Recently in Media Category

Further proof that BBC Four is the best channel in the UK comes through a series of excellent programmes that have been on-air this week:

- Storyville had YouTube Hero: The Winnebego Man starting briefly with the stories on people who made it "big" on YouTube, but highlighting the story of Jack Rebney who shot to fame via an outtakes tape from an "industrial film" (i.e. corporate film) detailing the features of said range of camper vans. It's really worth watching.

- Upgrade Me with Simon Armitage is a timely repeat of a documentary from a year ago in which the poet and gadget fan examines why we feel the need to upgrade all the time. It's not a perfect film, but I found it worthwhile after my little piece the other day, and coming on the day that Apple releases its new range of music products (of which more anon).

- I'll happily watch just about anything on climbing or mountaineering. At the weekend we had the excellent Great Climb on BBC Two Scotland (watchable via Sky) and BBC HD. Watch the sequence about 23 minutes in. And then BBC Four tonight had The Eiger: Wall of Death.

- More or Less is back on Radio 4. If you're not already, you should be subscribing to their podcast.

- I enjoyed Legacy on Radio 7 but must admit that I've not played the accompanying game yet. It's getting a repeat on BBC Radio Scotland very shortly so hopefully episode 1 will be back online to listen to via iPlayer.

- It wasn't the greatest MacTaggart lecture ever, but I think Mark Thompson had some relevant points to make about Sky's investment in UK production.

- I was a little underwhelmed by Apple's announcement today. My favourite iPod is the Classic. It's the only one with enough capacity for my needs, yet Steve Jobs seemingly neglected to mention it despite saying the entire range was getting an overhaul. If it gets discontinued, then I'll have to look for a new portable music manufacturer. I'm not at all sure about the new look Nano which seems to be a step back to the horrible looking third generation device and not actually usable in the hand. The Touch is fine (although Apple still seems to limit FM radio to the Nano), and the Shuffle becomes usable again (if mostly pointless without a screen). But Apple has again concentrated only on the US with Apple TV. Not only does $99 = £99 in Apple world, but there's no TV programming available. Now if they'd got iPlayer, 4OD, ITVplayer, Sky Player and LoveFilm on the device, they'd have people falling over themselves to buy one. Internet on the TV is the future of TV - not 3D. But Apple has missed in a trick in beating Canvas to the punch. If I was Sony, Samsung, LG or Panasonic, I'd be rushing to get my £99 device into the marketplace which does all these things even if it's just these things. The jury's out on iTunes 10 because while it's a sophisticated piece of software, changing icons isn't the same as a ground up rewrite which I believe this software is in dire need of.

There have been a few reports, publications and press releases recently that are worth highlighting.

The BBC has published its latest monthly iPlayer Performance Pack detailing results for July 2010. I always find this is worth a read.

It's interesting to note that requests for BBC iPlayer dipped a bit during both June and July. While the weather is almost certainly a contributing factor (and we're obviously not all into watching programmes on our laptops in the garden), this was during the period of the World Cup which ate up much of the primetime schedule. Even when ITV was showing games, the BBC tended to counter with repeats and non-essential programming.

The slide on page 11 of the report makes for interesting reading too. It details average weekly use of the iPlayer. It breaks out radio, TV, and users of both. So in the week of 26 July, 4.3m users (or more particularly, "user agents") used the TV functionality, while 1.3m used radio. 0.4m used both. That means an awful lot of people are using TV but not using radio - 9% in fact. Whereas around 31% of radio users also use TV. Seeing how that 9% changes over a longer period will be something to watch out for.

That said, people who listen to radio listen for much longer than television. In July radio users averaged 184 minutes, whereas TV users average just 69 minutes.

Top Gear continues to be the most popular show with episode 3 of the most recent series getting 1.273m requests. This was the episode that clashed with the World Cup Final...

I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue is the most popular radio programme with three episodes filling up the top three places each getting about 100,000 plays. I'm always surprised how many people listen to Chris Moyles on the iPlayer, since it's surely a show you need to listen to live? Yet it fills half the top 20 places.

The other notable radio performer was the World Cup quarterfinal between the Netherlands and Brazil. Because it took place in the afternoon, 69,000 people heard it streaming online.

There's plenty more to look at in the report.

Deloitte has commissioned another report into TV to accompany the Mediaguardian Edinburgh Television Festival. Perspectives on Television in Words and Numbers is well worth a read as there's lots to digest.

The headlines from this research centered around the fact that 86% of viewers watching pre-recorded programmes on PVRs always skip through the ads. Interestingly, this made the press release, but not the final report.

Instead the report digs deeper into how people used and trusted different media during the election, with television easily winning out. As other reports have also made clear, we've not yet really had our "internet" election.

The report goes into greater detail about television on demand, with a growing number of respondents claiming that this is important - significantly so amongst 18-24 year olds, the majority of whom consider this important. (As an aside, why does Sky still consider giving me access to the Sky Player an extra I should consider myself lucky to have? For the last couple of summers they've provided access to Sky Sports, for which I pay a subscription. And now I should consider myself fortunate to have it until the end year.)

The report shows that relatively few people are using their laptops, netbooks or smartphones to comment contemporaneously with live broadcasts of TV shows. Yet, this is surely only going to rise. Using Twitter or Facebook to comment on live shows like the X-Factor only makes them more unmissable to those who like those shows (In the case of X Factor, that absolutely does not include me. Indeed, I'm thankful that Tweetdeck has a filter option that lets users remove Tweets with certain keywords).

While the TV advertising is demonstrated has having the most impact, it's got to be worrying that as PVR ownership increases, fewer of those ads are going to be seen. Which brings us onto...

Product placement! While this is something of a step into the unknown for UK broadcasters, we're familiar with the very obvious branding in films (what action film doesn't partner with a mobile handset provider these days?) and imported TV like 24's Cisco kit and American Idol's blurred Coke glasses. The report quotes some American research that suggests recall can increase by 20% through product placement.

The BPI announced that music revenues were up 2.3% in 2009. That's right up! The BPI puts this increase down to innovation in the digital world and finding new revenue streams.

If you look at the full release, you'll see that although the overall revenue from Trade Income has increased by 1.4%, it's secondary revenues that have increased the most at 6.6%. Of that secondary revenues, "more than a third" of it comes from broadcasting and performance revenues (PPL announced pretty decent results earlier in the year).

While the development of new revenue streams is to be admired, it's interesting that even in these tougher times, revenues continue to rise in the music industry.

Finally, there's the big one. Ofcom's annual Communication Market Report. Weighing in at well over 350 pages, it's a canter through all areas of the media. I'll just pull a few points from the radio section and highlight them here.

Ofcom noted that while commercial radio's revenues have fallen 22% over the last five years, BBC Radio expenditure has risen by 26%. And despite the overall number of listeners increasing over the last five years reaching an all time high, the amount of time spent listening has diminished with commercial radio being especially badly hit over the last five years.

Those numbers would suggest that during a period when radio revenues decreased, perhaps less was invested in programming with a resultant fall in listening. I think it's arguable that radio is investing more in programming now - albeit not necessarily at a local level.

It's worth noting that in reporting podcast listening based on MIDAS results, Ofcom hasn't taken into account methodological changes in the most recent MIDAS survey. This results in a dip in podcast listening if you look at the numbers Ofcom shows in their chart (Fig 3.4 on p193). You only have to look at the reported podcast listening numbers from stations like Absolute Radio and the BBC to see that this isn't the case.

Fig 3.5 in the Ofcom report shows that 16-24s remain an audience for radio to be concerned about, with only 32% of listening time spent on live radio in this age group compared with 69% for all adults (Source: Ofcom research, June 2010).

Fig 3.36 (P223) is worth noting. It highlights just how well commercial radio does in Scotland, whereas BBC Local/National radio in Northern Ireland is especially strong.

While 66% of people have now heard of DAB, only 17% of people said that they intended to buy one in the next 12 months. It's going to take a few more cheaper radios (like the announcement of a new sub-£40 Pure radio yesterday) to actually get them to commit though.

Satisfaction is amazingly high - both with the choice of stations, and what's carried on them. 93% of people are satisfied with thier station selection and 94% are satisfied with what's carried on them.

There's a lot in here, even if much of it has previously been reported. It's definitely worth a browse.

A few months ago I noted that the Daily Star was claiming to be "Britain's most successful newspaper" in a TV ad. It was basing those findings on the then most recent ABC figures from January 2010, which then showed a small percentage increase in year on year sales results.

Those TV ads are running again according to a commentor.

Since then, proprietor Richard Desmond has cut the price of the paper further to just 10p. Remembering that both newsagent and distributors need to take a cut from that, I would assume that basically none of that cover price is being returned to Express Newspapers. The paper is effectively free.

The Sun remains discounted in some parts of the country, and the Mirror has remained at 45p. So put that in perspective when looking at these figures.

But when you do look at the most recent annual figures, the Daily Star has lost more sales than either of its two key rivals.

If you consider January to June 2010 changes, then the Daily Star has lost a smaller percentage of sales than either of its rivals. But if that's the source they're using then "Britain's least bad over the last six months newspaper" might be more accurate, or as my commentor says, "Britain's least unsuccessful newspaper."

Let's remind ourselves of where the Daily Star sits in the ecosystem. Have a look at the most up to date ABC figures:

Source: Guardian/ABC

It should also be noted that the Mirror does not include Daily Record sales from its sister publication in Scotland in this instance.

So can the Daily Star honestly claim to be "Britain's most successful newspaper"?

As an aside, disturbing reports suggest that Star proprietor, and pornographic channel owner, Richard Desmond is in prime position to buy Five. So should we be looking forward to more TV ads with spurious claims, and perhaps a return to late-night Channel 5 fare of old? I know I shan't be watching the channel should he get his hands on it.

Well - "the case has not been made" for closing it down. So reads one of the lines of the BBC Trust's Interim conclusions.

In other words, 6 Music has been saved.

On Twitter, the excitement is already palpable.

Now though, the station faces the future. How many of its newly found audience will stay with it? I confidently expect the audience to increase again at the next RAJAR, if for no other reason than the fact that 6 Music's impending closure was only announced partway through Q1.

But will those listeners all stay with the station? And more to the point, will the station continue to grow? If it were to become too big, then as I mentioned in a previous entry, it would become troublesome to the commercial sector.

The BBC Trust does recognise this:

We recognise that any proposal to close a BBC service is unlikely to be popular with those who use it. However, we do need to consider the question of whether the future growth of the service would significantly impact the market. We note that throughout the period of our consultation we have received no evidence from the commercial radio sector to suggest that 6 Music presents any kind of threat either now or in the future so long as it remains true to its distinctive remit. We also note the strong view expressed by many in the music industry that 6 Music plays a very valuable role in the cultural life of the UK that would not be easily replaced and that would not be filled by the commercial sector.

Personally, I believe that this was the right decision. I'm pretty unconvinced that the commercial sector is able to do exactly what the BBC can do. We can certainly make a go of it, and I think my own employer's services like Absolute Xtreme, and latterly Dabbl, make an interesting case. But Xfm is not the station it once was, and NME Radio closed down just as the BBC's Strategy Review consultation closed.

Of key importance to me is one of the factors that the BBC Trust has highlighted. It says that the review "has been helpful in highlighting the need for a further review of the BBC's digital strategy."

6 Music is one those services that has driven listeners - or potential listeners - to buy DAB radios, or to discover new ways of listening online or through their digital televisions. It's those kinds of services that digital radio needs to build its future.

We're now underway in the digital "upgrade" or "switchover". Whatever the terminology, it means that listeners need some benefit in adopting digital radio.

I make no bones about it. My employer has launched Absolute 80s nationally following a successful December launch in the London area, and Absolute Radio 90s has just launched in London. In the meantime, despite the sadness that will follow with the inevitable job losses, Smooth has boldly decided that its future is national and it too is joining that Digital One national platform.

New services like these will persuade people to buy digital radios, and the BBC is going to have to look at how it plans to migrate its audience onto digital.

I know that this won't be popular with some people. But digital is vital for our medium's future and there's no avoiding that reality. Contrary to popular belief, nobody's saying that FM will be closed down at some point. If listeners don't decide they want to go digital, and sets are not bought, then it won't happen. So the radio industry - and particularly the BBC - has to provide the reasons for people to make that switch.

6 Music aside, Five Live is a great case in point. The other day I highlighted "BBC Tennis", but on Saturday, it went one further. At 3pm on Saturday, the BBC was broadcasting Wimbledon on Sports Extra, World Cup football on Five Live, cricket on "Radio 4 LW" (which is also a DAB channel) and later the Tour de France online. If listeners want to hear something, then they will seek out the means to do so.

The Radio Player is imminent with a new easy to use mechanism to allow listening to radio via the internet (Only 2.9% of all radio listening is via the internet - a terribly disappointing amount).

Apps on mobile phones are now common ways to listen to the radio (although sadly the mobile networks can't keep up and are putting an end to "unlimited" data plans which prevents a certain amount of listening via 3G).

Saving 6 Music is one key way to help build radio's digital future.

It is worth mentioning that Asian Network's future does not look so rosy. And those 25% cuts in online were inevitable.

Lost amid the noise surrounding 6 Music's survival is the fact that the BBC publishes its Annual Report and Accounts today. This is always worth a read, although my favourite page is undoubtedly p33 in this document.

There you'll learn that the wonderful BBC Four costs £74.0m while BBC Three costs £118.6m. Now if the BBC really wanted to make some savings in an area that's already well served by the commercial sector...

As ever, these are my views, and they do not necessarily reflect those of my employer.

Media Guardian is today reporting that Sky Sports News is coming off the Freeview platform. Up until now, Sky had effectively been using the channel as something to promote their premium sports services. That's really why they never showed any action in full-screen.

But now they're pulling the service. I think they'll get some very annoyed customers. There will be Sky Sports subscribers who watch the service on second TV sets in other rooms, but aren't likely to subscribe to Sky Multiroom (Sky's default way to get Average Revenue Per User - ARPU - up).

And of course lots of people enjoyed Jeff Stelling and co. doing Soccer Saturday. This will just drive those people to Final Score on the BBC's red button.

What I really can't see is lots of people taking out full subscriptions to make up for the loss of service.

Sky's replacement service is atrocious. The risible Sky 3 is getting a "+1" channel. Sky 3 doesn't even really act as a driver to Sky 1, its programming is so dated and poor.

So what are Sky's long term plans? Well we know that BT Vision and Virgin Media will be pushing their deals for sport this autumn in a big way following Ofcom's statement on Pay TV made back in March.

Sky is still upset about that, although it has since done a deal with Virgin Media that included acquiring Virgin Media's wholly owned channels as well as giving full access to Sky's TV services including red button functionality to Virgin Media subscribers.

Sky could relaunch its Picnic plans that Ofcom previously put a stop to. Indeed I'd suggest that this is highly likely. This is simply an interim step because Sky doesn't have any hardware in place to allow Freeview viewers to subscribe to encrypted premium Sky Sports and Movies channels. And there's probably some ongoing discussion about Sky News. Adam Boulton aside, the channel had a reasonable election and I'd imagine garnered a fair few viewers via Freeview. Does Sky now want to ditch those viewers?

Sky faces some interesting challenges. Although a Conservative government might have seemed favourable, it's not clear how the coalition will effect things. An investigation into the separation of channel delivery and programming can't be a long way off. And of course we know that News Corporation is trying to take full ownership of BSkyB.

But the threat that Sky really faces is on demand. Satellite is great for some things - not least high bandwidth to deliver a multiplicity of HD TV channels. But it can't do on demand, which is the way the TV market is going. They're fighting Canvas tooth and nail for no other reason than it hurts Sky's business model. If I can buy programmes direct from the studios that make them, do I really need to subscribe to Sky One?

In the meantime hardware manufacturers just work around these issues. Sony's recent Bravia sets are all internet enabled, and take a lead from their games consoles in providing direct access via the internet to free and subscription television services. And this autumn Google will launch Google TV that'll again be included in some TVs as well as third party boxes.

A single platform in the shape of something like Canvas makes life easy for programme suppliers and viewers, and it's full steam ahead on that. But whatever Sky's views on that, the flood is coming. That will hurt some parts of Sky's business.

When Sky launched, and for much of its existance, it's been sport and films that have been of pre-eminant importance. I'd argue that films are far less important now. There are lots of convenient and inexpensive ways to watch films from buying DVDs and Blu-Rays to services like Lovefilm. Why would I need to subscribe to a film channel?

Sport is not in that position - and hence it becomes even more important to Sky.

Imported US drama series can be watched in large chunks on DVD boxsets. Or they can be bought on iTunes. A subscription to Sky One is no longer needed to keep up with House.

How successful might Picnic be? Well - somehow - TopUp TV still survives. ITV is mulling over the idea of taking ITV2, 3 and 4 behind a paywall. That would leave Freeview a bit barren - a couple of Five TV channels, Dave and of course the BBC. But if Sky buys Five too...

This is going to be an interesting to watch play out.

This morning a PR team from The Times was dishing out free coffee to colleagues at work. They're promoting the fact that from today, The Times and Sunday Times have new websites. And with them come paywalls.

As it happens, I don't drink coffee...

Last week I had the pleasure of attending a live recording of Radio Four's The Media Show. It was a debate on the merits of paywalls for newspapers between Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger and Sunday Times editor John Witherow.

The Times and Sunday Times sites will shortly disappear behind a paywall with charges for access set at £1 for a day, and £2 a week. Access will also be available to print subscribers.

The programme recorded for a good hour, although it was edited down to half an hour for broadcast, and you can listen to that here.

Here, for what they're worth, are my current thoughts on paywalls.

Newspapers are certainly losing money. While in better times, The Sunday Times has been a pretty profitable beast, it's not currently. And The Guardian is suffering too, relying on a broader GMG to bring in revenues that prop the newspaper up under the terms of The Scott Trust.

So what's the answer?

The free route surely remains the safer bet. The Guardian has done exceptionally well expanding out of the UK. While Witherow talked about how valueless ex-UK readers were to his web-offering, I think that he and News Group are missing a trick. Selling approrpriate advertising in different locales is very achievable, and the titles his group owns are famous enough around the world to deliver large readerships.

Rusbridger talked about the vast amounts that they were making from advertising. It sounds quite healthy - albeit that their costs are fairly "healthy" too.

So does that mean that The Guardian is right and The Sunday Times is wrong?

Well it's not quite that simple.

Why The Sunday Times Isn't Right

• The payment plan, as it's laid out is too draconian. I can't for the life of me think why they don't at least have some kind of metering system in place. Even the FT, which is acknowledged to be a special case, has some form of metering. And the FT is very profitable indeed. They realise that as an individual, I'm unlikely to subscribe to their site. But I only read one or two articles there a month. Am I less valuable because of that, as Witherow argues is true of many of his readers who read just a couple of articles and then disappear?

  No.

  You can serve me separate, appropriate advertising. As things stand, if someone sends me a link to something interesting in The Times, I'll face a request to pay a pound if I want to read it. If it was published that day, it'd actually be in my interest to instead buy a print copy of the paper. Less hassle getting my credit card out, setting up an account and so on.

• They haven't developed a micropayement scheme. They've gone for the easy option of just putting a payment mechanism in place that charges me one pound or more dependent on the length I'd like to subscribe. If, instead, they'd developed a scheme - a new PayPal perhaps - that many newspaper and other retailers joined, and then let me painlessly purchase an article for say, 5p, then that'd have been smart.

  This is where Apple wins. You enter your card details up front, and then it's small amounts as you go. Apple carefully doesn't process the first 79p track you buy to your credit card. They wait a few days in the hope that a meaningful amount is built up reducing their processing costs.

  But mostly it's about me not worrying too much if something costs me just 5p, and there being a payment mechanism in place that makes sense for a vendor. That means scale to make sense.

• Current subscribers to The Times may miss out. If you contract directly with the paper, then it can arrange daily delivery to your door at a preferential fee. But many people prefer to use and support their local newsagent. Indeed John Witherow made that point himself, despite it costing more for readers. Think about middle-class Times readers concerned about the welfare of their local newsagent/village store? But if you do that, The Times doesn't know about you. And you don't get free inclusive access to The Times' websites. That's despite the fact that ordering from your local newsagent will almost certainly be more expensive than dealing directly with The Times.
• Finding new readers is going to be exceptionally hard. How will I know whether I like the product if I have to pay from the outset? "Freemium" is surely the better model to persuade people like me who only irregularly buy the paper edition of The Times but do visit their site a couple of times a month, that I should think about a subscription.

So does that mean The Guardian is right?

• I don't think they've currently got their app model right. Currently you pay a one-off fee, and that gets you as much of The Guardian as you like. The subscription model - paying say £2.99 a quarter - is better, and is available via iTunes now.

  Perhaps when the iPad version comes along that'll be the case (Hint: I'd pay now for an Android version). But Rusbridger noted that the trouble with the iPad was that the web version looked so good, it was a struggle to come up with reasons why you'd buy an app. I guess offline caching is about the main reason - synchronise data when you're in a wifi zone, and then read offline later.

• Despite making upwards of £40m via advertising a year, The Guardian loses money. That's the inherent problem. And that's why even The Guardian will be watching carefully to see what learnings Murdoch takes from his experiment.

In short then, there are no right answers. The FT and Wall Street Journal can make their models work because they have exclusive data that nobody else can get, and is mostly paid for by employers. The Economist works because it's a business magazine that works to a large extent on a subscription model. It makes sense bundling web access with the paper subscription.

