questions, it was reasonable. At least there was a certain level of skill involved.]

Well don't bother. Instead, just lead a healthy lifestyle (I know, I know: pot, kettle, black, etc.).

The word "detox" really annoys me. It's pretty meaningless in the sense that it's most used. This morning, free newspaper Metro had a wraparound sponsored by Evian. They're once again asking us to "Detox with Evian" which makes no sense whatsoever. Drink bottled water if you like the taste, but it's no more or less healthy than any other kind of water in the western world.

On Radio 4 and Five Live this morning, a lady from a company who sell something called "a detox in a box" (nice aliteration), was roundly trounced by different people on both channels. Ben Goldacre of The Guardian's Bad Science was on Radio 4. You can read about the fun he had here, including the palpable untruths spouted by the detox defender.

Senese About Science has more, including a dossier that investigates many individual detoxing claims and a leaflet explaining all the nonsense.

I was right down in the corner today watching Wasps beat Harlequins 24-18. To be honest, my lens is too slow for the high shutter speed you really need for rugby. Hence, even though there was a try right in the corner where I was sitting, the shots were blurred because I should have been shooting at something like 1/1000 sec instead of 1/250. That meant needing to use a high ISO later in the game when I caught the action a little better. No wonder all the pros use such expensive lenses. More photos here.

Sorry - been a bit lapse with this. I had to take the opportunity to "do" the final day of the double Christmas edition. Best viewed large so you can read it.

No - I'm not talking about next week's adaption of The Diary of Anne Frank, but books and their authors on TV.

There's an interesting little discussion over at The Guardian about whether or not the Richard & Judy effect will continue with their new selection of titles now that they're hidden away on Watch getting a fraction of their Channel 4 audience. I suspect it'll make some difference, but sales won't fall through the floor of selected titles.

But it does highlight the lack of book coverage on mainstream television. Aside from South Bank Shows or Imagines on authors, and the discussion of big new books on Newsnight Review or The Culture Show, where books are mixed in with other art forms, there really isn't anything left.

Griff Rhys Jones once presented Bookworm for the BBC, but that finished in 2000. Sky Arts has The Book Show presented by Mariella Frostrop, but the ratings for it must be miniscule. Their sponsorship of the Hay festival means a nightly programme on during that too.

Radio is where there is plenty of book coverage with Open Book, again presented by Frostrop, and there's also A Good Read and Bookclub. And the BBC World Service has the World Book Club. That's aside from regular readings in daily slots of things like A Book At Bedtime and Book of the Week, as well as dramatisations, and opportunities to talk about books on a myriad of programmes from Start The Week to Simon Mayo (and his excellent weekly book segment).

But why is there nothing on television? With Richard & Judy out of sight, there's an opportunity for someone else to fly that flag.

It's now January, and that means that the films you can see in the cinema are suddenly good. On the other hand, the releases will come and go so fast, that you probably won't be able to see all them.

I both understand and really don't understand why the cinema industry treats films in this way. It's essentially because of awards. It's Oscar season, and Golden Globe season and BAFTA season, et al. The people who get to vote have memories like sieves seemingly, and can't be trusted to remember a film that came out in April by the time the nomination forms come around. So studios hold back films until the last possible minute, give them a limited release (the proper releases often only coming after a film has achieved a few gongs or nominations), and let them stack up on top of one another.

If you're even quite a regular cinema goer, you're going to find it hard to keep up. Of the serious films, this week sees Che: Part One and The Reader. Then coming up we have Slumdog Millionaire, The Wrestler, Frost/Nixon, Revolutionary Road, Milk and Valkyrie. That's just January, and the list probably isn't inclusive.

Still awards season does mean one good thing for the eager film fan - the "For Your Consideration" websites. If nominees can't be bothered to watch the personalised DVDs of these films that drop through their letterboxes (and immediately find themselves released on the internet as a result), then the film companies spend lots advertising in trade magazine and on their websites. They helpfully list all the locations (like Aspen) where you can catch screenings. But of late, they've also started including scripts for films up for writing awards, and it's nice to be able to legally download these.

So here's my list of what's currently available should you also want to read through a few screenplays:

http://www.universalpicturesawards.com/ has screenplays for Frost/Nixon and Changeling.

http://www.miramaxhighlights.com/ has screenplays for Mike Leigh's Happy Go Lucky and Doubt which I know nothing about.

http://www.paramount2008.com/ doesn't have anything apart from screening details.

http://www.foxsearchlight.com/awards/ has nothing just yet beyond screening details and a note that you should see their films in cinemas as they were meant to be shown - but curiously has a "screener disposal form" to certify that you've duly destroyed the screener that they have in fact sent you. I'm really looking forward to Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire next week.

http://www.vantageguilds.com/ has The Duchess, Defiance and Revolutionary Road the new Sam Mendes film.

http://warnerbros2008.warnerbros.com/hfpa/ has The Dark Knight and will have Gran Torino and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.

http://www.filminfocus.com/awards08/index.php has Burn After Reading and Milk.

http://www.weinsteincohighlights.com/ has The Reader and Vicky Cristina Barcelona.

I hope this helps. Obviously, I wouldn't recommend actually reading the things until you've seen the films, but there's nothing like getting in early is there?

PS Just noticed that there's a script site that helpfully does all this work for you, so I needn't have spent ages trawling about hitting refresh at Variety. They've got loads more!

Listening to the New Year's Day Concert from Vienna is my preferred way of dealing with any hangover. There's something about The Blue Danube and The Radetzky March that's intrinsically linked with the day.

If you missed it, tune in tonight on BBC Four...