The Times is a general newspaper. That news is available in lots of different places. They need to make money, but this almost certainly isn't the right way. Be wary of early subscriber numbers as their paper subscription package probably does reasonably well, and those people will automatically be considered subscribers.

And watching what their big name columnists have to say will be interesting. They were the people who got the New York Times to end their previous paywall experiement. They might be well paid by their papers to have those opinions, but they hate it when others - who's views are free to read - get bigger traction.

I don't think most newspaper executives quite understand the link culture and the effect that can have on traffic. The Guardian does. And I think the Mail does. It's that latter paper that's going to be worth watching the most. A popular, big website (it might be full of awful stuff, but it's popular), that while not directly competing with The Times, might well pick up a lot of the slack from The Times. We'll see.

I'd like to see a newspaper group really do something clever. A deal to give me a free iPad (or similar - because we all know that the iPad is vastly over-priced) if I take up a two year subscription - like my mobile phone company does.

I'd look at perhaps the biggest success in publishing in the last ten years - The Metro. It's not a bad product, but it's certainly not good. You could get quite a lot of the same news in the same depth reading Ceefax in the morning. But it's successful because it's free. For between 20p and £1 you could pick up a much better paper with far more interesting editorial. But even 20p is not free. And so, every morning, Metro's dump bin at my local station is empty well before 8am.

Channel 4's obviously not voting Green.

They were advertising their alternative election special this evening with a helicopter dangling this ad at lunchtime over Soho.

That follows a very expensively produced booklet that fell out of one of my newspapers at the weekend.

The thing is, even though I really like the people involved (Charlie Brooker, David Mitchell etc.), I'll still be watching the "proper" election coverage on BBC1 and maybe a bit of Sky. But I'll record it...

Actually I'll also be listening to the radio - Radio 4, Five Live and Geoff's Election Show and generally blogging and entertaining myself. I suspect that Twitter will be busy too.

I wonder what C4 will do if there needs to be a second election in October?

I saw the Telegraph's headline on Newsnight last night, and it was pretty clear that the right-wing press are out to prop up Cameron in any way they possibly can. But I didn't see the Mail, Express or Sun front pages!

"Clegg in Nazi Slur on Britain" in the Mail must surely take the biscuit. I'm not even going to visit their awful website to read the basis of this garbage. But as the commentors on Mailwatch are saying, the papers must truly be running scared. The Sun in particular will not be happy if they turn out not to have backed the winning horse.

Sometimes I think that Orange really is very classy. Orange is currently trying to merge with T-Mobile in the UK. If they get regulatory approval, the combined company will be the biggest mobile operator in the UK.

So isn't it charming when you open Orange World, their website which is set to be the default homepage on all Orange phones, and see the following?

"Full On Adult Films"?

Really?

I'm no prude, but is this deemed appropriate advertising for a company to offer to its customers who include all manner of people? Orange knows that I'm over 18, and it probably also knows that I'm male. But why serve this kind of advertising front and centre?

Most major media operators offer adult material. Many hotel chains offer adult films, and all the TV suppliers have their adult sections for pay per view films. But you wouldn't expect to turn to the inside front cover of Sky's magazine and see an ad for their porn offerings would you? Nor would you expect to see BT Vision owning up in those cuddly ads with its couple that they can seek additional material beyond the usual Hollywood blockbusters or old TV series. Those companies tend to promote their more "mainstream" products and programming.

This page was opened while I was taking the train home last night. As far as I can tell, they only deliver these ads after hours - probably aiming it at the post-pub market.

I just find it all very curious, and mostly a bit sleazy on Orange's part.

Sky is trumpeting the fact that last weekend's fixture between Man Utd and Blackburn Rovers (a 0-0 "thriller") was watched by 200,000 viewers. A remarkable achievement based on average of 133 people per pub in the 1500 or so pubs that have the 3D TVs so far. These are obviously all pretty large pubs!

But is 3D really the future for TV?

Well it won't surprise regular readers when I say, no, it's not.

At last week's Sony Radio Academy Award nominations, Sony was trumpeting its forthcoming 3D TVs, and in one corner of the room they had a prototype on display playing a BluRay montage of football and nature films.

First things first. The technical quality is excellent, and the technology works as well as any I've seen. Unlike my cinema experiences until now, the TV (LCD backlit I assume) is perfectly bright enough, although I should point out that I was watching in a darkened club environment. You have to put glasses on of course, but as I say, it was a perfectly enjoyable experience.

So why my negativity?

Well it was the football that did it for me. In the average televised football match as we're used to seeing them, the vast majority of shots are from one or two cameras placed in a gantry high(ish) above the halfway line. The majority of the action is observed from these views. While other cameras are employed to focus on individual players, and often a Steadicam on the touchline, most of the additional cameras are only really employed for showing replays.

And therein lies the problem. The viewer doesn't get much of a sense of depth perspective in 3D from that high gantry camera. Therefore, to make you feel more immersed in the game, matches in 3D have to be much more reliant on touchline cameras from the lower angles that allow you to fully perceive the 3D effect. While that might work from a technical and experiential perspective, it doesn't make for great football coverage. The high camera position allows you to get a good impression of where on the pitch players are, pick up on moves and off the ball runs, and generally be tactically much more astute. Coincidentally, seats near these camera positions tend to be the most expensive in the ground.

So while we all might enjoy seeing the odd game in 3D, it's offering broadly inferior camera angles for actual enjoyment of the game and the ability to see what's happening.

That's my view anyway.

The lady from Sky was a little coy about how much these TVs are going to cost when they're on sale in the summer. What I do know is that you won't be watching the World Cup on one - in the UK anyway. The BBC and ITV hold the rights to the competition, and only Sky has, or is likely to have, a 3D channel. It's possible that some cinemas will be holding screenings in the same way that certain Six Nations Rugby Union games were screened in 3D.

Instead, viewers would do better to connect their 23m HD TVs to an actual HD source - something that's a little easier now that consumers can start to buy Freeview HD boxes (as well as Sky, Virgin Media and Freesat).

Disclaimer: As mentioned above, I saw the Sony 3D TV at the nominations announcement for the Sony Radio Academy Awards last week where I was an invited guest on behalf of my employer. These views are mine and don't necessarily reflect those of my employer.

At the weekend I was idly watching some television with the netbook on my lap (something that happens a bit too much) when out of the corner of my eye I noticed Johnny and Lisa on a TV ad.

I looked up, keen to see what the new Capital Radio TV ad would look like. Except, it wasn't an ad for Capital. The absence of Capital branding around the studio and on the microphones was the first giveaway.

In fact it was an ad for Belvita Breakfast, a new breakfast biscuit from Kraft Foods (click through to see the ad in the absence of a YouTube version).

Now far be it from me to critique the creative merits of the ad. And at least they don't pretend to be talking on the radio - a big Ofcom no-no according to the current Broadcasting Code. You'd be in breach of all sorts of things - not least undue prominance.

I do think it's interesting that a current major breakfast show is being replicated in a debranded version for an advertiser.

At least they've used real DJs. There are those "so bad they're good" Halifax adverts.

I'm not sure if anyone who made these ads had a clue about anything, but aside from Ofcom considerations, Halifax's station has to be the most overstaffed service in existance. The Today Programme won't have as many people working for it as are hanging around in the back of the Halifax's radio station. (Broadcasting to who incidentally? Perhaps they should play this out in branches. That'd quickly drive custom elsewhere.)

I don't feel quite as strongly about these ads as Nik Goodman does, but they're undoubtedly appalling.

One more?

Today comes news that the BBC has had to delay its mobile phone applications until the BBC Trust has taken a close look at what it's doing. That obviously includes iPhone apps, but other operating systems are available, and the BBC was developing for them too.

The announcement that the BBC was developing applications came in February when Eric Huggers, the BBC's Director of Future Media & Technology, made the announcement at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

The first application for BBC News had been expected next month.

A lot of newspapers in particular had been enormously unhappy at the move. In particular the Newspaper Publishers' Association (who don't seem to have a website of their own), had complained to the BBC Trust.

Well it has come to pass that despite the fact that most mobile applications - and almost certainly the BBC's News app - are just fancy front ends to news stories already available in browsers, everyone was kicking up a fuss.

Also complaining were third-party developers who'd made available a range of applications - many of which were paid for - which directly used BBC news stories and streams.

In Media Guardian's podcast a couple of weeks ago, Emily Bell and Matt Wells got particularly upset at the prospect of a BBC News application. While admitting that they were in competition with the BBC with their own Guardian app which is paid for (and very good it is too), I'm not sure that I agree that this stacks up. Why shouldn't the BBC be able to put an application "wrapper" around something you can already see on mobile phones.

To some extent many applications are pointless wrappers of web editorial. Taken to a logical extreme, we're all going to end up with mobile devices with hundreds of applications each working with a single website, a bit like you might have a long list of bookmarks in your browser.

Certainly you can do some clever stuff with applications - perhaps using location based information to provide relevant data, as well as the push side of things (As an aside, the BBC Breaking News Twitter feed is one of the few I let send me a direct text to my mobile because unlike most organisations, they use it fairly sparingly. Sky News' Twitter account "breaks" just about every story that comes down the wires, and as such is less useful. The Guardian's Twitter news feed similarly pumps out too many stories a day.).

The BBC has for years made a mobile version of its news website available to mobile devices. Should this be allowed?

There are always going to be applications that simply use the RSS feeds of sites like BBC News to power them, and there's little that can be done to stop their creation. Indeed, if you look beyond the iPhone platform, anyone can write anything they like for platforms like Android and there's very little anyone can do to stop them.

It's an artificial distinction. And those kinds of distinctions just don't work on the web.

From a user's point of view, a delay in making available a BBC iPlayer application is not a good thing. Consumers are expecting and even demanding that programmes are made available via mobile devices. Whether or not the mobile networks can cope with widescale video and audio streaming usage like this is a separate - but important - question.

In the end, it was probably foollish to believe that the BBC Trust wouldn't need to put its oar in before these applications saw the light of day, but its viewers and listeners who will lose out. The idea that mobile is an area the BBC shouldn't be in will be utterly absurd in even 12 months' time. That's if it isn't already.

These are my own views, and they do not necessarily reflect those of my employer, not that we're really in the mobile news application game.

I know - that's awful. Sorry.

What to make of The Times' much vaunted and soon to be realised paywall?

At the moment, not a lot. There'll be a £1 charge for a day's access and £2 for a week. In terms of the paper itself, the value isn't bad. The daily paper costs £1 a day anyway, and more at weekends. Simplistically, then, it's good value.

But it's not as simple as that is it?

It depends on how you read (sorry - I'm not going to say "consume") the papers (again - not "content").

For those who visit sites like The Times' every day, and spend hours wallowing in the writing, then clearly, this is an exceptional deal. If the subscription includes full access to their archive stretching right back to 1785 then so much the better (although the current prices for that service suggest not).

But if someone sends me a link to something interesting, am I really likely to pay a quid to read it? Almost certainly not.

And therein lies the problem. To what extent are visitors to its website Times fans - for want a better term - and how much are they just passing through, equally as likely to move on to The Guardian or the Telegraph if they can't get on The Times' site easily.

This was never going to be an easy nut to crack, and that's why everyone's paying so much attention to what Murdoch does with The Times' website. The ideal scenario would involve painless micro-payments - a few pence here or there to get more access. So not just a pound for the whole paper, but 5p for a single article. Like iTunes addicts, once registered, the incremental costs are so modest as to not trouble anyone. You'd pay your money and read as you wanted.

Getting a scheme going that was applicable to a welter of sites would mean that the costs involved in setting up such a scheme would be mitigated. Debit or credit card processing fees would be minimised. Apple does this to the best of its ability by not immediately charging you 79p when you buy a track. It waits a few days to see if you buy some more. Only then does it charge your card - thus minimising those processing fees.

Subscribers to the paper's various schemes will get full access to the papers' sites. But linkage traffic will drift away. If I subscribe, and read something really interesting, is there much point in me recommending it to you and blogging or Tweeting it? While in the short term, that "passing trade" might not be that valuable beyond basic traffic loss and the attendant advertising, The Times is obviously taking the view that those people aren't really that brand loyal and they'll instead cash in from their regular readers. But that doesn't open the paper up to a great deal of discovery. Yes they earn from their current readers, but one of the major issues facing newspapers is to engender a new younger readership. These, though, are exactly the people who are used to getting newspapers free. It doesn't help that they expect to get a Metro, City AM or Evening Standard free even in newsprint form.

The proposed New York Times and implemented FT methodologies of allowing a limited amount of free exposure before forcing you first to register and then to pay - the meter system - seems to be a better model.

So all said, I can't say that I'll be paying a great deal of money for electronic access. It's a shame that The Times hasn't adopted a cleverer micro-payment system, and allowing free digital access to people who've bought the paper edition that day would be clever (A unique PIN code on each copy perhaps? I think a US magazine - perhaps Entertainment Weekly - tried something similar once).

Does that mean that good journalism shouldn't be paid for? Certainly not. While I enjoy reading all The Guardian's website has to offer, I do buy the paper edition daily. That's not because I feel I have some kind of "moral obligation" to do so, but I'm aware that as a website on its own, it couldn't exist without some of those print revenues.

Advertisers are need to have to pay high enough rates to support quality writing. But that's easier said than done.

I have no real solutions. I'm certain that Murdoch doesn't have one either. From first reports this is about the simplest implementation of a paywall that there could be. Others will do this better.

On Friday, a Department of Culture, Media & Sport consultation based around their Review of Listed Events closed.

This consultation was based around some preliminary suggestions on the updating of the list of sporting (and other cultural) events for which either live free-to-air TV coverage, or recorded highlights should be made available.

The big issue seems to have revolved around the inclusion of cricket's home Ashes Test series on the list of events that should be televised live on free-to-air television.

Just to be clear, this is a once every four years tournament latterly consisting of five Tests, with previous series in England taking place in 2005 and 2009.

Let's be clear - if there's a sports body who wants their event to be included on this list, I've yet to hear it. While the IOC specifically states in its Charter (section 49, paragraph 1):

The IOC takes all necessary steps in order to ensure the fullest coverage by the different
media and the widest possible audience in the world for the Olympic Games.

Most bodies do not necessarily make such claims. In some countries, for example, you will have to subscribe to pay TV to watch every game in the FIFA World Cup Finals. It's usually the case that pay TV broadcasters can afford to pay more for sports rigths. At the very least, having more potential bidders in the game mean that rights will earn them more whoever wins the rights.

So perhaps understandably, the ECB has been robustly opposing the inclusion of The Ashes on the list.

They argue that were they to be forced to sell The Ashes to a free-to-air broadcaster, they'd lose £137.4m for the 2014-2017 contract period - a period that includes one Ashes tournament. This seemingly represents a 48% drop in overall domestic revenues, even accounting for any upside in increased sponsorship awareness.

In other words, those five matches are worth £27m each!

Is that a believable figure? I don't think so. Football, for example, is far more popular on Sky Sports, yet those games cost something like £3.8m on average. Certainly, that is an average figure, and Sky's coverage of a single match is around three hours rather than five days. But it just doesn't add up to me.

The ECB may well have conducted plenty of independent research into these values, but is nearly half the value of all domestic cricket over a four year period due to five matches?

In any case, the ECB needs to face up to a significant falling off of interest in the game. It's a disgrace that the only live cricket on UK free-to-air television is the current IPL coverage on ITV4.

Does the ECB really think that they can generate interest in the game without gaining widespread coverage of it? You can go into schools as much as you like, but unless kids can see their heroes, they're not going to want to play the game.

And I'm sure none of Sky's cash is just going to bolster overseas players' salaries.

There's a legitimate question about what free-to-air broadcasters like the BBC or Channel 4 can or would pay for Test cricket these days. There are questions about fitting the coverage in - largely irrelevant as aside from other sporting obligations both the BBC and Channel 4 could easily ditch their entire daytime schedules without loss. What they really mean is that cricket has been gone from free-to-air TV for such a long time now, that there's already a lack of audience interest.

This downward spiral will only continue unless some live coverage is carried free-to-air. Nearly every other sport knows this. Compare and contrast with Rugby Union which saw nearly 6m people watching France v England on Saturday night. Six Nations fixtures, with the exception of Wales in the proposed list, aren't Listed. Yet rugby realises packed audiences, massive interest in the game, which extends down to club level, and wide exposure through a mix of premium and free-to-air coverage.

The ECB has even failed to sell Twenty20 fixtures to a free-to-air broadcaster. I'm certain that the BBC or Channel 4 would have bitten their hand off to gain solely those rights. But no - the ECB sold them to Sky too.

(It's worth mentioning, incidentally, that Sky could still buy the rights to Ashes fixtures and run them free-to-air on a channel such as Sky 3 on Freeview. In Italy, Sky there has Olympic rights which will be broadcast free-to-air).

The ECB runs scare stories about Sky losing all interest in Test cricket without The Ashes despite the fact that it'd almost certainly have the Australian hosted event every four years as well as all other Test cricket. This is the ECB snobbishly looking with a look at distain at the IPL and saying never...

The other issue the ECB needs to face up to is the forthcoming Ofcom requirement that Sky wholesales sports channels at cheaper prices to competitors such as BT and Virgin Media. Sky will fight these rules all the way, but assuming that they come to pass, that's likely to reduce the amount that Sky can pay for sports rights anyway. So come what may, the ECB is going to be looking at a reduced revenues for their next contract.

What's not clear to me at the moment is whether this whole DCMS process will be completed prior to the election, or whether it gets kicked into the long grass. A cynic might suggest that the Conservatives would be Murdoch-friendly - that's certainly the implication. But it's not quite as straightforward as that, and then there's the possibility of a hung Parliament (Vince Cable for Chancellor of the Exchequor anyone?).

The long and short of it is that if more people don't gain exposure to Test cricket, the value of those rights will diminish. Audiences will get smaller, and frankly, if someone sets up a Packer/IPL type of series, then that'll be the ECB's fault.

I was unfortunate enough to catch a TV advert for the Daily Star last night. I think it must have been after the football which I saw a few minutes of. I can't imagine another programme I might have been watching which the Daily Star might want to target me in. At least it wasn't in the middle of The Daily Show on More 4 where the Daily Mail was recently found to be advertising...

Quite why anyone would read the Daily Star I'm really not sure. My lack of understanding of the Star is dwarfed by the reason anyone would read the Daily Express. I just don't understand why anyone would read that rag whatever your opinions. I don't particularly like The Sun, The Mirror and certainly not the rabid Daily Mail. But I can appreciate that they all do their respective job well, which is why I fail to understand why anyone would read the inferior versions offered by Richard Desmond's business.

That's all as maybe, but I was intrigued by the 'el cheapo' ad which basically featured a Daily Star logo and a voiceover. The advert was persuading you to read the paper on the basis that "The Daily Star is Britain's most successful newspaper."

Goodness. Who'd have thought?

At the bottom of the screen was a source for the data:

"Source: ABC. Based on circulation increase Jan 09-10."

This is true. Well at least it's true that the Daily Star (cover price 20p nationally) is selling 10,842 more copies than it did in the same month last year, whereas The Sun (20p in the southeast, and northern England) and the Daily Mirror (45p nationally) have both lost sales. And, to be fair, the Star is - remarkably - the only newspaper of any quality to record a year on year circulation increase.

But that's an interesting definition of "successful".

Here's how the last year's sales look:

Source: ABC

So despite being a cheaper product, the paper is still firmly rooted in third place amongst the popular tabloids.

Is the advert misleading? Surely not...

As everyone looks forward to the new Tim Burton take on Alice in Wonderland, and I wonder whether I can be bothered to see it in 3D, the BFI has put its newly restored version of the first ever version of Alice on YouTube.

Running at just under ten minutes, it's a remarkable document dating from 1903, and one that had very nearly been completely lost.

Read more at the BFI's website which has some detailed background about the film's origins.

If you're quick, there's still a chance to hear last week's Radio 4 programme Science on Trial.

With enormous topicality, it examined some of the very concerning legal cases that have been brought in British courts surrounding use of libel laws to restrict scientific debate, and effectively silence some of those who otherwise promote remedies for which there are significant questions of efficacy.

This came to a head yesterday when Simon Singh appeared in the High Court in front of three of the most senior appeals judges in the country. He's fighting a libel action brought by the British Chiropractic Association, after he authored a piece in The Guardian nearly two years ago.

If you ever actually visit my site (and aren't just seeing it in an RSS reader), you'll have perhaps noticed the link to Sense About Science. This is an important freedom that we need to fight for.

If you haven't already, you really need to do a few things.

First of all - sign this petition for the reform of this country's unjust libel laws. Even today's Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee report highlights the injustice of this.

Go on - do it now.

For more background on the Simon Singh case, you can do no worse than read the Jack of Kent blog. He has a nice summary of events to date here, and a report on yesterday's procedings here.

Simon Singh had penned a piece in the Daily Telegraph prior to yesterday's appearance, and there was also a good primer in The Times.

Or listen to the programme linked to above.

The big news eminating from the BBC today is that they're finally getting around to releasing some mobile applications.

That's not entirely true: the BBC has previously released other applications, such as the iPlayer for various Nokia mobile phones. But notably, it hasn't released any applications on the mobile daddy of them all - the iPhone.

As I understand it, this isn't a reluctance on their part - I'm sure they were sitting by watching other media organisations put together some excellent applications and "steal a march". I think this was more to do with the terms and conditions imposed by Apple and the BBC's status under the Charter.

And then there's the small matter of concern over users being landed with astronomical data bills because they watched last night's Eastenders via 3G, and don't have a good data package with their operator. I suspect that we'll see stern warnings on-screen before you can embark on streaming over 3G.

Obviously those little local difficulties have been overcome, because as the BBC News site, the press office, the BBC Internet blog and Erik Huggers himself all announce today - apps are coming.

With the BBC not having done anything up until now, others have filled the void. A number of applications use BBC RSS feeds to serve up news and sports stories. Other applications gather together links to radio and television services - including the BBC's - and are sold for profit.

So it certainly makes sense that the BBC does this itself.

And it's pleasing to see that unlike some media outlets, the BBC understands that it needs to develop for platforms beyond the iPhone, including Blackberry and Android. Notably, S60 isn't on that list. I don't suppose that means it's not being developed for, but it's clear that despite a massive user base, it's not a great development environment from what I can gather, and the variety of devices available for it can make coding for it problematic.

Anyway, having resolved that my next phone will be an Android device (HTC Desire - I have my eyes on you), I look forward to playing with these later in the year.

According to a story in Media Guardian, "an estimated 5 million" people tuned in to hear who would be the Christmas number one yesterday during the various chart shows.

There are two main chart shows these days: the Radio 1 version which is considered the official chart, and the Big Top 40 chart which runs on dozens of local commercial radio stations and during which you can actually affect the top ten chart placings by buying songs during the show.

Radio has a couple of problems with listening figures for one-off shows: RAJAR only measures audiences over three month periods, and then publishes those figures at something of a delay. So even if one show achieved four times the audience of the regular show, when averaged over a thirteen (or twelve) week period, that audience surge is flattened out. This is even more the case with the Big Top 40 chart which has 6 month weighting meaning that the numbers are derived from the previous 12 weeks' performance.

So the 5 million figure is a complete (educated) guess.

To be fair, that's what John Plunkett's piece says, and the figure comes from Mark Goodier:

But Goodier estimated that the combined audience for the Radio 1 chart show - yesterday hosted by Scott Mills - and its commercial radio rival, the Big Top 40 , could have topped 5 million.

How did Goodier get to that figure? Well he might have looked at the audiences of Radio 1 and the Big Top 40 shows at that time. Between 1845 and 1900 on Sundays, Radio 1 is heard by 748,000 listeners, while the Big Top 40 chart is heard by 968,000 listeners across its network of 139 FM stations as well as various digital outlets*.

So something like 1.7m people usually hear the number one. Goodier is speculating that around 3 times as many people heard yesterday's chart.

I think that he might actually be being a little conservative. The two songs battling for the number one sold around a million copies between them. Ordinarily a number one sells much less than this (perhaps by a factor of ten if this table from Wikipedia detailing download only sales is to be believed).

In summary - nobody knows how many people listened yesterday. This is a bad time of year to do any kind of research (RAJAR takes a break for a couple of weeks), and unless somebody like the BBC has commissioned some, we'll never know.

I think that Goodier is actually being conservative given the many millions who saw Joe win X-Factor the week before, allied with the hundreds of thousands of Rage and Joe sales achieved. I'd put the figure a bit higher perhaps at around 6 or 7 million. But I have no real proof either way. So it's a fair guestimate.

* Note that I've used 6 month weighting for the Big Top 40 figures, but only 3 month weighting for Radio 1, in line with their respective RAJAR reporting periods. Source: RAJAR/Ipsos MORI/RSMB period ending September 2009.

In today's Standard (I managed to get a copy at Kings Cross - they're never available much beyond 5.30pm at Oxford Circus or Piccadilly Circus), David Sexton pontificates over two pages about why "bloggers" are so hostile towards Ian McEwan.

This is the piece that Sexton is talking about. Following a series of Guardian Book blogs on the best books of each year of the last decade, the author asks for nominations for the worst book of the decade. What the piece is really about is over-praised books, or titles that received good reviews but which weren't all that good.

Sexton finds it astonishing that so much venom can be saved up for McEwan.

Let's take this back a step. Is everything McEwan's written good? No. At least not in my view and I've only read a handful of his books. I loved Atonement but thought that Amsterdam (which won the Booker) was vastly over-rated. I enjoyed Enduring Love, but both Saturday and On Chesil Beach left me wanting. Those are my views and they count for as much or as little as you like.

In the internet world you're always going to find extremes, and just as people like to vent at one another in pubs, they like to write to newspapers. In this day and age, we're able to comment on anything we like and enjoy doing so. Witness then, the nearly 900 comments (at time of writing) accompanying the Guardian's blog.

Is Sexton new to the internet? Is that why the strength of opinion takes him by surprise? Has he never been to a debating chamber where people will happily argue back and forth. A blog's comment section such as this is just such a place. And when you marry that with a subject that we can all easily hold forth on like which book, in our opinion, was given the most undeserved praise, then the comments can fly.

And I take exception to Sexton calling all the commenters "bloggers."

Bloggers hunting in packs never make a pretty sight, of course. By and large, bloggers remain writers who have not been able to find more rewarding outlets for their work and are therefore pre-packed with resentment, whatever subject they address. They rarely come to praise.

First off, you're talking about commenters - the same people who write to your letters page too. Bloggers maintain or contribute to their own sites. There's a subtle and yet fundamental difference, which while it might seem of little import, is relevant to the argument. They're also a wide variety of society.

I love Word magazine, but a story in a recent issue - preceded by a podcast in similar vein - made the same mistake. In that instance it was about the "feedback" that Lily Allen received when she spoke of her beliefs surrounding music piracy (her views were not to everyone's liking).

That Word piece spoke of "the message boards" and those who contribute to them.

In both cases, the people to whom disdain is being shown are a broad church. Speaking of them in a simplistic terminology really doesn't do justice. They're Word magazines readers; they're Guardian and Evening Standard readers. They're not some subspecies who hunt "in packs."

Can unpleasantness occur if we're not careful? Certainly. But that's the same kind of argument that suggests that everyone who watches football is a hooligan.

And I seriously doubt that all those 9000 or so comments come from people who've "not been able to find more rewarding outlets for their work." That's a low, and thoroughly unfair blow.

Sexton might want to look around at the comments under the sister pieces in this series in which commentors praise lots of books from each year of the last decade and recommend titles to one another. It's not all bile you know!

Given that ITV barely does any local or regional news, it seems a bit unfair to target the BBC's programme - Inside Out - that covers the English regions. And I'm not.

But for reasons I can't really explain, I decided to go channel surfing in the 970s and 980s on Sky to see what stories all the regional BBC services were covering.

BBC East, covering East Anglia, had a story covering "legal highs": drugs that are legally available to buy and which are potentially as dangerous as illegal drugs. A good story you might think. You can read more here - and see the episode later once it's encoded, on the iPlayer.

Then I flicked over to BBC Oxford. They were also covering "legal highs".

Aha. Clever. Reusing the same story that's relevant in other parts of the UK!

Umm. No.

They'd made an entirely different (but somewhat better) version of the same story. So while the BBC East reporter was wandering around shops in Norwich and Colchester buying dubious drugs, in Oxford the friend of someone who'd died after taking drugs was doing something similar. The Oxford interviews were of a higher calibre if I'm being honest too.

You can see the BBC Oxford (or BBC South) version of the story here, again once it's been encoded.

It's possibly not surprising that a relevant story gets shown in more than one region, but it's a shame that the two reporting teams couldn't have pooled resources, or planned more carefully the fact that they'd each be producing the same story.

Of course - there always has been a massive rivalry between Oxford and Cambridge...

On Monday there was a Radio Academy event in London with Matt Wells asking the questions of BBC Radio Five Live's controller, Adrian van Klaveren.

The obvious area for questioning surrounded Five Live's forthcoming move to a new facility in Salford.

As someone who listens to an awful lot of Five Live, I'm still unconvinced, although van Klaveren put up some persuasive arguments. BBC Radio probably is too metropolitan in its outlook, with some programmes coming from outside London based on all sorts of mistaken logic.

But I wonder if it wouldn't have been smarter to move a station like Radio 2 up there? When all is said and done - and this was a theme at the interview event - it's clear that Five Live is going to have to do an awful lot of "Down the Line" interviews.

While technically these will be fine, as anyone who's ever heard a Radio 4 Today interview with someone sitting in the radio car in a remote place knows, it's never the same as having the interviewee facing you in the same room. As things stand currently, Five Live often shares major interviewees with Radio 4 - especially politicians.[UPDATE: It's probably worth noting that sometimes politicians are in other London studios - White City, Broadcasting House or Millbank and are doing "Down the Lines" - but the argument still holds]

Van Klaveren was at pains to point out that politicians do venture north and that they'll be able to interview people up there. But if a major event is taking place in parliament, then it's London where the people concerned will be found.

Partially as a result of all this, Five Live is about to see a significant scheduling shakeup as Simon Mayo heads off to Radio Two (and there's no doubt that his loss will be felt), to be replaced by Richard Bacon, who's late night programme will itself be replaced by Tony Livesey.

Gabby Logan also finds a place on the schedule in a lunchtime slot that means that Victoria Derbyshire's programme loses an hour. That in itself probably isn't a major issue, as I personally find the full-blooded phone-ins the worst aspects of Five Live. Although I've yet to be fully convinced by Logan listening to her Sunday programme.

And the recent "Rules of Chat" TV ad for Five Live does concern me. Previously the station has been about news and sport. Yes, it handles lighter stories, including entertainment news, but it was primarily news and sport. "Chat" seems to have sneaked in of late.

Logan remains an uncertain choice in my view, and the cynic in me wonders if, like the recent return of Anne Robinson to Watchdog, it's not more about getting fuller value from an expensively contracted presenter - her TV commitments having dwindled a little with the decline in quantity of live football on the BBC.

Richard Bacon is less of an issue to me, and I well remember the howls of protest that met with Simon Mayo's arrival at Five Live. They proved to be completely unfounded. But as Wells indicated, he will need to "step up" his game when he makes the move in January.

I was interested in Stephen Nolan's situation. By far the worst programme on the station, with its pointless "White v Black" arguments which tend to go along the lines of this:

Caller A: "White is definitely better than black. It's so much whiter!"

Nolan: "How can you say that when black is so dark? That makes no sense at all!"

Caller B: "No. Black is definitely better than white. The darkness of it wins everytime."

Nolan: "I can't believe you said that. White is surely the most light of the two and clearly better."

Repeat - ad nauseum.

Specious though those arguments are, they're nothing to the waste of flying Nolan across the Irish Sea to Manchester each week where his show is made and broadcast from. Nolan is a broadcaster on BBC Radio Ulster each weekday morning, and so on Friday he hops on plane to Manchester to make his weekend shows.

Having heard that "Down the Line" interviews needn't be so bad, Five Live still feels the need to make his show out of Manchester rather than Belfast even though it's technically perfectly straightforward for a predominantly phone-in show to come from pretty much anywhere. Yes - his production team are in Manchester, but there can't be that many of them, and it just seems a waste.

Van Klaveren was adamant that presenters would not be trained or flown up to Manchester and put up in hotels. If they retained homes in the South East, that was their lookout.

Interestingly, this question cropped up again in a Q&A session with him on one of the BBC's blog pages later in the week. And once again van Klaveren stoutly defended it.

An issue that I did ask him about in the open Q&A at the Radio Academy event was the scarcity of sporting journalism on the station. I still fondly remember On The Line, which started out on Five as weekly investigative standalone programme, before making a transfer to BBC Two. Unfortunately, once it was ditched by TV it never did really return, and yet it's just about the only serious sports news outlet. Much of the rest of the coverage surrounding sport is based on panel discussions - usually with ex-pros. Per se, there's nothing wrong with these, and they make entertaining listening. But taking a hard look at sporting issues and the sometimes touchy politics behind it, is something that only the BBC can really do, and there's a scarcity of that.

The only other true coverage of these kinds of issues is to be found in an occasional Panorama from the likes of Andrew Jennings who specialises in investigating bodies like the IOC and FIFA.

Even if commercial broadcasters actually wanted to seriously address some of these issues, they'd be more concerned about damaging critically important commercial relationships - it simply wouldn't happen.

I've said before that running a major global sport is the closest you can legitimately get to being an internationally recognised dictator these days - particularly in the West. Look at the people in charge of the Olympics, football (UEFA and FIFA) and Formula One. People treat them literally like visiting heads of state such is their power and influence, however "democratic" or not their sporting bodies are. Jack Warner of Trinidadian football association is the foremost of these wretched characters.

That's why we need a BBC who'll take on these bodies and not run scared. The Kennel Club is a relevant case in point, as has been coverage of greyhound racing.

Van Klaveren said that in fact this kind of coverage does exist but that perhaps it's not signposted clearly enough. Where once a programme like On The Line (which successfully spun off at least two excellent companion books by the way) would exist in its own right, today's Five Live tends towards broader programmes that are less distinguishable in the schedule.

It would be good if Five Live was able to gather together some of this journalism and house it - perhaps on the web - under a specific label.

[UPDATE: The full audio of the Radio Academy event is available either on their website, the Five Live blog, and here!]

As Peter Mandelson continues to show us that he completely misunderstands the nature of the internet, a general failing of "content-owners" can be seen when you try to do something very simple that you should be able to do in this day and age but can't.

At the weekend I thought I'd try to get hold of a nice Hammer film to watch. (NB. I dislike the over-Americanisation of Halloween, but still enjoy the odd horror film, and Hammer films are a guilty pleasure).

We live in a world of instant gratification, but not always that instant.

The thing you need to bear in mind here is that I like to watch films on the big expensive device that monopolises my living room. It's there to serve precisly this purpose. My iPod or laptop aren't as good.

Amazon had the film in stock, but I'd have to wait until Tuesday to get it. Where else can one buy legal films on the internet to downlaod? Not Amazon who only currently sell music. Basically I was going to be stuck with iTunes who do have a great selection.

But there's a problem. I can't then watch my purchase on my TV. That's not entirely true. I can plug my laptop into my TV. But the quality is poor. I need either an HDMI cable (by TV isn't HD), or an S-video cable, and audio cable.

I wasn't about to pay for an inferior experience. I'd prefer to be able to burn to DVD. But I can't. I had a look around the web to see if there were any workarounds, but they all involve screen-captures of the movie played back on the laptop, recorded and then converted to DVD.

Apple lets you burn your music to CD - it even let you do this when it had copy-protection included. But you can't burn purchased films or TV programmes onto DVD.

What I can easily do is go online and find a DivX file of the film I wanted, download it, and play it back in my DivX compatible DVD player. Or I can use my Xbox to play the file direct off PC wirelessly.

In other words, downloading an illegal copy is much easier for consumers. And that - very simply - is why entertainment companies are losing so much money.

Of course the amounts being lost are nonsense. If all illegal activity was shut down, you'd be a fool to believe that the money to buy the films and music that's being shared or stolen would suddenly appear from nowhere. It's being spent on legal games, and music, mobile phone bills and satellite packages.

William Gallagher was recently extolling the virtues of Lou Grant on the excellent UK DVD Review podcast recently. Yet it's never been released on DVD. I can pay for it and download it on iTunes, but I can't watch it on TV. And while portable players offer a certain amount of convenience, I still like to watch proper dramas on a proper TV.

I actually spent a little time searching around the internet to find out any other legal downloading initiatives. The only UK specific service I could find was from Lovefilm who seem to offer a limited number of digital films online to buy, which each come with a free DVD which is then mailed to you.

But nobody seems to offer a service that lets you download a film or TV show, letting you either play it back online or burn to DVD.

Another lost opportunity from an industry so scared of piracy that they're cutting their nose off to spite their face.

Today sees publication of the latest RAJAR figures and there are a few things that are food for thought.

FIrst of all, it wasn't the greatest RAJAR for commercial radio which slipped back a little against a strong BBC which saw increases in share for all its national analogue networks with the exception of Radio 1.

Source: RAJAR Q3 2009

Commercial radio really does need this to return to parity.

Nationally, as well as the BBC channels mentioned, Talksport has done well with some gains quarter on quarter.

In London there's a very interesting story with Capital FM becoming the biggest station in London and this is despite losing share quarter on quarter. What's happened is that Magic has lost even more (and Heart has missed out too), leaving Capital as "London's number one" as the jingles will no doubt be informing listeners at some point today.

My own employer, Absolute Radio, has done well in London, picking up 7.6% in hours against an overall declining backdrop (the BBC is gaining in London too, where the traditional commercial lead is being whittled away).

All of this means it's going to be interesting to see what happens in Q1 next year once Chris Evans has started up on Radio 2. But that's six months away yet.

One very important measure is the percentage of listening that's being done via a digital platform - be it DAB, the internet or DTV. For all radio, it's remained at 21.1%. With commercial radio overall dipping a little at 20.2%, the BBC has helped keep the level up as it has achieved 21.6% digital overall.

Source: RAJAR Q3 2009

Does this mean that "Digital Upgrade" is not going to happen, and we're going to remain on analogue forever? Er, no. It'd be good to see those figures continue to rise, and I know that the DRDB is working hard to ensure that they do continue increasing.

We've also heard that the radio industry is working on a new way for every station to be able to be heard online. Hopefully, that will drag up the relatively lowly 2.2% listening share that the internet currently achieves.

Source: RAJAR Q3 2009

Again, my own employer, Absolute Radio, has managed to better this. Excluding our FM listening in London, 51.5% of all listening is done via a digital platform now - exceding the 50% target set by Lord Carter in his Digital Britain report four years ahead of the 2013 date suggested.

Even if we include FM listening in London, Absolute Radio is at 30.5% - well ahead of the commercial average.

DAB ownership is also up 14% year on year now with 16.6m adults living in a home with at least one DAB radio.

This next quarter is a very important one for sales of DAB radios - and now more than ever WiFi connected radios. As well as the Pure Sensia, Pure has just announced the Sensia Flow while Revo has just announced the Heritage. And Logitech has its interesting looking Squeezebox The common factor for all of is that they have internet radio. As more homes get wireless networks, these devices will become more common place.

All of this leads me to Radio at the Edge where amongst other things, Richard Bacon will be interviewing Tony Blackburn and Lisa Kerr will be telling us why Radio Must Go Digital. It's well worth the asking price, so persuade the people you need to, to let you go!

And if you're very lucky, you might see some very interesting short videos from, ahem, me...

(Note: Although I work for Absolute Radio, this piece does not necessarily represent the views of my employer. That said, it's only because my employer is happy to publish our digital platform listening figures that I can quote them here. I am unable to publish other stations' platform listening figures.)

[Updated to include DAB ownership - 8.20am]

Associated Newspapers has just announced that the London Lite will shortly be closing. This has surely been inevitable since the Evening Standard went free a week or so ago.

Clearly as well the journalists mentioned in the The Guardian's report, there are also an awful lot of part-time distributors losing their jobs, as well associated roles.

I have mixed feelings on this, as I think the paper was absolutely dreadful and an utter waste of space. Culturally, we won't be missing anything that a dozen entertainment websites (or "proper" tabloids) can't do much better. Indeed, let's face it: these papers only need to exist in physical form while we don't have mobile internet on the underground.

But nobody wants to see people losing their jobs - they won't all be able to get jobs at Best Buy.

So what are Londoners left with? The Evening Standard, which is apparently giving out 600,000 copies every evening. Except that I don't think it's got its distribution at the refined point that The London Paper and London Lite had achieved.

In W1 where I work, I usually can't get a copy at Oxford Circus by 6pm with all the distributors having closed their stands and left for the evening. Such is the footfall there, the papers have all been snapped up. Note that I can easily pick up a London Lite at that time, and indeed I can carry on getting one until at least 7pm and often later.

My route home gives me no further opportunity to collect a copy, and so more often than not I simply no longer see the paper. Even the mainline rail stations aren't that well served. At 8pm this evening there wasn't a Standard to be had in Kings Cross. Yet the recent Standard marketing technique was to sell the paper through until about 11pm at a discounted price. I've always previously been able to get a copy at the station at that time, and potential new readers drawn in by the cut-price deal who work late, are now left in the lurch. And beyond mainline stations, there are numerous stations at junctions where overground and underground meet without commuters leaving the ticketed platform areas.

Of course, once I reach my suburban destination, I have no opportunity. The local newsagent doesn't carry it - only a very distant supermarket - the kind of place you tend to visit once a week at most.

Now it's still early days, and perhaps the West End will be better served, but the biggest issue facing the Standard right now is that some of those people who loyally paid their 50p daily can no longer buy a copy. Yes - it's available online - but actually they need a mobile friendly downloadable version that lets me read it offline on my phone, netbook or laptop. The current version requires an internet connection. Even a simple PDF would be fine.

FInally - that photo at the top is curious. WH Smith - at least at Kings Cross - lets you pick up a free copy as long as you buy something else in store!

And so it has come to pass - this weekend's dead rubber between the Ukraine and England, will only be available online or at your local Odeon cinema.

The prices seem to range from £4.99 if you book now to £11.99 if you book on the day of the game. Odeon cinemas seem to be charging the higher of the two prices.

There's been a combination of teeth gnashing and apathy today. The game is pretty much meaningless since England has qualified (although it might subtly affect our "co-efficient" for determining things like group stages draws in future tournaments).

That said, I certainly can't be bothered.

The reason given for the match not finding a television home with the BBC, ITV, Five, Sky or ESPN is that "broadcasters were willing to pay the asking price to screen the game." In other words, if none of those guys - even someone like ESPN which is surely trying to create a new business, isn't willing to pay to screen it, then clearly too much is being charged.

What's actually happened is that when the draw for this round of group stages was made by FIFA a couple of years ago, a few sports agencies dash around and purchase the rights to games from individual nations' football associations. They move quickly since if a footballing "minnows" have games against larger football-mad nations. Rather than selling group stages to one rights holder, individual nations can sell their own home games separately. So whatever the English FA would like it to do, it's the Ukranian FA that gets to sell its home rights.

So it was that back in November 2007 a company named Kentaro snapped up the rights to a number of England games. Setanta came along and bought them. There was probably a hope that if it came down to the wire, this could be a critical game for England to qualify for South Africa. A high fee was probably demanded and paid. In the event, England strolled the group, and the match is meaningless, as is the final fixture against Belarus. Meanwhile Setanta went bust and rights reverted to Kentaro who were then left with a problem selling them in a down market at a time when England were strolling to qualification.

Kentaro has taken a gamble and it hasn't paid off*. So now, rather than cutting their losses and accepting the highest offer from a "traditional" football broadcaster, they're trying the direct-to-consumer route. They claim that they'll limit the number of streams they sell to a million which represents a minimum of £5m revenue if they get to that number.

In the future, we'll perhaps see more of this kind of selling, although there are plenty of regular pay-per-view platforms available like Sky Box Office, Virgin Media and BT Vision. None of these seems to be being employed. So unless you're able to hook up your PC to your TV, you're reduced to watching the game on a smaller screen - quite possibly a laptop sized screen. Not your 42" plasma. A pay-per-view option would also have enabled some pubs to show the game.

Will the feed be stable? Who knows. The BBC has struggled at times during key Wimbledon fixtures that take place during office hours. Sky's Player also struggled at certain points during The Ashes. These are large broadcasters with big IT teams who are used to serving significant numbers of simultaneous streams. Sport will always show up a poor digital picture - I'd always want to watch some sport on any prospective flatscreen TV I was buying for example.

How strong is Kentaro's backbone? It's possible that we won't find out, because I'd be amazed if all that many pay up.

The Odeon idea is interesting, and I assume that it'll be an HD stream - certainly not an internet stream. In the past Odeon cinemas have simulcast live football in big tournaments, as well as HD Formula 1 coverage. They also regularly show live opera from places like the Met and Glynebourne.

But let's see what happens at the weekend. I doubt we'll ever learn how many streams are sold. However, it will be interesting to see what happens when the draw for the group stages of Euro 2012 are made in February 2010. Will we see some higher profile away games going online?

*Clearly, I have no real insight into Kentaro's business plans, but I think that's a safe assumption to make.

Warning. You are about to read a bit of a rant: if you haven't already stopped reading already that is. It's been a long time in coming, but I feel I have to say something about it.

I loathe content.

The word "content" that is.

I really, really loathe it.

It's a hideous and yet all encompassing word.

At first it was just the by now omnipresent "User Generated Content". But now websites are filled with "content". TV schedules are now packed with "content". Radio stations use "content" to fill the airtime. Newspapers and magazine are stuffed with "content". It's everywhere.

Like many words, it started out as an industry specific word. Marketing types would talk about the content they were producing for their new project. That was frustrating, but marketing is full of nonsense (apologies for causing offence to any marketing professionals reading this - but you know I'm speaking the truth). Yet slowly it's become one of those words that's seeped out of the confines of the marketing universe and has begun to permeate society. "Premium" is a word that has similarly escaped the clutches of the marketing world and broken free into our world. We all now know that a "premium lager" is somehow better than a regular one. The ads are glossier; the image more refined; and the product more expensive. But it's brewed in the same facility in South Wales or wherever. Nobody can actually really explain what's so "premium" about it. They might say that they like it more, but advertising has largely conditioned them to do so. And there are plenty of other examples.

Thus you'll now see consumer-facing websites talking about "content" quite openly - especially if you're invited to upload pictures, audio or video. But you'll also hear the word spoken and used in this sense on television and radio.

Content, I'm reliably informed, is from the Latin, contentum, the neuter past particple of continere meaning "to contain". Google cites something like 1.4bn mentions of the word.

Dictionary.com's definition is probably as good as any:

4. substantive information or creative material viewed in contrast to its actual or potential manner of presentation: publishers, record companies, and other content providers; a flashy Web site, but without much content.

(I'd use the OED's defintion, but it's all behind a paywall).

So why do I hate the word? It's a word that's not easily replaceable in the context in which it's currently used, because it can mean so many things: video, audio, written pieces, or combinations thereof. As a catchall, then, does it not serve a purpose?

Yet that's precisely what really annoys me about the word.

It takes that art out of those things. If I'm writing an essay on a subject, is this a carefully crafted literary piece or is it a piece of "content"? If I'm composing a new song, am I just making some "content"? If I'm making a film with a crew, and some actors, have I really just put together "content"?

In the context of the word's definition, then yes I have. But the word is somehow dismissive. It doesn't consider the thought, time, or creativity (or lack of) that went into producing the work or works. Aqua by Barbie Girl and A Day In The Life by The Beatles are somehow equal because they're both just "content". Saw VI and Lawrence of Arabia are the same. A throw away piece of tittle-tattle from The Sun's Bizarre column is the same as a 1500 word essay in the Times Literary Supplement. It's all "content".

It probably doesn't help that the word sounds a little like "cement", because when I hear someone talk about content - perhaps on a website - then I think about someone trying to shovel oozing piles of something into the website so that it'll quickly set and there's something there for people to read, watch or listen to. It's not a stunning piece of hand crafted masonry. It's a breeze block. There's no real thought about the quality of what's being uploaded or written; just the knowledge that some of it's needed to attract readers, viewers or listeners. There is space or airtime to fill, and on the internet, that space is effectively infinite, while in the broadcasting world you can always start a new channel or stream.

It's simple economics. And of course that's what the media industry is all about. With the exception (perhaps!) of the BBC, all that filler material is just there to turn a buck for the company who has to fill it. That's fine. We live in a capitalist world. But surely we care about how we fill those empty spaces? And that to me is the problem with the word "content." It suggests an attitude that just requires taking the most cost effective way to fill in the gaps.

Am I an idealist? I'm well aware that commissioning editors for daytime TV are just trying to fill the gaps in their schedule as cost effectively as possible. They need a decent audience share to maintain their positions, and reap the maximum value of the associated advertising.

To take an easy example, nobody really hand-crafts an episode of the Jeremy Kyle Show. They don't care. They just know that the network wants x hours of shows a year, and they just churn them out as quickly and cost-effectively as possible. Think of that cement mixer again, pulling up at a studio in Manchester and just dumping its load.

Similarly, the producers of Big Brother and Channel 4 know that they have to produce hours of footage to fill out much of Quarter Two and Three's primetime schedule. Yes, they want to maximise the audience - but that's not really the same as caring about the programmes they make. Perhaps in these instances "content" is, then, an accurate word.

Closer to home, commercial radio has to achieve maximum revenues for minimal costs. It does this largely by playing music; in many cases, the same music. The listener is left with soundalike stations across the country. Indeed they're now quite likely to be 100% identical.

But does that mean that we shouldn't at least aspire to greater things?

The reality is that some standards have to be maintained if you want to stand out and make an impact. However dire some of ITV's comedy and drama series might be, I don't believe the makers didn't really care at least a little bit about them (OK - the producers of The Palace last year probably didn't).

That's not to say that slick machines can't operate, producing television programmes by the mile, but maintaining a certain quality threshold. The CSI franchise springs to mind with some excellent production values maintained, even if a few scripts do seem to have jumped the shark. House is now in its sixth series, having made well over 100 episodes, yet the quality of scripts remains impressive. It can be done.

I suppose I get upset when I hear people throwing the word "content" around as though people will come flocking to read, listen or view it, irrespective of what it is. Pile it high and they will come!

And so, every website in the known universe has rushed to include "User Generated Content" in their sites! Sometimes it's very appropriate - Flickr obviously wouldn't exist without its users photos, although YouTube could probably do with a little more user generated "content", and less broadcaster created "content". But mostly it's just another bandwagon that most have failed to climb on.

What I do agree with is that we need a word to use to talk about all this material; preferably a word that doesn't conjour up an image of a builder shoveling cement from a wheelbarrow into a hole to fill it up. Because that's what I picture in my mind's eye when I hear someone discussing how they need content to fill a hole in their schedule/pages/site. Cement is readily available in vast quantities from your local builders' yard.

Please give me an alternative; a word that conveys some care and consideration has gone into what has been created. And in the meantime, feel free to tell me off if I ever use the word.

The usual disclaimer - these are my personal opinions and do not represent those of my employer. And yes, I have, in extremis, used "content" before, quite probably on this very blog. But I try not to. I really do.

The Edinburgh TV Festival is all very depressing isn't it. The stories coming out, during a recession that's probably hit TV today to a greater extent than ever before, all seem to be about shutting things down, and leaving well alone.

James Murdoch has come out swinging with his McTaggart lecture and it's depressing stuff. Poor little Sky is being set upon from every side. This is the same Sky, by the way, that recently announced record numbers of subscribers including many who've been shifted over to HD (for which there's an additional monthly cost).

I think that Richard Sambrook (yes - of the BBC) really hits the nail on the head in his blog entry.

Allied with a good piece from David Chance in the FT the other day, it really shows where an embattled Murdoch is really coming from.

The printed media is embattled to put it politely. Rupert Murdoch's answer is to make everything paid-for. If he can just make this happen, then everything will be OK. But that won't work if everybody else doesn't go along with him. As even Murdoch will acknowledge, in a market like London, consumers seem to prefer the "news-lite" Metro to bargain-price 20p copy of The Sun. While clever things with subscription models and access to the web probably could make a difference, micro-payments (also beloved of many others in the TV industry who believe that we'll somehow go through the rigmarole of paying 10p to watch Susan Boyle or whoever sing on our laptops) have yet to really emerge, and quite possibly never will. (Robert Peston talks about an adjunct of this in his very long, but well-worth-reading blog.)

Meanwhile he feels the pressure from two sides in the TV business. None of the Murdochs have ever liked Freeview - ironic as they're a stakeholder in the consortium and continue to supply three free-to-air channels. Ofcom turned down their proposal to switch them over to a sports/movies subscription option, and so the stake sits there as Sky fumes, plots and schemes its next move. In the meantime, the forthcoming Freeview HD is likely to cost Sky subscribers in churn.

Ofcom really became unpopular with Sky the moment it announced proposals to force the broadcaster to wholesale some of its premium programming - sport and films - to other broadcasters. Yes, you can buy those channels on Virgin Media, but other platforms such as Top-Up TV and BT Vision don't have access. BT, for example, would love to sell Sky Sports to consumers in a way that doesn't force them to buy dozens of other channels to access the sports package as Sky effectively forces consumers to do.

Ofcom also talks about rights that Sky is unable to use, yet holds the rights to such as subscription films on demand. You pay a monthly fee for recent releases (a la Sky Movies) and watch them as you want. The main issue is that Sky does not have the bandwidth to offer this kind of service. Indeed, the return path is still largely reliant on phonelines. Cable companies and internet operators can clearly offer these kinds of services.

To say that Sky is furious at Ofcom's intervention here would be putting it lightly. It's livid. It could change the fundamentals of their entire business model.

Is it surprising, then that suddenly David Cameron has talked about limiting Ofcom in the future. Anyone would think that one or more of the Murdoch clan has a word with Mr Cameron...

Historically British broadcasting has been world class, and that includes commercial as well as public sector broadcasting. Yet, as Sambrook says:

What's missing so far is discussion of the public good. Because many commercial operations are struggling, the answer for some is to close or pull down the BBC's activities. A lowest common-denominator approach. Surely part of the justification for public funding and public media is to provide during conditions of market failure?

The argument is always to take down the BBC. But will we be left with programming that is as good? Will we have the information and resource available to all?

We're living in a wonderful age. The internet allows the licence payer to watch, listen and read so much of what we've already paid for. The BBC is just about the only news organisation in the world with a significant number of foreign bureaux beyond the agencies like Reuters, AFP and AP. We laugh when we see what we think are, say, ill-informed Americans not understanding the world view on issues, yet it's only because we get that world view ourselves via news organisations that employ staff in these locations.

James Murdoch talks about "unaccountable institutions" like the BBC Trust, Channel 4 and Ofcom. Yet he works for a very unaccountable company himself. Yes, I can buy shares in the business, but what I say or believe counts for nothing. I can at least have a say so in the next government with my views counting equal to those of the very rich. Sky and News International pretty much do as they wish (and they reportedly don't pay a great deal of tax either).

I find it amusing that Murdoch attacks the EU's attempts to force competition into football rights by forcing them to be sold to at least two companies should be attacked. Of course he's right that prices went up rather than down as consumers had to take out a second subscription, but is that really the EU's fault or Sky's? It still has the dominant share of matches including every single "glamour" tie. Setanta didn't play along and despite trying just about everything, went out of business (they made plenty of mistake to be sure). ESPN is not making those mistakes and has quickly climbed into bed with Sky who now handle everything from subscriptions to production on ESPN's behalf. It's clear that you get along or you die.

Has the BBC gotten too big? Sometimes, yes. I think that the provision of free video to various newspapers hasn't been the smartest thing. I can quite see why commercial providers like ITN, Reuters and PA would be furious. They're having a market removed from them.

Similarly, the Lonely Planet purchase really wasn't smart. Although I think that BBC Worldwide existing as a commercial operator who's job is to plough profits back to the BBC is clearly exactly what the BBC needs.

Murdoch's MacTaggart speech was based around a "creationism" theme which didn't really work I felt. But calling the UK "authoritarian" is misguided at the very least, and obnoxious in the extreme.

Somehow, I found his closing sentence to be fearful rather than fill me with support with his viewpoints. Wall Street's Gordon Gekko sprang to mind:

The only reliable, durable, perpetual guarantor of independence is profit.

As the Edinburgh Television Festival approaches, and Autumn line-ups begin are announced and begin, this week's Broadcast magazine is chock full of exciting, and mostly slightly less exciting news.

The big story is ITV reworking Blind Date into a new speed-dating format. Since even C4 who have previously piloted show called it "the cattle market of dating shows" I'm not at all sure that this is for me.

Five's big news is that they've signed up Justin Lee Collins in a golden handcuffs deal. That's great news - because it means we're far less likely to run into Collins on any other channel in one of those dreadful "Bring Back..." format shows. I always liked the fact that the Friday/Sunday Night Project starred both Collins and Alan Carr, meaning that by never seeing it, I could avoid both these people in one fell swoop.

Everyone by now knows that C4 has scrapped Big Brother. It has finally realised that it can do a hell of a lot better with the silly money it had to pay Endemol for it following a bidding war with ITV back in 2006. Indies around the country are dusting off proposals to grab their share of the cash. Incidentally, if you missed Paul Jackson's history of the UK independent TV sector on Radio 4 recently - Soho Stories - then you missed an excellent documentary series (Yes. That's the same Jackson who's going to be responsible for Justin Lee Collins' first Five series - Heads or Tails - based on coin tossing...).

Sky One is going through one of its periodic upheavals as it goes out and tries to take on the likes of ITV, C4 and Five by commissioning big homegrown shows. So it's moving The Simpsons and busily commissioning daytime programming, factual (bird watching from Bill Bailey) and drama like the forthcoming Chris Ryan Strikeback.

People even occassionally mention "HBO" in the same sentence as Sky One, despite the US behemoth not ever producing light entertainment programming, and what it does make tends to be more challenging and less like the mainstream. And let's not forget that Sky has bought the big new HBO series The Pacific (a kind of Band of Brothers sequel) but which is being shown on Sky Movies, also home to the Star Wars TV series, Clone Wars. And Sky Arts is where you'll shortly find another HBO series, In Treatment. Sky One certainly isn't aspiring to be HBO.

I predict that ratings bankers like The Simpsons will be back in place before you can say Gladiators...

Meanwhile Julian (Gosford Park) Fellowes is writing Downton Abbey for ITV1 next year. It'll be set in an Edwardian countryhouse, sounds quite interesting and probably won't be shown in Scotland.

The BBC is tracking the "buzz" of shows via a website called shownar.combuilt by Shulze & Webb for the BBC. It's not altogether clear to me why some of those terribly clever BBC types couldn't do this themselves via APIs from Twitter et al.

That said, it's an interesting idea and well worth a visit, since the information seems to all be out in the open. Being Human is the show with the most buzz at the moment, as it continues its BBC1 run.

According to the Broadcast piece it could include non-BBC programming at some point although there are currently no plans.

Given the long times between RAJAR reports, tracking this kind of buzz can give you a good feeling about how programmes are going down with the digitally enabled. Although clearly buzz does not equal ratings. Being Human is by no means the BBC's biggest TV programme of the week.

Elsewhere, More 4 has bough HBO comedy drama Hung, and it seems that they'll be showing the next series of Curb Your Enthusiasm in October which would seem to be simultaneously with its US screenings, a smart move recently adopted by ITV2 with Entourage. Hulu's now not expected in Europe until 2010, although ITV is in talks. Meanwhile Arqiva's purchase of Project Kangaroo assets means that it wants to get into the game too.

I couldn't find any radio specific news in Broadcast magazine.

Back in the summer of 2008, the radio station I work for was then called Virgin Radio which in turn was owned by SMG plc. Once upon a time SMG was a media force to be reckoned with. It also owned the Glasgow Herald, the cinema advertising group Pearl & Dean, an outdoor advertising company called Primesight, and of course STV and Grampian - the ITV franchises in Scotland.

Then there was something of a boardroom coup in 2007. The Herald group had already been sold off, and there were disposals on the cards for other businesses, as the share price crashed, and there was a general retrenchment.

Virgin Radio was finally sold to the Times of India, and became Absolute Radio. And SMG, having got rid of nearly everything with the exception of Pearl & Dean (which it has been unable to sell for various reasons), renamed itself STV.

The new management was led by Rob Woodward, and he decided that STV needed a new focus which meant producing more local programming. This came at a time when the rest of ITV was doing the reverse, and no longer making local programmes and closing regional studios and production bases.

STV has traditionally done well in Scotland, but ITV has changed over the years. Where once upon a time it was a network of seperate groups who'd meet every so often and divvy up who would make what programmes for the network, it slowly merged into one large company, with just some smaller players like STV in Scotland and UTV in Northern Ireland remaining outside ITV plc. However everyone continued to play out broadly the same programmes across the entire network.

In recent months STV has changed. Rob Woodward says he's trying to focus on more local programming. Ordinarily STV has to pay its share of production costs of any ITV network productions that it shows. But opting out of expensive dramas saves it money. Drama just happens to be the most expensive type of programming on television (possibly with the exception of something like X-Factor which is also expensive to produce).

In recent months this has meant that the most recent series of Lewis and Kingdom did not reached STV's viewers' screens. Seemingly these dramas - set in England - are of limited interest to Scottish viewers, despite garnering good ratings in earlier series. The fact that they're very expensive to produce is neither here nor there seemingly.

Then, when ITV relaunched The Bill as a weekly 9pm drama a few weeks ago, STV dropped that series as well - after 25 years. ITV responded this time by scheduling a same-week repeat on ITV3, which is available free-to-air to all digitally enabled homes in Scotland.

Today Broadcast reported that nearly all of ITV's Autumn drama schedule (excluding the soaps) will not be carried by STV. At the weekend, STV didn't show the one-off drama Gunrush, starring Timothy Spall I've yet to watch but awaits me on my Sky+ and has been well-reviewed). Nor will STV be showing Doc Martin, The Fixer, Wuthering Heights, Agatha Christie's Marple, Collision, Blue Murder or Midsomer Murders. These include some of ITV's most popular and upmarket dramas.

The only major ITV dramas that STV is going to show will be Murderland which stars the very Scottish Robbie Coltrane and is produced by Touchpaper Scotland, and the Quentin Crisp follow-up, An Englishman in New York. Not airing the former would have been a real kick in the teeth to Scottish viewers!

Not living in Scotland, I've not seen the full scale of displeasure that may (or may not) have been raised at these decisions to date. Not showing The Bill was probably the first instance of a show going missing that people noticed (viewers may not realise that they've not seen new series of Lewis or Kingdom just yet). I'd be amazed if there wasn't a bigger viewer reaction to this news too. There are plenty of very busy message boards though.

In today's Broadcast piece, STV's Broadcast Services and Regulatory Affairs Director, Bobby Hain, said that not showing these productions was not purely a financial decision. Yet it's odd that STV seems to be mostly opting out of dramas and not much cheaper factual programming.

STV has been busily talking up some of its home-grown programming including a documentary on Susan Boyle, and the fact that they took live coverage of the Scottish Parliament reaching a verdict on the Lockerbie bomber who was returned to Libya. But will audiences really hold up?

Tomorrow, in place of The Bill, Scottish viewers will be treated to Scotland's DNA Secrets (and it's Scotland Goes To War next week). On Sunday and Monday, when ITV's new version of Wuthering Heights starts, STV will be showing Sirens, a repeat of a 2002 crime drama made by STV. On Tuesday, when ITV begins the second series of The Fixer (from Kudos, producer of programmes like Life on Mars and Spooks), STV will be showing an episode of Fitz, the 12 year-old American Cracker remake which was cancelled after 16 episodes.

Incidentally, STV's website is so poor that I couldn't actually find out what was on TV beyond today's programmes. I could see no facility for seeing future programmes. I had to use the Radio Times website to see future STV listings.

While on the one-hand, it's admirable that STV still shows some locally produced documentaries when the rest of the ITV network has pretty much given up, it's clear that this absolutely is a money saving device. It's palpably nonsense to try and claim anything else. Other replacements include imported programming like South Park and repeats of films which were clearly acquired cheaply (although I do think Michael Grade's recent tirade against STV misfired a little when he mentioned Gregory's Girl as one of STV's replacement films. Clearly that does hold a lot of Scottish resonance. Actually it holds a lot of resonance for viewers across the UK).

The bigger question for STV is whether or not the audience is maintained over the longer term.

Bobby Hain, again, on Radio 4's Media Show (you can still listen) a few weeks ago was confident that they would. But the reality is that if STV can save its £60,000 contribution towards the £1m cost of an hour of Wuthering Heights, and show a seven year-old repeat at a fraction of the cost, then it can afford to lose some ratings and still come out ahead financially. But it does occupy the third spot on EPGs and peoples' sets, and that kind of thinking is how channels like G.O.L.D. and Dave are programmed, and surely STV has a higher purpose than repeats channels like those. I wonder how Becoming Jane will fare on BBC1 on Sunday night in the Scottish region while the rest of the UK gets to watch a new Bronte adaptation?

Something very interesting has happened on digital television as a consequence of this stand-off. Sky Digital viewers usually have their local ITV service determined for them by virtue of their postcode. Unlike the BBC, other regional options are usually hidden in the EPG. You can find them if you manually add a channel but it's difficult if not impossible to record shows from those channels, and they appear in a different part of the EPG. But recently ITV London appeared on 993 for non-London viewers. In other words, Scottish Sky viewers can watch these programmes with relative ease if they go looking in the outer reaches of their EPGs. And the same has happened with Virgin Media customers who can now find ITV London on channel 853, while Freesat viewers can get ITV London on channel 977. Watching ITV's HD service might also get around the problem, although I'm unsure given the fact that it's only reachable via the red button currently.

Who loses? Well Freeview and analogue viewers obviously. But also Scottish advertisers. If more people start watching ITV London, then local Scottish advertisers will receive fewer viewers than they might have hoped. That in turn hits STV's finances.

But potentially all Scottish viewers of ITV and STV lose out. They're going to need to stay alert to even know that programmes like Wuthering Heights are even being shown. I'd be fascinated to see next week's Scottish edition of the Radio Times. The London edition has a big three page feature on that very programme with "(not STV)" alongside it. I suspect that feature sits in the Scottish edition too. Viewers will just have to wait for the DVD. If I was ITV, I'd actually simulcast that programme on ITV3 and look very carefully at the ratings for that channel in the Scottish regions.

Otherwise local versions of listings magazines and Scottish newspapers won't mention them. So how would a viewer even know about ITV showing these new series? Perhaps via ITV2, ITV3 or ITV4?

The other danger is for the long-term futures of talented producers, writers, actors, directors and other staffers working on Scottish drama productions. Since Rebus was cancelled, STV has been left with Taggart, the long running detective drama as its sole ITV drama commission. And as far as I know, that's not yet been recommissioned by ITV with un-aired episodes dropped into the schedule at seemingly random intervals, hardly helping the series maintain a decent audience following.

ITV might become reluctant to commission drama from STV if STV refuses to show any of its dramas in Scotland. So perversely STV viewers could actually end up with less Scottish-made drama as a consequence; frankly, STV is not going to be able to produce £1m an hour dramas without the support of the rest of the network.

[UPDATE]

STV announced its interim financial results this morning. They've reported a steep decline in profits, but unlike ITV, they're still reporting a profit.

I found this part of Media Guardian's report very interesting:

STV said that it remains in discussions with ITV over the future commission of Taggart, a hugely important revenue and profit driver for the division, and that the company "remained confident" about the future of the series. Analysts predict the cost to STV if Taggart is not recommissioned to be in the region of £3m.

Finally, in good journalistic measure, I should note that I do actually have some shares in STV as a result of working for them during their ownership of Virgin Radio. I'd completely forgotten about them! However since the value of my shares would leave me hard pressed to buy a round of drinks for my brother and sister in a Wetherspoon's pub, I don't think that my ownership of them makes me anything less than objective.

Yesterday evening, England won the final Test at the Oval, and doing so regained the Ashes.

It was a fine moment.

And it was a moment that I experienced via the radio listening to Test Match Special on Five Live Sports Extra.

As it happened I spent most of the weekend at the V Festival in Chelmsford where Absolute Radio had an exclusive area. What we didn't have was a satellite dish, although thanks to the Sky Player, I was able to keep checking on the score when I wasn't listening to the radio (and watching and listening to bands playing obviously). I've moaned before about Sky's Player only being available to those Sky Sports subscribers who either buy a triple-play package from Sky or pay a supplement for an extra box - multiroom as it's called. I'm happy with my phone and internet providers, and living by myself, I don't need multiroom thanks very much.

But for July and August, Sky extended access to Sky Sports on the Sky Player to all subscribers meaning that all the Test cricket has been watchable via your PC.

But back to yesterday. Media Guardian this morning reports that Sky Sports' audience peaked at 1.92m viewers as the final Australian wicket was taken. An hour or so later, 2m watched Five's highlights of the same event.

These are both excellent numbers for the respective stations. But in 2005, when Channel 4 still carried live Test cricket, 7.4m viewers watched England win.

As I've made clear previously, I've no bone to pick with Sky who's coverage is excellent - particularly from a technical point of view. Although I much prefer Aggers and the TMS radio team to the dull David Gower and over-eager David Lloyd (his ridiculous trailers for the laughable England XI/Stanford Superstars damp squib have permamently lowered my apppreciation of him). And Mark Nicholas on Five's highlights is very good indeed. In the end, that's all a matter of taste.

The key point here is that far fewer people got to see any cricket this time around. And this cannot be good for the game.

Defenders of the ECB's short-sightedness will talk at length about how Sky's money is being ploughed into the roots of the game. But over the same period we've also seen an influx of highly paid overseas players.

We should also remember that cricket is state-sponsored. Sport England gives the ECB a lot of money (details of a recent £37.8m deal can be seen here), so I think that public at large should see some benefit of its munificance.

And even if we remove the "emotional" part of the equation, in pure commercial terms, do sponsors like Vodafone, Buxton and nPower really get full value for money by having their potential audience limited?

With cricket having been off-air to the "free-to-air"* masses for a number of years now, I can't see Test cricket making a return even if it wanted to. Channel controllers aren't eager, getting better ratings for vapid fare like Deal or No Deal, The Weakest Link or Loose Women.

But the lack of even one-day or Twenty20 games is surely going to cause the game long-term damage.

Are more schools playing cricket than before? Or have they sold their playing fields to developers (a major issue for all school sports)? Can they afford to maintain cricket pitches and have practice nets? And even if they do have the kit, do kids aspire to be the next Freddie Flintoff or Stuart Broad? Or have they perhaps never seen them do their stuff?

Which other Test playing nations in the world have no live cricket on free-to-air television?

Football's clearly the biggest sport in the country, and even though the Premier League is not live, there is free-to-air coverage of FA Cup, Champions' League, Europa League, international and now Championship fixtures. Rugby sees decent pay-TV returns from the Guinness Premiership and Heineken Cup fixtures, but highlights are available, and the Six Nations and Rugby World Cup are still free-to-air.

Other "minority" sports like tennis, golf, and athletics all reach much larger television audiences than cricket does, even if they only have a handful of tournaments broadcast every year.

Yes, some of those events are protected, but others aren't and the sporting bodies, rights holders and sponsors understand the value of making at least some of their sport available to a far broader audience. Even boxing has slowly realised that they simply won't attract a new audience in if they price the next generation of fans out.

The ECB should realise that now they've placed all their eggs in Sky's basket, they run the dual risk of both losing a potential new fanbase of young cricket followers, and lose cash in the medium term as sponsors don't reach wider audiences, while Sky can effectively hold them over a barrel next time around (if there's nobody else interested in your sport, then you're not going to maximise returns). It should be a matter of priority to get at least one tournament onto free-to-air television.

For slightly different reasons, horse-racing actually pays to ensure that Channel 4 continues to cover their sport. Yes - that's for betting income purposes, but it comes down to keeping an audience interested.

But in the end, the proof will be in the pudding. In 2005, the streets of London were lined wtih thousands of people who cheered on the winning side as they paraded in an open-top bus, culminating in a packed Trafalgar Square. Will we see the same scenes this time around I wonder?

[UPDATE] Just after posting this, I notice that in fact there'll be no open top bus tour this year:

"The team still have a packed schedule ahead of them and are flying to Belfast on Tuesday for a one-day international."

Hmmm.

*Some ECB defenders will point out that TV in this country isn't "free-to-air" because we are all required to pay for a TV licence. This is true, but in the same way that car drivers have to pay a vehicle licence tax, there's a difference between most "free-to-drive" roads and "premium" toll-roads. I also have to pay for my TV set, and electricity to run it, so that's frankly an irrelevant point.

Having launched three years ago (when this photo was taken), News International has today announced that following a £12.9m loss, it's closing down.

Obviously this is sad news for everyone who works there, including the street vendors (although I have mixed feelings about them). But I can't say that I'm surprised.

First, Associated launched the London Lite as a spoiler vehicle, and so it became something of a battle between the two to see who's proprietor had deeper pockets. Commuters were unlikely to pick up both of the papers on a regular basis. We've obviously entered a recession, and if your product relies 100% on advertising, now's not a good time for you.

But more obviously, if Rupert Murdoch is truly going to start charging for access to all his newspapers' websites, then he can't have his cake and eat it by claiming that news has value to consumers, yet giving away that same news in printed paper form.

Will I miss the London Paper?

No.

It was rubbish.

Dross.

On those few times I picked up a copy, I found that by the next tube stop I'd read everything that was worth reading in it. The news values were low-brow, and it made Metro look postively good. Page after page of "celebrity" coverage, along with dull columns and pointless space fillers.

Not only that, getting through the West End unmolested by distributors was next to impossible. The only thing that could be said for it was that it was better designed than the London Lite.

The London Lite is equally as bad in all other respects of course. And between them they accounted for gargantuan quantities of waste paper on the tube. Despite signs saying not to, people leave the papers on escalators and you just know that when they're sometimes out of service it's because of newspapers clogging them up.

So the question is, what will happen to London Lite? Well Associated sold the Standard so it no longer protects that paper - it actively competes with it (using material generated by the Standard themselves under the bizarre deal that was done).

Perhaps the market will sustain one of the two? Or perhaps Associated would quite like to kill off the Standard? If we come out of the recession soon, then it might be a fitter and stronger property.

Metro, I'm sure, is perfectly safe for the time being. But whether London Lite remains open or closes, the Evening Standard has been massively damaged. Many commuters have got out of the habit of paying for a paper. And that's not a habit that's easy to get back into.

News emerged at the weekend that Guardian Media Group is said to be discussing the future of The Observer - one of the oldest newspapers in the world.

One idea seems to be to turn it into a weekly news magazine - I assume in the style of Time, Newsweek or The Economist.

That'd be a great shame. But The Observer really does need to do something. As a regular reader (and purchaser) of the paper, it has noticeably got worse over recent weeks. The TV section disappeared and has been folded into the back of the Review section. I'm guessing this uses up Review pagination too. The Business and Media section now has little to no media coverage. Cash was folded into that section some time ago.

I've never been a big fan of newspaper magazines - why do they all carry expensively photographed fashion sections? The Observer Magazine has been relaunched more times than I can count, but it doesn't carry any columnist I find remotely interesting. Worse than that, it still carries horoscopes - something that should never be carried in a serious newspaper. I chuck out the magazine unread far too frequently.

(It must be said that the same could be said of The Guardian's Saturday magazine, but there is occassionally a good issue, like this weekend's short story edition).

The Sport monthly is very good, and although it doesn't interest me, so is the Food supplement.

But Women doesn't interest me and is genuinely awful in conceit.

The real problem lies in the main paper. Too many columns full of fluff. I don't care about Jude Law, and don't need to read a columnists writing about not-caring about Jude Law. If I wanted to read Heat or OK, I'd buy those magazines. They'd do a better job.

Serious commentators like Will Hutton, Nic Cohen and the excellent Henry Porter are good. David Mitchell is a nice addition. But ditch the rest. Give me long investigative and interesting pieces of news coverage.

And if you can't do that, give me more foreign coverage. I'm really not sure why it's relegated to the back of the main section.

Oh and please change your TV reviewer... Just about anybody would be better. At least there's still Philip French.

It's always interesting to read comments on Media Guardian in places like Roy Greenslade's blog. There's obviously still a lot of hostility from people upset when Roger Alton was replaced - but his editorial reign saw many of the issues that are still there.

My problem is that if The Observer stopped Sunday publication, I really don't know what other paper I could read. The Independent on Sunday is a poor relation with little value to it given the cover price. The Sunday Times just annoys me. The Mail on Sunday disgusts me. The Sunday Telegraph feels like something I shouldn't be able to read for at least twenty years.

I fear that I would actually stop reading a Sunday newspaper.

The annual nonsense that is the MediaGuardian 100 has once again been published.

And as ever, there are lots and lots of telly folk on the list. And plenty of representation from the dead tree media. But once again, nearly nobody from radio!

Aside from a handful of presenters, you've got Tim Davie, Mark Damazer (both BBC) and Stephen Miron (Global).

What about the controller of the most popular radio station in the UK, Radio 2? Or perhaps Radio 1?

It's interesting that Miron is included but Ashley Tabor of Global Radio isn't. Or perhaps someone from Bauer or GMG?

Several of these make the sector list, but even though UK radio listening is at an all time high, they don't get into the top 100.

The list is short of women, so it's curious that the controller of BBC Two, Janice Hadlow, is missing. Yet the head of E4 makes the list! Which is more influential - BBC Two or E4?

And is Noel Clarke (you know - Doctor Who's sidekick's boyfriend) really more powerful than Jonathan Ross? Somebody's having a laugh here aren't they?

There are two interesting developments in the world of newspapers and digital today.

First up is Rupert Murdoch who's reported to be introducing a charge for reading currently free newspapers on the internet. He's looked at the model operated by the Wall Street Journal and wants to roll out some kind of system to his other newspapers.

Newspapers face the problem that as circulations fall and page impressions on websites rise, the advertising from their online offerings doesn't make up for the lost print revenue. Major US newspapers are crumbling (The Boston Globe was the latest teetering on the edge), and as the internet effectively has infinite inventory for advertising, if we're not careful, prices will only go in one direction - and it's not up.

From a consumer's point of view, news has become free. They're used to that model on TV and radio. And despite attempts from various publishers online, that's the case with the internet too. Even in print, many are able to read free newspapers.

The problem that Murdoch faces is that unless a lot of his competitors also introduce pay models, it's going to be hard for his titles to go it alone. If I can't read the story free on Timesonline, why don't I just go to Telegraph.co.uk? Then there's always BBC News...

The Wall Street Journal has valuable time sensitive data with an audience that will pay for it. The same can be said of the FT - it has put its cover price up from £1 to £2 in less than two years. Basically, FT readers are price insensitive to a large extent. They need the paper, and it's entirely possible that their office pays for it anyway. Like the Wall Street Journal, the FT charges beyond a certain level for access to its website.

But at the moment, news from News Corporation's websites can usually be found somewhere else free of charge. It's a dilemma.

I think the key to this will be to find a workable micropayment system, or a value-added subscription scheme. The Independent had a go for a while, but eventually failed. Charging small amounts via cards is not very workable. If The Times included access to its enormous archive (stretching back to 1785) then that'd be an interesting idea. It wouldn't work for everybody, because not all of us are interested in that kind of historic information. I'll wait with interest to see what Murdoch comes up with.

The other part of this story is the new Kindle that Amazon has announced in the US - the Kindle DX. This device is specifically aimed at reading magazines and newspapers. I've not tried a Kindle - they've not been released in the UK - but I understand that reading a newspaper on it required a bit too much scrolling or removed a lot of the serendipity of the printed page which had stories you mightn't look at until your eye was caught by them.

The price is pretty high at $489, but there will be "a steep discount on the Kindle if they buy a long term subscription and there is no home delivery in their area."

This is the model that I think is probably the future of these devices. Sell me it like a mobile phone - cheap or even free if I take an 18 month contract out. Then deliver the new edition early each morning automatically, and give me updates through the day - especially if there's breaking news.

The home delivery proviso is odd, and suggests that papers are still trying to hang on to their paper readership. Initially at least, those readers are more valuable, and the discounting scheme is to grow readership albeit earning less from those additional readers.

Exactly the extent of the discount doesn't seem to be known yet. But the mobile phone model is the one to look at.

In time, there'll be improved iterations of the Kindle and its rivals. Colour screens have to be next - newspapers have invested millions in full colour presses, so although digital copies are fully searchable, readers are missing out on photography.

But this is a fascinating development, and it'll be interesting to see who's first to try this model in the UK.

Newspapers haven't been having the greatest time recently. Circulations continue to fall, and there's a generation growing up who gets its news from the web, perhaps with the odd bit of a 24-hour news channel thrown in.

But that's really paid-for newspapers. We also now have the free titles. Starting with Metro, and added to, in the capital at least, by the LondonPaper and London Lite. People probably read just about as many titles as they did before. The difference is that they're not paying for them. And ad revenues alone do not make great editorial.

Against this background, the Evening Standard has been sold to an ex-KGB member who wants to turn it around. Worringly, they've put the editor of The Tatler in place as its new editor, but things can only improve from its most recent iteration. But, as you can see above, the fascinating tack they've taken with their new advertising campaign is to actually apologise to Londoners for the negativity and aloofness the title had adopted in recent times.

When I first started working in London all those years ago, I'd always buy a paper in the morning - probably The Independent - and the Standard on the way home in the evening. Even though I didn't come from a household that religiously had had a daily paper delivered when I was growing up, I'd fallen in love with newspapers.

When The Independent launched in 1986, I was 16 years old and bought the first copy. I still have it. For many years the Indie carried me along - a title that fitted my hopes and beliefs, and delivered thoughtful news. Remember, at the time it was the only paper that refused to cover Royal stories in any meaningful way. It took science seriously. It had a fantastic Saturday magazine.

Roll forward a few years, and I was still in the newspaper habit. I'd by now worked for a local newspaper group, and that had done nothing to remove the habit.

In those first years in London, I enjoyed reading the Standard on the way home. Yes, it was lighter than The Independent, but it still had a bit of foreign news - they even had a couple of foreign correspondents. The paper had a decent supplement, its sports coverage of the capital's teams was second to none, arts coverage was excellent, and it was good value. It got me home.

Somewhere along the way, things changed. I switched to The Guardian when underinvestment at The Independent and an over-reliance on campaigns and news that wasn't really news led me away from it.

And at some point down the line, I stopped reading the Standard too. This was in spite of having people like Derek Malcolm write their film reviews. But there was page after page of columnists, and less news than there had been.

Yes, like everyone else, I get more of my news from the internet these days, but in actual fact, local news coverage is hard to come by on the internet. It's mostly just the same Press Association sources repeated all over the place. The reality is that most local news still surfaces in local newspapers. But the actual "news" part of the Standard had diminished. And I stopped being a reader long before the paper's more recent anti-Ken Livingstone hysteria and its seeming attempt to become an unloved younger sibling of the Daily Mail.

Associated tried lots of things to tempt me back. They brought out their quite innovative (and no doubt very expensive) smartcard payment system - I still have 8 credits left on my card. They gave away umbrellas (that fell apart), travel coffee mugs, and rucksacks (you can imagine how good they were). The only campaign that actually worked for me was when they gave away copies of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson to promote the hardback release of The Girl Who Played With Fire. I'd already read the book in hardback, but bought multiple copies of the Standard so that I could give the copies to friends and family who I thought might enjoy this excellent work. As it turns out, I think that Associated actually got paid to give this title away.

The interminable features and general interest in all things celebratory mean that the paper had stopped being of interest to me. On those rare occassions that I bought it - instead of lasting me all the way home, it was doing well to hold my attention for a couple of tube stops. The headlines, staring out from the sullen vendors became more hysterical. I'd maybe glance at the cover, but I wouldn't buy it.

I'll give the relaunched title a go. But I'm out of the habit of reading a paper on the way home. Other things fill my time - either book reading, or listening to podcasts (something that certainly wasn't an option to me when I started working in London). Others play portable gaming devices or watch videos on their media players. We have a range of options to pass the time, even in the deepest of tube tunnels.

The other problem the Standard faces are the free papers. When Metro started, I admit that I wasn't sure how well it'd do. For a start, they didn't deign to make it available where I lived, and not at my interchange either. But when I did pick up copies, I couldn't really see anything that the internet couldn't give me. It's a bland concotion of the main headlines plus an over-reliance of those "and finally" stories that TV used to relegate to the end of the news. Why would I want that? Others do, but I don't. It just causes litter at the top of escalators in the morning.

So I never got into the habit.

More recently the LondonPaper launched, and alongside it London Lite. While the LondonPaper had the better design, the reality is that both of them are literally garbage. When they started out, they were pretty poor and if anything, they've got worse. The tube and public transport in general is littered with them. I assume that some of my above inflation fare increase is going to pay for all the additional cleaners they must need to tidy up after them.

In W1 at least, there is no shortage of vendors who generally block the pavement and get in the way. I have to pass between six to eight of them between my office and the tube station.

On the rare occassion I've picked up someone else's copy, it just reinforces the feeling that I've been quite correct to leave them well alone. The titles' news values are near enough non-existant. They seem to think they're competing with low-rent magazines like Now or Heat. The quality is abysmal, and they're filled with either press-releases seemingly reprinted verbatim or copy straight from the Press Association wire. Ceefax has deeper news coverage.

I've actually now begun to take offence at the vendors who thrust their papers at me. Do I look like someone who might read their tat?

I know that's a bit unfair. They're just earning a living. But these are rags in the truest sense. At least while there continues to be a battle between them, they're costing their respective proprietors money rather than making it. But is that a good thing for the future of the industry?

While I await the first newspaper to offer me a package that lets me buy an e-reader like the Sony or the Amazon Kindle, and get a year's subscription bundled in (think: the contract mobile phone model), I don't think the actual printed page is yet a dead technology. I'm still surprised that with just about everyone on full-colour presses, more isn't made of strong photography. The Guardian does it with Eyewitness and to be fair the Standard tries a bit too. But there's room for more. Tell me what's going on in this wonderful city!

Anyway, we'll have to wait and see what the new look Standard brings us. Until I've seen it, I'll give it the benefit of the doubt, but this is probably the last chance saloon for the title.

A very strange story is in today's Times. The presenter of ITV1's Tonight programme, Jonathan Maitland, writes about product placement and sponsorship on TV.

First of all, Maitland seems to confuse product placement and sponsorship. As he says, Andy Burnham seems to have ruled out product placement, although I'm not sure that any shift in thinking by Ed Richards at Ofcom will really affect the issue. If there's not a government willingness to relax the rules, then they won't find Ofcom doing so.

However, product placement is very different to sponsorship, which is I think, what Maitland's really driving at. Product placement - the placing of sponsored products within the editorial of a programme - is surely near-impossible to do with current affairs or documentary programming. It's much more likely to find take-up, should it be legalised, in drama or light entertainment programmes.

The Ofcom Broadcasting Code does of course allow the sponsorship of TV programmes. However, there are certain types of programmes for which sponsorship is forbidden:

9.1 The following may not be sponsored:

* news bulletins and news desk presentations on radio; and
* news and current affairs programmes on television.

That means Tonight.

And there's worse news. Article 10 of the European Audiovisual Media Services Directive (which basically trumps UK law), also strictly prohibits this:

4. News and current affairs programmes shall not be sponsored.

So at a European level, it wouldn't be legal for Tonight to be funded by Maitland's un-named insurance company.

In some respects, TV is limited in what it can do compared to radio. Take sponsorship credits. In television, they're sold at a discount from spot airtime despite the fact that as more homes get PVRs and we fast-forward through commercials, sponsor break-bumpers become the things to look out for. But TV is limited in what it can do:

9.12 Sponsorship credits must be clearly separated from programmes by temporal or spatial means.

9.13 Sponsorship must be clearly separated from advertising. Sponsor credits must not contain advertising messages or calls to action. In particular, credits must not encourage the purchase or rental of the products or services of the sponsor or a third party.

Unfortunately, the Television Without Frontiers directive (the forerunner to the Audiovisual Media Services Directive) puts these stipulations in. Ofcom explained it all in a recent Broadcast Bulletin that took a close look at TV sponsorships and found some to be in breach of its Broadcast Code.

For example, PC World's sponsorship of The Gadget Show was found to be in breach because it used the following phrases:

* "Any TV big or small, it's at PC World"
* "A huge range of mp3 and mp4 players at PC World"
* "A wide choice of laptops with mobile broadband at PC World"
* "Take the internet anywhere with mobile broadband at PC World"
* "Any game and console, it's at PC World"

Ofcom said:

In this case, the credits consisted of animated shots of the sponsor's products combined with promotional language to describe the extensive range available, followed by a very brief identification of the sponsorship arrangement.

Ofcom considered that the predominant focus of the credits was on the products and range available from the sponsor, with the identification of the sponsorship arrangement appearing to be secondary. The credits were therefore in breach of Rule 9.13.

Now compare and contrast with the rules for sponsorship of radio, which doesn't fall under any of the European directives mentioned above:

9.8 During longer sponsored output, credits must be broadcast as appropriate to create the degree of transparency required.

9.10 Credits must be cleared for broadcast in the same way as advertisements.

So on TV "sponsor credits must not contain advertising messages or calls to action" but on radio "credits may contain legitimate advertising messages." And there lies the difference.

Of course that works to the advantage of radio!

But after this entertaining diversion into the rules and regulations surrounding broadcast media sponsorship, let's return to Jonathan Maitland's piece. The unspoken part of this story is something that Broadcast reported this week: Tonight is facing its second major budget cut in six months. In November it had a 20% budget cut and made 12 of its 65 employees redundant. Now it has to cut a further 15% from its budget. Times are tough, and its undertstandable that Maitland believes in the programme and is perhaps fustrated that ITV can't benefit from sponsorship of the programme.

If my show had just received a cumulative 32% budget cut, then I'd be looking at new funding models.

The other day I talked about the frustration I suffered when I tried to listen to BBC Radio Five Live on my mobile streaming via 3G.

I thought that it might be worth exploring that a little more.

Most of the news about listening to the radio via your phone is about the iPhone. Of course unlike many phones with lesser specifications, the iPhone doesn't have an FM receiver built into it, so if you want to listen to the radio with it, you're probably looking at getting an app to do the job.

Many radio broadcasters are busily bringing out feature packed applications that do more than just play the radio. Absolute Radio, my own employer, has recently released its very well received application, and the team at Global have just received a Sony Radio Academy Award nomination for the work on their Capital FM app (which is being rapidly rolled out to other stations in their portfolio).

That's all well and good, but what about the other smartphone platforms?

Getting accurate market share data for this is not easy. Some of the data is jealously guarded by various manufacturers and operators, and other data is available at a nice premium.

For the purposes of this analysis I'm using data from AdMob. They release regular reports based on the traffic they see for the mobile sites that they serve advertising for.

Their February 2009 report suggests that globally, the Symbian operating system (as used by Nokia) remains the most popular amongst smartphone users. This is followed by the iPhone OS, although traffic from the iPod Touch is excluded since, well, it's not a phone (although obviously it can be used for online apps with a WiFi network).

In the UK the two are reversed and it seems that the iPhone is the smartphone platform of choice for developers to first concentrate on. However, it should be remembered that the data is not based on device ownership however - it's based on traffic. And because Apple's devices have a usefully large screen and excellent data packages, they are likely to be used significantly more than smaller "phone-sized" devices.

To return to my original question. How could I listen to the radio, via 3G or GPRS, on my N-Series Nokia phone? I have listened to Five Live in the past and it was a hit-or-miss affair. But websites have changed since I last tried it in 2008, and I was unsuccessful this week.

A little bit of Googling revealed that Nokia does indeed have an internet radio application. But there was a problem (although I didn't discover it at first).

The first search result takes you to a Nokia site that insists that the first thing you have to do is download PC Suite. This is a bit of problem for two reasons. First, because Nokia, in its infinite wisdom, keeps releasing different "suites". And secondly, because it turns out that Internet Radio is included with more recent phones (with superior "Feature Packs" in Nokia's terminology). Unfortunately, if like me, your phone is locked to your network, and your network provider insists on tweaking the firmware (take a bow Orange), then you'll never have updated firmware made available for your phone.

When I got my N82 it came with a CD from Nokia with N Series Suite which is fine - but is different to the regular PC Suite and from the newish Ovi Suite. Ovi is the brand that Nokia will be launching for its forthcoming app store.

Unhelpfully, Nokia keeps links to all three of these alive making it hard to know which version I should be using. I'm pretty sure that it's Ovi, but Nokia does a dreadful job explaining that to the consumer. For all my moaning about new versions of iTunes everytime Apple adds a new property to some other device in its portfolio, at least it's easy to track down the correct piece of software.

But back to my radio issue. The only obvious way of installing the Internet Radio application was to install PC Suite which I didn't want to do as I'm now using Ovi. Surely the application existed on its own? It did. The problem was that searching initially led me to this old open source version that involves using Shoutcast. Adding stations is a complicated affair involving using something like Winamp to create a playlist and then export that list to your phone. Not exactly friendly. I installed it and played with it for a while, getting very frustrated.

In the end, I found the version I wanted at S60.com. This works pretty well and is a standalone app with no messing around using Shoutcast or PC applications. It lets you bookmark your favourite stations, allows you to choose quality depending on your connection (3G, GRPS or WiFi), and does a very neat fade in and fade out when changing stations. And of course, unlike a certain market leading smartphone I could mention, you can listen to the radio and do other things at the same time like sending text messages or reading email.

If the station includes the data correctly, as Absolute Radio does, you get details of the current song playing too.

So no problem then?

Well not quite. You see, while Nokia's directory includes many of the main UK commercial stations - I've mentioned Absolute, but Global's main brands like Classic FM, Capital 95.8FM, and a couple of Heart FMs are in there - there's a notable absentee. The only BBC service available is the BBC World Service (I should also mention that Bauer services aren't included, and neither is Talksport).

Now I rather suspect that unless these services aren't that bothered, the reason they're missing is to do with geo-IP blocking. Does Nokia have the functionality to allow this? The BBC wouldn't be allowed to serve much football on Five Live to Nokia phones outside the UK, and for all I know, all these radio services are streaming through a big server in Finland.

The Internet Radio application does allow you to plug in streams directly, but that rather supposes you can find the streams' details. Have a good look around the BBC website and see if you can find them. I suspect that if I had a working internet radio I might be able to find the stream details that way, but rooting around the website turns nothing up.

So if I can't get an application to play BBC radio, can I just visit their website and listen there?

Um. No.

Visiting bbc.co.uk on the Nokia cleverly sends me to their mobile website (or a version of it), and that doesn't include any listening links. I believe that the BBC is concerned that people will run up huge data bills on their mobiles listening to the radio without realising it. So to avoid all complications, I just don't see the links.

That's the reason that my N82 isn't up to date enough to (officially) run the Nokia iPlayer application. In my firmware, Realplayer, which plays the files back, doesn't refer to your application's choice of data connectivity and so even if you think you've connected on WiFi, without changing a fiddly Realplayer setting, you might end up listening via 3G - and get a big data bill to boot. Once we're all on all-you-can-eat data plans this will go away, but in the meantime, it's a bit like stepping back into 56k modem days.

Anyway, I couldn't find a listen live button on the mobile radio site. Visiting the iPlayer site presents a non-mobile friendly site, but it also doesn't think that I have Real installed despite the fact that I do, and implores me to load it before I can listen to the live stream.

So there's no way I can see of using the BBC website, on my mobile at least, to listen to a live radio stream.

I'm obviously not the only person with this problem, because someone has set up this page which works. It's just a mobile friendly page of links to RAM streams and they play fine. The only downside is that you can't use another application while listening - unlike most Nokia applications. But that's a Realplayer shortcoming.

It'd be really good if there was a nice 32k AAC+ stream publicly available to listen to via the Nokia Internet Radio application (128k AAC+ streams are being used for iPlayer, but that data rate's a little high for mobile). But in the meantime, this non-authorised workaround is the only way I can find.

In summary - radio on the Nokia really should be better, and much easier for the consumer. At the moment with the iPhone we're seeing nearly every station produce their own application which feels a little silly, albeit providing good additional functionality. Nokia's Internet Radio application is a nice start, but it really needs the support of the nation's biggest and most popular radio broadcaster. Listening to the BBC on the iPhone or Windows Media devices, is also difficult, and sites like bbcstreams.com are filling the hole currently.

15-24 listening is declining across the board, and if your station is not on the one device that you know that this age group carry and use, then it's harder to make sure the next generation keeps the radio habit.

As ever, these are my thoughts and don't represent those of my employer. And I'm not really trying to bash the BBC who are doing an excellent job in so many ways with radio. I'm just frustrated with the difficulties I had over this earlier in the week, and my attempts to work around them.

It's been a big week in the biggest club football competition in the world, with Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester United and Arsenal all featuring in the second leg of the quarter-final.

Last night I was returning late from the cinema and realised I was without a radio to listen to the Chelsea v Liverpool fixture. Perhaps I could listen to Five Live via the internet I thought as I stood at the bus stop. I had my phone with me, but most sports commentary is broadcast on AM, and phones only ever have FM radios. But much surfing around the BBC's mobile website (it rather insisted I use the mobile website) did not reveal a link to their audio stream in Real, the preferred format of many phones. I know it's there somewhere, but I couldn't find it. I perhaps could have visited Talksport website, but they seem to prefer Windows Media which is pretty useless on any phones except Windows Mobile.

So it was in vain hope that I switched to FM and discovered that BBC Radio London were broadcasting the game (Nik Goodman also listened - but switched to FM driven by the broadcaster itself!). That got me home until I could watch the second half on ITV1 - and what an outstanding game it was!

Anyway, on to tonight's games, with Manchester United out in Porto while I was at Arsenal watching them play Villarreal. Now I often like to listen to radio commentaries of games in the ground. Arsenal is very good about showing replays of major incidents - unless they're in any way contentious when the big screen certainly won't show them so as not to incite the crowd.

I tuned into Five Live on my little DAB radio and perhaps unsurprisingly, they were covering the Man Utd game. Never mind. Let's check out Five Live Sports Extra - the BBC's digital sports channel. Surely they'd be covering the game?

No.

Hmm. OK. Much as it goes against the grain, I thought I'd give Talksport a whirl. I know that they've also been covering Champions' League fixtures which aren't sold on an exclusive basis like TV fixtures are. Despite the cost of sending out commentators and an engineer to Portugal, that's where Talksport went with their commentators sitting no doubt a few feet from Alan Green and his Five Live team.

OK. Let's try BBC London. I know that they'd done a deal with Chelsea previously for all their Champions' League fixtures, but maybe they'd be covering it. Nope. They didn't even seem to have a sports programme on.

I flicked around at this point but new it was useless. There are no other radio stations in London that cover football. Certainly no commercial station does. [Capital] Gold once used to, and I listened to that station regularly. But they stopped years ago, and I've not listened since. Xfm has aired a few games in the past, but no longer. Forget Heart or Magic. My own station, Absolute, has never covered live football. And nobody else was doing so either.

So on Tuesday, three stations in the capital were covering the same game featuring a London club - a game that was being broadcast on free to air terrestrial TV.

Tonight there was another London club playing. The game was only available on subscription TV (Sky) meaning that millions of potential listeners were unable to hear it.

It's a sorry state of affairs - it really is.

I'm surprised that the BBC didn't find space on Sports Extra for it, but I'm also disappointed that commercial radio is in such a state that it won't bother with sport at all - the exceptions being Talksport and some local services in big football areas like the North West and North East (I can't imagine that Man Utd playing in the Champions' League would not be covered locally as well as nationally).

I know that RAJAR - the radio ratings system - doesn't serve one-off fixtures very well, making it hard to sell to sponsors. And for all I know Arsenal or UEFA charged a fortune for the rights to this game. But I rather suspect that nobody was interested. And it's the public that loses out.

Arsenal won 3-0 on the night at 4-1 on aggregate. They'll meet Manchester United in the two-legged semi-final. Those games will be on the radio.

[Update] Amusingly, a work colleague was driving back from somewhere on Tuesday night and was trying to find the Arsenal game. He couldn't of course, but on AM he did find a Spanish station that was covering it. Despite not speaking Spanish he was able to listen just picking out the names: "Fabregas.... Van Persie... Walcott!"

Friday night saw the first in a new series of Genius on BBC2. It's a TV transition of the popular Radio 4 comedy presented by Dave Gorman. The radio series is very funny. The TV version is also very funny, being basically the same, except that you can see some of the mock-ups they've built of various "Genius" ideas suggested by viewers/listeners.

Now I've had bad things to say about Sam Wollaston's TV reviews for The Guardian here in the past. He's obviously angling for his own column rather than being really interested in television. So perhaps I shouldn't have been so disappointed.

But I think that one sentence really gives him away in his Saturday review of Genius:

This is not about real ideas; it's about comedy. Actually, it's already been a Radio 4 comedy (three words that have rarely sat together well in my book) for a while.

[My emphasis]

Do I take it that Wollaston thinks that all Radio 4 comedy is bad? Does he actually ever listen to comedy on the radio?

I wouldn't for one second say that every comedy that Radio 4 puts out is comedy gold, but I think it covers a lot ground with a "something for everyone" approach. While there are certainly duds, the quantity that it commissions means that it does get quite a few hits. Whatever you think of The News Quiz - it's pretty much the same as Have I Got News For You.

The Now Show's always entertaining; "Clue" is recording a new batch sadly without chairman Humph; Ed Reardon is unfailingly excellent; and I enjoy Clare in the Community. Then there's other returning series like Heresy and The Unbelievable Truth (on tonight). And I've just picked up CDs of series 1 of Bleak Expectations following Barry Cryer's recommendation at a Radio Academy event last week. Then there are Armando Iannucci's Charm Offensive, Down the Line, Nebulous and Chain Reaction.

Has Wollaston listened to any of these? Is none of them funny in his eyes (or ears)?

Saying something like that is just a display of his own ignorance. He really doesn't deserve to share a column with Nancy Banks-Smith.

If you enjoyed The Wire, and in particular the fifth season, then you'll really find this piece by David Simon worth reading.

It's food for though next time somebody says that bloggers or citizen journalists will fill in what traditional media is no longer able to.

With UK regional newspapers falling nearly as fast as US ones, it's a concerning time for all of us.

This Wednesday, ITV2 launches that rarest of things, a new sitcom. Actually, that's a bit unfair, as ITV has been commissioning a reasonable amount of programming for ITV2. It's just that most of it really doesn't interest me.

But this week there's something that I am looking forward to - FM. Indeed, if you head over to ITV's site, you can watch a preview of the first episode.

It's not too bad with The IT Crowd's Chris O'Dowd playing a DJ alongside Kevin Bishop, who plays his co-host, and was a one-time boyband member.

If Skin FM, the radio station portrayed, doesn't look too much like your local radio station, that's because it won't. There really aren't any radio stations like those you see on TV. Skin FM is evidently modelled on Xfm - well Xfm before Capital (and now Global) took it over.

But sitcoms are more about the characters and a DJ who can't mix but decides to fake it with a mix CD is not really that far from the truth at all (so I hear).

As ITV's trying to be edgy with this show, there's lots of swearing, and a bit of sex too. And we get a few cameos: the first episode features The Guillemots, Justin Hawkins (ex-Darkness) and Marianne Faithful! And we're promised that there are more to come. They add, I suppose, a hint of Larry Sanders to proceedings.

I suppose the most disappointing thing about it, is not what was on-air, but the quote from producer Izzy Mant in last week's Broadcast (NB. Quote isn't in the online piece):

"When I first came across this project I thought: why hasn't anyone done a sitcom set in a music radio station before?"

Umm. They have.

As I mentioned a while back when this series was announced, the UK's seen Kit Curran and The Lenny Henry Show (the sitcom incarnation). And they're both British!

And possibly more famous than either of those was WKRP in Cincinatti.

They're just the shows set in music radio stations. There've been others set in non-music radio stations: Frasier immediately springs to mind. And radio comedies like Radio Active or even On The Hour.

Indeed, of all occupations featured in sitcoms, radio has definitely had more than its fair share.

That shouldn't detract from FM, but let's not forget our heritage shall we?

As I said at the start of this piece, it's always entertaining to see your place of work featured in fiction, and invariably it's not accurate. A couple of weeks ago Radio 3's The Wire had a play by Mark Lawson entitled The Number of the Dead. This was set in an un-named news studio and featured Tim McInnery as Timothy Freeman, a slightly jaded news presenter with his much younger co-host. Suddenly a breaking news story begins to impact on his life personally.

Now Mark Lawson obviously has a good idea about how radio studios work (he frequently presents Front Row in between his otherwise gargantuan workload), but in this instance you felt that he was like a cook presented with a rack of herbs and spices, trying to desperately shoehorn all of them into a recipe.

So we had lots of lingo that those "in the biz" would probably recognise. But it was all just a little forced. His producer was rude and offensive to his wife, when if there's one thing we all know about producers, and that's that they don't upset the talent. And the character was just that bit too jaded.

What was really more entertaining was trying to work out who Lawson might be basing this story on. With talk of studios like "C7" it could only be the BBC since even the largest commercial operator has a relatively finite number of studios and usually names in a sensible scheme: "A, B, C..." or "1, 2, 3..."

There really is no commercial news station with the exception of LBC, and Radio 4 doesn't do long news programmes that continually ask for emails and texts. So it must be Five Live that he's thinking of. And the obvious show there would be Five Live Drive with Peter Allen and Anita Arnand. But I don't really think Peter Allen behaves like McInnery's character!

(I'd love to post the mp3 of this, since we're long after the iPlayer window, but I'd probably be shot).

At least we have series two of Moving Wallpaper to look out for on Friday. Not content with generally showing off on QI on Friday, Ben Miller's back as his wonderfully awful TV producer Jonathan Pope. This time, he's without the dreadful Echo Beach which I stopped watching after one episode (either you believe in a soap or you don't), and we have a seemingly non-broadcast zombie series instead.

And it was all going so well.

Last year the BAFTA awards had the sound messed up for the BBC1 broadcast. There were apologies all around, and we were told that this wasn't because the OB was put together by an independent. We were told that the production team had years of experience.

This year, things looked like they were going well. Coverage ran over three channels for no obvious reason with an hour each on BBC Three, BBC Two and BBC One. I watched the latter two covering the awards.

The whole ceremony is broadcast on a significant delay - presumably to allow time to bleep Mickey Rourke's acceptance speech (and Mick Jagger).

But the real problem came when we saw the Terry Gilliam montage sequence as he was inducted into the academy was just appalling. It looked like an early edit had been used, as we saw repeated clips and sequences of clips. It was clear that nobody had watched the final edit all the way through at the end. Given that the one thing we knew before the evening was that Gilliam would definitely be winning, this particular montage could have been edited weeks ago.

But instead it looked like they'd given it to the work experience kid.

It was an embarrassment.

Gilliam came on and made his acceptance. He got out a long piece of paper and threatened to thank all the "little guys" beginning with those from Time Bandit. Now I don't know how far down the list he made it, but there was a clunky edit as he suddenly ended his speech with a thanks and left. Again, very poor production.

As is traditional, we then began had a round up of the awards that didn't make it into the two hour broadcast (BBC Three's coverage was red carpet stuff). So we had the winners of the Best Short, etc.

As we watched Nick Park accepted for Short Animation, who let's face it, is much loved by British audiences, the credits rolled right over the top. This was obviously for timing purposes, but it was awful. And given that we were only a minute over the 10pm scheduled finish, nobody would have minded a very short over-run.

After Nick Park, we had the editing award for Slumdog Millionaire and had credits running over credits as the winner accepted his award. Then the same happened for Animated Film (Wall-E). Then we had the transition music and we just cut to an end credit as the broadcast ended.

I think we got to see all the awards, casting an eye over the official winners' list, but it was complete amateur hour. Absolutely dreadful.

These awards are broadcast internationally and it really did not reflect well on Whizz Kid Entertainment who co-produced the awards with BAFTA for the BBC.

How about next year we get the awards live - or at least on a very short delay for the potty-mouthed likes of messrs. Rourke and Jagger. Run it on one channel, and if it over-runs, then it over-runs. Award ceremonies make a habit of that, although at least unlike the Oscars, the BAFTAs cut to the chase without silly interludes.

(PS Why does the BBC correspondent in Sydney this evening look like he's talking down the line on Skype? For a major story like that in Australia, surely a satellite feed should be used?)

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.

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).

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

DAB - Dead and Buried?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Getting Intimate with the Audience

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

- Lunch -

Death by a Thousand Cuts: More Choice = More Noise

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Black and yellow is a step forward."

But it's still a clunky interface.

"Audience = £" read a big slide.

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

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

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

The Chief TwiT Speaks - Leo Laporte

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Newspapers are a real challenge; radio less so.

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

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

Collings and Herrin

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

At the end of July this year, the BBC was fined £400,000 by Ofcom including £17,500 for the Russell Brand show. At the time, the show was still being made by the BBC and not Brand's independent production company. And I'd hazard a guess that the producer was different at the time (it referred to an incident that took place in April 2006 when Brand was still on 6 Music).

Let me re-iterate: this fine or the details behind it didn't emerge last night. It was published on 31 July this year - three full months ago. Note to Observer journos: Ofcom has a free mailing list. They'll email you this stuff as it comes out. I highly recommend it. Alternatively, they could have read all the coverage at the time.

I'm pretty sure that I didn't accidentally pick up the Mail on Sunday yesterday in place of The Observer (there wasn't a free Cliff Richard CD after all), so quite why The Observer is publishing such lazy journalism as this inexplicable.

This was an entirely different kind of breach, and as can be seen from the list and the extensive press reports we've had over the last eighteen months, it affected everything from Blue Peter to Jo Whiley to Children in Need.

Look, I know that editorial floors around the country are desperately trying to keep the Brand/Ross story alive. Our fearless investigators will undoubtedly be attending every gig Brand performs at for the next six months, and burlesque troops around the capital will have more fans than usual at the stage door. But I buy a quality Sunday to find out - you know - important stuff going on in the world, not warmed up stuff that everyone else reported three months ago.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

VOICEOVER: Meanwhile in Lossiemouth...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Repeat times 13.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It's an unfortunate coincidence that just days after I'd first used The Times' archive for a little project that I'm working on, that they announce to registered users that it'll have a paywall from the end of this week (confusingly, they list the date as Friday 18 September when there isn't such a day).

Still I did at least find what I was looking for on this occassion.

Sadly it mirrors what Guardian newspapers have done with their archive. The Times is a little cheaper with access charged at £4.95 for a day, then £14.95 a month and £74.95 a year. The Guardian is £7.95 for a day, £14.95 for three days and £49.95 for a month - so significantly more.

I fully understand the value of these archives, and the work that must have gone into digitising all those papers. But it's a shame that the prices are where they are. Plenty of people will still be visiting their local reference libraries for access.

This comes a week after Google announced that it was digitising a number of US papers. The Google effort seems to be ad-funded, although I can't see a clear promise that these will be available free in future. And Google doesn't seem to offer an easy way of downloading the articles, something you certainly can do with The Times' archive.

Still, I did enjoy this side-story from The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's coverage of the Apollo 11 landings in 1969:

I never knew that it had been given the working title "Picnic", but it seems that Sky has decided to put the whole venture on ice.

Let me explain, 18 months or so ago, Sky suddenly announced that it wanted to take its three current Freeview services - Sky News, Sky Sports News and Sky Three - off the Freeview platform, and use the space to put four or so new subscription channels on in its place. It would use a higher spec of encoding that would mean consumers needed new boxes to both decode this, and to provide a slot for their subscription smart cards.

Ofcom wasn't too happy and the whole thing disappeared deep into Ofcom's Southwark Bridge offices for further consultation. Sky was an original partner of Freeview, and suddently DTT wouldn't quite be so free.

The cynic in me thought that this was a chance to get back at Setanta who was soon to be launching with Premier League football. And due to their tie-up with Top-Up TV, they'd be on Freeview, unlike Sky.

At Sky News, they were a bit unhappy as not only were they off Virgin Media (and still are, I believe), but now they were coming off Freeview.

Ofcom has quite forceably responded to Sky's press statements regarding the suspension of development work on Picnic. In particular they highlight a tardiness on Sky's part to get responses to them on deadline and in full detail.

So a questionmark must hang over how serious a proposition this ever was. On the one hand, the venture had employed as many as 70 people (doing what, exactly, beyond technical work and responding to Ofcom, is a little unclear)., but the original hope had been to put something in place in time for the start of the last football season. The idea was surely to confuse a marketplace that Setanta was then entering into.

I suspect that Sky is now not so fussed about Setanta. They've certaininly come out well following last week's debacle. As yesterday's Observer noted, they've made Rupert Murdoch look like the good guy.

It'll be interesting yet to read what Ofcom has to say, but adopting MPEG 4 still feels like something to do further down the line, when Freeview HD starts. Still, it'll be worth watching what happens to this most popular of digital television formats.

There's a widely reported story today about a report examining how alcohol is covered in the media. In particular the perceived glamourisation of excessive drinking by radio DJs such as Chris Moyles.

You can read coverage at the BBC News site, and in all the papers (here are links to the story in The Guardian and the Telegraph).

An interesting and worthwhile story? Undoubtedly. But the critic in me would quite like to see the full report. It's not that I don't trust the reporters the papers and news organisations allocated to the story, but, err, I don't always. For example, Chris Moyles is repeatedly mentioned but there's no mention of, say, Christian O'Connell or Johnny Vaughan. Now that might be because they're exemplary models of restraint who don't glamourise excessive drinking. Or it might be because the report didn't cover them. Yet we read that "Commercial radio stations were worse offenders than the BBC."

In fact, according to the Telegraph's piece:

The study focused on BBC Radio 1, BBC 1Xtra, Kiss 101 broadcasting to the South West and Wales, Key 103 for Greater Manchester, Galaxy Birmingham and Kerrang! Radio for the West Midlands.

But that fact doesn't appear in most of the reports. That's why I wanted to read the full document. I know that what actually has happened is that a press release for the report has been sent out, and most stories are probably generated from that. The report's author Professor Norma Daykin will have been available for interview, and that'll differentiate the reports. Finally, the report itself may have been sent to journalists, but how many do you really think read it all the way through?

That's why I'd like to read it for myself. The BBC site doesn't include it, and neither do stories at the other papers' sites I've looked at. The research was carried out at the University of the West of England, but their website reveals no obvious links. The research was funded by the Department of Health, but again I had no luck finding it online there. It's part of the Know Your Limits campaign conducted in association with the Home Office. No luck there at either or the two websites I found - your guess is as good as mine as to why there are two.

The report is being presented o the British Sociological Association in Brighton, I read, but once again, an online search is fruitless aside from an abstract (P12 of this Word document).

The reason I want to see the report is that it's important to understand how much audio was listened to over what period (e.g. Was it carried out over the Christmas period? Answer: Yes - from December to February according to the Telegraph piece, but then they had a medical reporter rather than a media reporter cover the story). I've mentioned the issue regarding stations monitored and they've obviously concentrated on youth orientated services. But they ignored Scotland and Northern Ireland which might have thrown up different results for example.

The internet allows us to be able to present primary material and given that this research was state-funded, it should be easily available for us all to download and read. It shouldn't just be kept to attendees of academic conferences, and published in expensive journals or online in locked academic databases.

There's an entertaining blog on Media Guardian that compares the route that my employers have taken in rebranding Virgin Radio as Absolute Radio compared with the route taken by Revolution in Oldham:

For years the station bucked the trend of better music mixes and instead served up alternative indie and rock, making presenters out of local musical icons...

But then a fortnight ago, without any prior announcement, the station's music policy changed beyond recognition. The curious sounds of credible bands you'd never heard of dispersed into the Mancunian ether, replaced overnight by perennial favourites James Blunt, the Bee Gees and Take That. No explanation. Big gaps everywhere. Lots of adverts. Ace of Base.

Bizarrely, the clearly furious presenters were still allowed to go on air. Upon playing Elton John's I'm Still Standing, one presenter commented angrily: "No, this isn't ironic." It was to be his last comment on the matter; non-stop music followed.

[UPDATE] Steve Penk bought the station!

That could explain a lot!

Martin Kelner's been penning some very honest pieces about radio over the last few months, and today's is as true as any of them.

Talking about Kenny Everett is possibly a little hackneyed - sorry if that sounds heretical. But in essence, what he says is true. It seems to be TV personalities only who get shows. It's always nice to see a radio talent shine through.

Here's an ad that I'm 99.999% certain that you haven't seen.

It's a Russ and Jono ad for Virgin Radio that was never actually aired. This is a rough cut without final graphics or sound, but it still gives you a good idea of what they were trying to do.

Today there are over seven million DAB digital radios in use in the UK, although it's future still has a few question marks hanging over it rightly or wrongly. But it's fascinating to go back and see how the system was first launched.

So amongst some of the videos I've recently been going through at Virgin Radio, I was interested to find the following.

The first is a BBC TV News report covering the BBC's launch of services to actually listen to. Edward Stourton tells us that the first radios won't be available for a couple of years when they'll cost £700. And there's a cracking shot of a group of people on a coach all listening via headphones to the service in this report from Torin Douglas.

Ironically, the main technical advantage that's given in this report over FM, is the ability to listen to DAB in the car, when in reality that's the main obstacle that's still to be overcome with in-car radios still relatively rare, and audio cutting out in a more irritating fashion than FM does.

It's also interesting to hear that the cost of DAB was a worry for commercial radio from the very start with Virgin Radio's own David Campbell concerned about costs.

A couple of years later and consumer DAB sets were very nearly ready. So Tomorrow's World covered DAB in this report. The sounds a bit poor, I'm afraid, as the VHS tape it was captured from was pretty poor and quite possibly a second generation tape.

It's probably best to gloss over references to "CD quality", but again there are lots of references to the poor quality of FM on the move. And I wonder where you can get one of those DAB Renault Espaces?

Sadly we never have reached the point where we can choose between five different football commentaries, but then the rights holders probably preclude that to an extent (in TV of course we have interactive Olympics on the BBC, and Sky offering nearly every Champions' League game).

And we've still got a way to go before we see screens like those demoed by Peter Snow at the end of Jez Nelson's report.

In the run-up to Virgin Radio rebranding as... - well, we'll have to wait and see what precisely it becomes - I've been digging through the vaults to see what old TV ads I could find.

Here's the first second ad which ran sometime after the launch of FM in 1995 featuring Russ and Jono. There where lots of very subtly different versions depending on whether it was the 1215AM or 105.8FM frequency that was relevant to viewers, the amount being given away (£10,000, £15,000 or £20,000), and whether the prospective listener should tune in on "Monday" or "tomorrow morning."

Anyway, without further ado, here are three variants to give you a flavour.

Under a new deal announced today by the ECB... precisely nothing changes. Sky has retained live rights to... well... everything. And Five has a highlights package.

Sky undoubtedly does a superb job. They've got lots of resources and they've innovated with new technology high-definition coverage, and super-slomo cameras (Although I did laugh on Saturday when it seemed as though play might continue through to the Sunday and David "Bumble" Lloyd told us details about how people in the ground on the Saturday could buy reduced price tickets on the Sunday "for those of you listening on earpieces." With the best will in the world, nobody listening via earpiece in a cricket ground is hearing the Sky audio feed - they're listening to Test Match Special on Radio 4 LW and Five Live Sports Xtra (not that the BBC admit that it's on R4 LW). Listening to a feed available only via satellite is not technically possible without some clever wizardry perhaps involving a laptop and a slingbox).

But the sad fact is that a 45 minute highlight package is not going energise the next generation of young cricketers. When England won the Ashes in 2005 there was a ticker-tape parade with a massive celebration in Trafalgar Square. That simply wouldn't happen again because the majority of the population would see, at best, highlights.

There will be no live cricket on terrestrial free-to-air television until 2013 at the earliest.

Now the ECB has admonished the BBC for not bidding this time around. Undoubtedly it's disappointing, and it's simply not true that the BBC couldn't accommodate a Test Series. One-day cricket - in particular Twenty20 - could easily be scheduled.

That said, the BBC has countered the ECB's accusations by declaring that "We have always said that any bid for live test cricket is subject to value for money and ability to schedule. In our view neither of these criteria were met."

I suspect that it's less scheduling issues than a value for money test that has kept the BBC out of the fray. The fact of the matter is that if the ECB is simply trying to maximise its revenues, then the BBC is never going to be able to outbid Sky. Sports is Sky's raison d'etre and it's simply not good value to pay over the odds. But the ECB could surely have adopted some kind of strategy that essentially meant that subject to some kind of minimum, at least some tests would be available to terrestrial broadcasters.

No form of cricket is accorded Full Live Protected Coverage, so if Sky wants to outbid all and sundry then it's able to.

It's interesting that several other broadcasters including ITV, Channel 4 and Setanta were interested in one-day coverage but none bid. They all knew that they'd be trumped by Sky.

If the ECB was serious about wanting to broaden the coverage of cricket, they should have put at least some rights out to tender to terrestrial broadcasters only. And in the long run, while they're undoubtedly generating more cash than ever before, they're still the losers.

Cricket is in a mess in any case, with all sorts of tournaments setting up left right and centre. Players are likely to be torn between club and country with some incredible riches seemingly available in the various Twenty20 leagues that are popping up. I'd love to see some impartial attendance figures because while Twenty20 is undoubtedly selling out, I wonder if it's not getting harder and harder to fill grounds as cricket fans essentially die out.

This won't end with cricket by the way. Both FIFA and UEFA are keen to remove fixtures from their finals tournament from the Listed Events. Currently the whole tournaments have to be screened terrestrially, but they argue that we only need to see games involving the home nations and perhaps the final on terrestrial television. That'd allow them to sell those other games to satellite broadcasters. It's something we really need to look out for.

As a consequence of the BBC running fraudulent competitions, Ofcom has fined the Corporation £400,000.

Undoubtedly, mistakes - whether deliberate or not - were made. And some kind of remedial action was necessary.

When ITV or GCap were recently fined, you didn't hear me complaining. But both of those organisations are commercial companies, and therefore fines have to come straight from the bottom line. Shareholder's receive lower dividends as the company makes a smaller profit.

The BBC is funded by us - the licence fee payers. £400,000 is equivalent to complete licence fees for 2,867 homes. And the cheques (the total amount is from several separate instances) have to be made payable to HM Paymaster General.

In other words, as a result of this fine, that's £400,000 less that can be spent on programming. Storyville, for example, had a budget cut rumoured to be around £1m. Depending on how it was spent, that money could have made several hours of programming.

Did the BBC do wrong? Absolutely. Should those responsible accept the blame, and even in extreme cases, be fired? Certainly. But should the viewer foot the bill? I don't think so.

Now I don't have all the answers. What kind of powers should be available to a regulator to ensure that the state broadcaster doesn't repeat these things in the future? Well job security of responsible people is one, although it's usually the people at the bottom who feel that force. Is a particular producer solely responsible, and in any case, does that prevent other cases ever becoming exposed. Firing someone is simplistic but very extreme.

I don't know what should be done aside from making right financial wrongs (e.g. reimbursing viewers or listeners who paid to enter competitions they had no chance of winning). But it seems to me that the BBC has reacted properly as the various frauds became apparent. It has in place now incredibly detailed systems - arguably too onerous - to prevent similar things happening again. It's wearing its hair-shirt. Fining the viewers and listeners is not the answer.

As a postscript, please go over to The New Yorker's website and read Charles Van Doren's account of the quiz show scandals on the fifties, as depicted in the film Quiz Show. It's a fascinating inside account of the first big competition scandal, and how it impacted Van Doren himself.

Good news all - there's a new "Knock Off Nigel" campaign airing on TV and radio (in reality this has been running for a few weeks now, but since ITV has seemingly given up for the summer - apart from ITV4's Tour coverage - and Channel 4 is a no go area for me with its horrific BB programming, I've not seen the ad at all). For the uninitiated, this is a campaign targeting people who download pirate films from the internet. The campaign targets them as being "Knock Off Nigels" because they're so cheap. Both radio and television campaigns are accompanied by an annoying catchy ditty that's sung in a variety of styles. Obviously, during a credit crunch, being "cheap" is probably a wise and sensible attitude to take - just as long as you're not downloading films. Thinking about it, perhaps I won't spend £19 to see Batman in the Odeon Leicester Square after all. After all, it'll be cheaper on Blu-Ray than that when it comes out, and that's for one solitary person (OK - the most expensive seats, but really!).

I say the ad's "catchy" - but it's only catchy in the same way syphilis is. It has the same broad appeal as someone running their fingernails down a blackboard. I suppose that means that it gets noticed. But is it effective?

Well undoubtedly piracy of films and DVDs is a big problem, but equating the people who do it to people who steal cash from their mum's purse (as the official website does) is just unrealistic. Are people who download movies social parriahs? Not really any more so than people who buy dodgy DVDs from blokes outside pubs or at car boot sales. I guess that's what the ad's trying to do, although you might question the effectiveness of it from some of the comments accompanying the ad on Youtube (I refuse to embed the ad because it's hideous).

The problem they face is that downloading films comes across as victimless. If I did steal a tenner from my mum, then she'd be down ten pounds. But if I download a film, only the film companies are going to be out any cash, and we all know that they're vast corporations raking the cash in and paying their stars ridiculous amounts of money for minimal amounts of work. I'm not saying that this is the right attitude, but it's a prevalent one.

When it comes to it, I want to see The Dark Knight in all its widescreen Dolby Digital IMAX glory and not see something somebody shot with their Handycam in a busy cinema.

Anyway, I should leave the last word to those fine folk over at BrokenTV who came up with the poster below.

"And for the DVD buying public, we can expect to suffer the perpetual indignity of being treated like filthy criminals no longer, being able to watch an episode of Arrested Development on shiny disc without having to suffer an unskippable lecture. Every. Single. Time."

Incidentally, the Knock Off Nigel website allows you to download their "catchy" jingle as a mobile ringtone. Someone obviously sat down and noted that "kids" like downloading ringtones, so why not make it available? In real life it hasn't really become more popular than the Nokia ringtone has it?

The real final word comes from The IT Crowd:

I wrote a little piece for the One Golden Square blog on RAJAR last week which it's worth directing you to.

I'd also suggest you read Martin Kelner in today's Guardian.

If you read the right sort of newspapers, you couldn't help but fail to notice that the fifth and final series of The Wire premiered on FX channel in the UK this week.

Then this morning, the various media sites, including Mediaguardian publish the fact that "only" 38,000 people watched the show last night. More people, it seemed, had watched Family Guy and NCIS earlier in the evening.

So is this as disastrous a figure as the reports might have you think, even if they don't out and out say that? Well of course not. There are several things to consider when reporting overnights for shows such as this:

1) Unlike Channel 4, the repeat on FX+ later that evening wasn't included. Ordinarily, perhaps because they have an alert press office, the Channel 4+1 figures are reported for major shows on that channel. OK, so a midnight repeat probably didn't garner many extra people, but it will have gathered a few.

2) FX will be repeating this show on several occassions throughout the week. We don't all watch at the first opportunity, and in the multi-channel world, same week repeats are important.

3) BARB really can't cope with overnights of a single programme at 10pm on a channel like FX. In total there are just 5,100 homes on the panel. I don't know how many of them are multi-channel, but let's be generous and assume that 4,500 of them are in multichannel homes. As I say, I don't have the actual figures, but run with me. At 10pm last night something like 21m people were watching one or another channel out of a total population of perhaps 50m. So roughly 1,890 BARB "boxes" were recording viewing. We learn that FX had a 1% share at that point in time so we're talking about roughly 19 boxes being in play. Perhaps just 19 homes then. That's simply not a statistically significant number to be working with - it only takes a handful of people to massive affect FX's viewing figures. So the 38,000 should probably be taken with a certain amount of salt.

4) In any case, channels like FX will be looking at an overall weekly or monthly average share. Programmers there will be looking at the broader picture and selling their airtime accordingly.

In reality The Wire, for all its plaudits, has never had strong viewing figures, including on its home network HBO, where it was something to be proud of rather than to gain viewers as other shows might. That's the only way it has managed to win 5 seasons. I suspect that many more people are watching the DVDs than watching on FX.

I see from today's Broadcast that ITV2 has commissioned "FM" a 6 x 30 minute sitcom about a "neurotic indie DJ" who works at Skin FM. The sitcom will apparently feature real bands and current tracks which is quite an interesting idea - if you think about it, with the exception of trails, sports montages and the radio left on in various pubs and cafés in the soaps, contermporary music is fairly missing from mainstream TV (OK - there's been Glastonbury, T in the Park and Later..., but that's still a limited amount).

Anyway, we'll probably have to wait until next year to see the fruits of this labour, but I wonder if it can be as good as other sitcoms set in radio stations. There was Frasier of course which is fairly peerless as a sitcom. Then there was The Lenny Henry Show from 87/88 which was set in a pirate radio station somewhere in South London and also featured Gina McKee. I know there's WKRP in Cincinatti which always seemed to be on late at night when I was younger, but I can't say I really watched it (and from all accounts the DVDs are a shadow of the real show since nearly all the music has had to have been replaced for copyright reasons).

But I think Kit Curran, the self proclaimed "king of the airwaves" must be my favourite. Starring Denis "Wedge" Lawson, there were two series of it. Unless my memory is playing tricks on me (and much internet searching is unclear on the matter), the first series was broadcast on ITV, while the second series ended up on Channel 4. Anyway, given some of the rubbish that's being released on DVD these days, it must surely get a release one day.

Like all those interminable list programmes which Channel 4 doesn't seem to run quite as often as it once did, Mediaguardian today published its list of the Media Top 100 2008.

Of course it's largely designed to rile large numbers of the actual people in the list who are lower than they believe that they should be and to cause the rest of us to loudly condemn the list.

The criteria used is thus:

A panel of experienced media watchers from the worlds of politics, journalism, advertising and the internet judged entrants using three criteria: cultural influence, economic clout and political power of all candidates.

It's not really bothered getting too wound up by the list but I will say this: I liked Gavin and Stacey as much as the next person, but that's not enough to put James Corden and Ruth Jones into the list. They've written two series of a sitcom and that's it. Their next projects obviously will get commissioned regardless, but then so will those of Russell T Davies (31), Stephen Fry (54) and Jeremy Clarkson (58).

Then there's the dominance of newspapers - seemingly every national editor is noteworthy from the biggest selling paper The Sun (3,089,321 daily) to The Independent (233,973). Yet Andy Parfitt, controller of Radio 1 (11,067,000 weekly) does not make list. So despite running a station that's only marginally less popular than Lesley Douglas' network (19), he's not worthy. And the less said about Katie Price on the list the better.

Here's a remarkable story from Wired. It refers to ongoing talks in the US where the record industry is trying to make the radio industry pay royalties to singers and musicians. Unlike the UK, where both songer writers and the performing artists separately get paid by radio stations, in the US only the songwriters get paid. Performers are unpaid on the basis that radio station airplay is giving them free publicity to sell their product.

And so one side or another has been posting tins of herring ("red herring" - geddit?), a dictionary, and a set of digital downloads (including "Take the Money and Run" by the Steve Miller Band and "A Change Would Do You Good" by Sheryl Crow).

Thanks to my employer's new owners' blog, I should also point you to this report commissioned by the National Association of Broadcasters who look after radio stations' interests. It attempts to put an actual value on the cumulative sales that radio stations generate. It concludes that between 14% and 23% of music sales can be directly attributed to radio, and that any change in the status quo might disrupt this income stream (approx $1.5 to $2.3 billion annually).

"If a new performance fee were enacted, stations could reduce the amount of music airplay, change formats and even cease to operate, resulting in the loss of much of this promotional benefit."

I'm not entirely sure I buy that given that most of the rest of the Western world pays performers. Some of those US stations must really be struggling if they'd close down ahead of paying a small percentage of their income to the performers whose work their entire livelihood is based on!

What other industry doesn't pay for the main constituent of its business? If I want to make a film based on a Stephen King novel, I don't just say to King - don't ask me for any cash, but think of all those additional book sales you'll get when my film comes out!

If you're at all interested in the future of radio in this country - then you might want to read this interim report which has just shown up on the DCMS website.

In summary there are two sets of key things to take from this:

- DAB should become the primary platform for all national, regional and large local services. So that's all the BBC national, commercial national and major local and regional services going to DAB exclusively.

- Community and smaller local stations will need to remain on analogue as the most cost effective way of delivering radio. But a plan for migrating them to digital should be worked on.

- In places where DAB rollout is not economic (especially rural areas), listeners should not be disadvantaged, and restructuring the FM network should take place. People in those areas are not going to lose their current services.

- A concerted effort needs to be made to ensure that all future digital radio sets can receive and decode all variants of Eureka 147. That is to say, get manufacturers producing sets that will receive all forms of digital radio.

- All services will be migrated from MW onto either DAB or FM.

For this to happen a timetable will need to be set, but:

- A precise timetable cannot yet be set, but a set of circumstances for that to happen should be layed out including trigger criteria

- The criteria should include the amount of DAB listening. Determining exactly what level this should be will be examined by the Group in the second half of this year, although it's likely to be around 50% (Currently it's around 11%, so there's a way to go).

- 2020 looks like the very latest date at which migration should have taken place.

- There must be "further consideration should be made of what mechanisms can encourage greater investment in new and high quality digital content. One such mechanism might be to allow greater economies of scale in the commercial sector by allowing for greater consolidation of ownership and coverage, particularly of local multiplexes, which in turn may free up investment for increasing coverage and more digital-only content."

And today, the BBC has published its response to Ofcom's Second Public Service Broadcasting Review. In a statement from Mark Thompson we get this:

"The challenges facing DAB: Some tough choices had to be made at the time of the BBC’s six year plan about the funding available for DAB. However, beyond its current commitments, the BBC could support a bold set of measures to develop DAB on behalf of the whole industry, including extending the coverage of the BBC’s national multiplex beyond 90% of the UK population; developing a plan for extending the coverage of the BBC’s Nations radio stations; and initiating a stronger marketing effort co-ordinated across the industry."

I suggest you go away and read, in particular, pages 38 and 39 of the PDF. I found the following especially interesting:

"Initiate a strong marketing effort co-ordinated across the industry, including active industry coordination to rebrand digital radio and by developing a national coverage database based on a single planning model made available online to the public (as for DTT / Freeview)."

If there were some substansive changes to how DAB is formulated - and we may yet see that - then this mightn't be a bad idea. Freeview has been very well marketed, and a similar pattern is now being adopted with Freesat.

So today is the start of Wimbledon, and as ever, the BBC has enormously comprehensive coverage. On digital TV they have the exceptional service that allows you to pick and choose which game you watch, and this is all replicated online (for UK users). Five Live and Five Live Sports Xtra have commentaries available throughout the fortnight - the main service hosted by the estimable Simon Mayo.

Then there's the official site which is run by IBM. There too you can listen to commentaries from Radio Wimbledon. It has three services this year (as previously noted, since they're broadcast locally on FM too) which are free to listen to online. You're also offered an even more comprehensive video service than that offered by the BBC (not that any significant match won't be broadcast by the Beeb), which costs subscribers £12.90 for an "all access" pass. Only a diehard would pay up for this surely, although the catch-up service might be worthwhile for some (at this stage it's not clear how many BBC games will be later available via the iPlayer).

All well and good. But then I had my weekly email from ITV.com with the following subject line: "Listen to Wimbledon live on itv.com!"

What? The BBC has a long-term deal in place, so what's ITV up to?

The HTML email that ITV.com send out doesn't render properly in Gmail, so I had to go exploring on ITV's website, and sure enough, if you click through to the Sport section you get this:

"Listen now to live Radio Wimbledon coverage direct from the Championships

"Remember to turn your speakers on, turn them up - and enjoy!"

Essentially ITV.com is rebroadcasting the official Radio Wimbledon coverage. It doesn't launch neatly in a player like it does from the official Wimbledon site, but it's certainly there.

It's curious that ITV should enter into this arrangement. Tennis quite evidently isn't core to them - indeed it's impossible to actually think of a sport that's "more" BBC and "less" ITV than tennis, and Wimbledon in particular.

Of course there'll be a financial arrangement in place, and I'm sure that ITV.com will be happy with any additional pageviews. But you can't help think that the BBC might be a little miffed, and it's still an odd move.

[UPDATE] Media Guardain has the full story about this, seemingly last minute, deal struck between IMG on behalf of Wimbledon and ITV.com. I still find it slightly odd that non-exclusive audio that can also be found via the official Wimbledon website would generate such interest.

But the news release does explain one thing. It struck me that Wimbledon was putting an awful lot of effort into its radio offering by producing three radio streams seemingly for the website and some local RSLs. It seems that these are syndicated offerings made available to English language broadcasters throughout the world. Radio anorak that I am, I'd love to know where these services are being rebroadcast.

Mark Kermode of Five Live and The Culture Show has a great rant about Sex and the City, exposing it for the product placement-fest that it is. And product placement is only growing in films. It's long been accepted in the Bond films, but since The Matrix every blockbuster has done a mobile phone deal, and while Waynes World so memorably parodied the whole industry way back in 1992, the references are about as subtle in 2008 - look at Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk for starters.

Yesterday, Culture Secretary Andy Burnham, spoke out against a proposal from the EU to allow product placement on British television:

Another test of standards that is coming round the corner is product placement. As you know the Government is obliged to consider this as part of the implementation of the new Audio Visual Media Services Directive.

If Jim Royle gets out of his chair for a Kit Kat, I want to think, ‘he fancies a Kit Kat’ – not, ‘Kit Kat my arse!’

The full speech is here.

I'm not sure and have yet to be convinced by either side. The ITV view is that if it's done badly viewers will vote with their remotes. I'm not sure. Watch any number of US series and you'll see product placement already in place. Sometimes it's subtle - a lot of times it's not. And those blockbuster films I mentioned earlier are frankly embarrassing.

There's also the reality that props are supplied by agencies to producers free of charge. It keep the cost of set dressing down, but it might mean that your office is fitted out completely with Apples, or perhaps Dells. That might be realistic. But it might not.

TV broadcasters are going to need to look for different revenue streams having largely screwed themselves out of premium rate phone line revenues, and with spot airtime becoming ever easier to skip through. But they're really going to have to be careful if they want this to work.

There have been a couple of pieces recently wondering about why we're losing TV critics in our national newspapers. Ray Snoddy in Marketing magazine wrote about it last week following the ditching of daily TV reviews by the Daily Telegraph. He noted that the Mail on Sunday and the Daily Mail have also ditched them. Now those latter two papers can do anything they like because I'm not likely to see them (even when I'm suckered into picking one up for a free DVD). But I'm surprised that the Telegraph has gone down this route.

Personally I find that the TV review column is one of the first I turn to when picking up a paper, and the column's loss would be akin to the removal of the crossword (something that wouldn't worry me, but I know would impact on sales overnight).

So why are they doing it. Well everyone whoops and chears if a drama gets 6 million viewers these days - mass audiences are not what they were, but 6 million is still a lot of people. As Radio Times editor Gill Hudson notes in a blog over at The Guardian, it's significantly higher than any newspaper's readership.

As others have noted, papers are happy to run reviews of classical music and theatre - activities that are far less popular.

I think it's actually a bad mistake on those newspapers' behalf to stop their TV columns.

It's true that some writing can become stale after a time. I got fed up in the end by Victor Lewis Smith in the Evening Standard. The facile jokes meant that I tended to join the review in paragraph two or three to skip them. But then he also reviewed programmes other than those provided by PR departments for that week. So if that meant a review of an hour of Ideal World, then so be it. And if something was good, he spoke up for it as well. I also dislike Sam Wollaston a lot of the time in The Guardian. He can be too much of a show-off far too often, and when he recently moaned that coming in at the start of series 4 of Battlestar Galactica was too confusing, I felt like throttling him. Having a complicated ongoing story is something to be applauded not moaned about. I'd also advise starting The Wire at episode one too. Finally on the moan list there's the appalling Kathryn Flett at The Observer. As a commentor on the Guardian's blog noticed, she doesn't seem to be writing her column for that newspaper's target audience.

But that's enough moaning. I like plenty of others. Charlie Brooker's Screen Burn is well worth a read even if he's likely to have a tendency to concentrate on tat like B*g B*****r. But he's happy to write about good programmes from time to time. Nancy Banks Smith is still great, and the Independent's reviewers remain good.

I think my defence for keeping reviewers is that TV is still incredibly important to a large proportion of the population. We spend over three and a half hours a day on average watching it according to BARB. Britain's Got Talent seemed to have a large proportion of the population held in rapture for a week or so recently, and the winners of anything from X Factor, Strictly Come Dancing or The Apprentice are devoured by reality TV obsessed media. So people do actually care about television.

Despite the advent of the internet, DVDs, video games and a plethora of other things fighting for your attention, people pretty much watch TV to the same extent as they did ten years ago.

Source: BARB

Of course a review of The Apprentice isn't the same as documentary on Early Music on BBC Four. But they're both important.

When I was younger, it used to confuse me that most TV reviews came out after the programme had aired. You'd not be able to watch the great show that the reviewer loved, but you might thank your lucky stars that you missed the one the reviewer hated. Either way, it was gone into the ether. There might be a repeat in a few months' time, but unless you knew someone who'd videoed it, you were out of luck.

These days programmes on digital channels tend to get multiple same week repeats, so if you missed the latest episode of Lost, you can catch up during another airing. And then there's the iPlayer and its equivalents. Missed an episode of The Apprentice? Watch it online and get up to date. You might have Sky+ed a show and not have watched it - the review may help you decide whether to bother watching it, or free up some space on your device and hit the delete key.

So why give up on them? I really don't know.

Some argue that anyone can comment on TV via their blogs or on forums. Well so they can. But they do the same with films, and I don't think anyone's rushing to dump their film reviewers. I can only think that it's snobbery that considers TV not one of the arts (it's instructive to look at newspaper websites or sections where TV is its own section and not part of the "Arts" section).

Well I can be the biggest snob in the world, but in this instance they've got it wrong, and I think it'll cost them sales in the long term.

As the sale of Virgin Radio nears completion, thoughts turn to the rebranding exercise to be carried out by Albion.

One of the most obvious, and spectacularly successful media rebrands of recent years was that of UK TV G2 into Dave which took place back in October 2007.

I wrote a piece on Dave's success back in December last year, where I thought it was particularly important to note that a major part of the new brands success, in my view came from it becoming available on Freeview. Adding close to 10 million new homes into the mix is always going to help. And with strong programming like Top Gear and QI repeats, that has helped it leap into the position it now finds itself.

Compare and contrast with Virgin1, another new channel launch from last year (launching 1st October 2007) which has also benefitted from being available on Freeview replacing the previous channel ftn.

Source: BARB

Note that I've not included their sister "+1" channels for which I don't have full data, and which don't broadcast on Freeview in any case. Also note that these share figures do include cable and satellite viewing and aren't solely Freeview, although I truly believe that Freeview availability is core to their success.

Although Dave's initial lustre is beginning to tarnish a little, it's still significantly stronger than it was at the start. It's no surpise that UK TV Gold is next to be relaunched with Richard & Judy signed up for a nightly 8pm show. Finding a Freeview slot will be critical though, as currently UK TV Gold is subscription only on Freeview boxes with programming available only through Top Up TV (there's not really a fully available channel space for it).

Virgin1 which launched a couple of weeks before Dave has benefitted from US acquisitions like Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (how they must hate the US writers for going on strike and only producing nine episodes) and The Riches. They've also taken Star Trek programming away from Sky One. But their lack of UK programming is perhaps a factor is their relative performance compared with Dave. That said, there appears to be some growth there, and they've just gone widescreen which I think is vital for all significant non-terrestrial channels to use. Sci-Fi, I'm looking at you as possibly the most significant non-widescreen channel currently broadcasting, but Eurosport could do with it too - especially since they're in the process of going HD too.

But I digress. The key thing for both these channels' successes is not just strong branding and impactful advertising, but good programming. And home grown seems to trump a few acquisitions, albeit good ones.

And, no, Virgin Radio's not going to be renamed "Radio Dave."

Another old favourite. There's good news that the BBC is going to produce a new popular science show for BBC1 provisionally titled "What? Where? Why?" to replace the late, and sometimes lamented, Tomorrow's World. Science has been critically missing from our screens for too long now. We certainly get plenty of natural history, but that's only part of the story. Hopefully that'll also allow some of the more frivalous topics that Horizon's covered of late be incorporated into a more popular show and provide some serious, and more difficult science over on BBC2.

These days, the only place you can get really good and consistent science coverage is actually on the radio, where Radio 4 does a good job as does the Guardian's Science Weekly podcast.

There was a cracking In Our Time last week on probability, incidentally - it's available to listen again to here.

I know I keep returning to this having written about it back in February when Peter Bazalgette raised the idea, and again following the Radio 3.0 conference a couple of weeks ago when GCap's outgoing chairman Richard Eyre also raised the issue in a personal capacity.

So it was interesting yesterday that Enders Analysis who report on all things media and technological, released a paper entitled "Privatising Radios One and Two: how to kill commercial radio with kindness." No prizes for guessing that Enders share my opinions on the issue.

I'd love to link to the full paper, but Enders is a subscription service, so I'll just report their summary finding from their website:

The privatisation of the BBC’s two national music radio networks - Radio One and Radio Two - is in the news again and is being proposed by certain commentators as a potential solution to the current problems facing the UK commercial radio industry. This report argues that, far from being a solution, unleashing these two highly successful BBC stations on the commercial sector will imperil the existence of many stations. This would dramatically increase the volume of advertising time available, at a time of glut, and draw advertising spend away from many stations.

Enders note that if the two services were to be privatised the volume of commercial radio inventory would at a stroke increase by 66%. Even though such massive players would undoubtedly introduce new advertising money to the radio market, there's no chance that they'd make up that colossal shortfall, particularly at a time where there's already plenty of space available. However money would flow to the two new giants, from both national commercial radio, and also from the national commercial stations (disclosure: that'd obviously affect my employer) as well as national revenue from local commercial stations.

It's important to explain what that means. When you listen to local commercial radio, you're sometimes put off by the local ads for garden centres, tile centres and car dealerships. But in fact, there's more advertising for national brands which comes via a central sales team for that group.

Here's a chart showing just how important this cash is to a local commercial station:

Source: RAB

Losing a large chunk of that cash would be devastating to the industry. And that's not even the whole picture. On top of that is money for promotions and sponsorship. It's an important part of a commercial station's revenue stream, and becoming more so.

Source: RAB

The Enders report makes some other valid points including the fact that no current radio player is probably in a position to spend the £1 billion that these stations would make. But interestingly, they see another hidden aspect to this: that perhaps Channel 4 would get ownership of them. Richard Eyre is quoted as saying "“Radio One and Radio Two should certainly not be awarded to the highest commercial bidder." So what does that mean?

We're back to top-slicing the licence fee. And let's throw into the frying pan the news yesterday that the EU is minded to block the BBC's support on C4's switch to digital as potentially falling foul of state aid, then suddenly things don't look quite as simple.

But returning, finally I hope, to the subject of Radio 1 and Radio 2's proposed privatisation, I suppose the most disturbing factor is the number of people in UK commercial radio who do think it's a good idea.

[UPDATE - I've removed a quote from a select committee report, which although accurately reported, might seem to imply that RadioCentre is in favour of privatising the two services.]

[UPDATE 2 - Richard Eyre's comments are spelt out in a comment piece he wrote for this week's Media Week. He's still wrong.]

If you were a UK resident and rushed out and bought an Apple TV device after they were announced in autumn 2006, you'd have been sorely disappointed when you got home and plugged it in. Certainly you could listen to you iTunes library through your TV, as well as any video podcasts you subscribed to. But actual films or TV programmes were in short supply.

Over the past few months, that situation has improved, and you can buy episodes of Ashes to Ashes or Gavin and Stacey (ahead of a DVD release) availble to buy, but films have been in short supply, with some Pixar shorts being the main offerings.

ITV has been less forthcoming with its iTunes offering, with the feeling that they're holding back programming until after the launch of Kangaroo or SeeSaw or whatever the joint BBC Worldwide/ITV/Channel 4 venture ends up being called.

But back to films. Today, Apple's finally gotten around to making films available, and entertainingly, for the UK market, they're promoted on the iTunes store front page as being "films" even if they end up appearing in your iTunes library as "movies".

I'm not sure that I'm going to bother though. OK - so I don't have an Apple TV, iPhone, iPod Touch or even an iPod Classic, so aside from watching on my laptop screen, there's not a great deal of value me buying. Yet even if I did have one of the devices, the prices don't really do it for me.

First off there are rentals priced at £2.49 or £3.49 for catalogue and new releases respectively. So The Matrix will cost be £2.49 to rent. Yet the price of the DVD at Amazon to buy is only £2.98. Certainly there's a postage charge to come, but I've got Amazon Prime so it'd be here tomorrow for no extra cost!

Let's choose another film at random (Honestly - I am looking at random. I'm not just looking for examples to prove my point): School of Rock. Well, for some reason, that's not available to rent. But I can buy it for £6.99 as it's a catalogue title. At Amazon it's £4.97. Team America: World Police? Well it's on C4 this Saturday but again only available to buy at £6.99. £4.98 at Amazon.

A Mighty Heart? Well that doesn't count as a catalogue title because it's priced at £10.99. It's £6.98 on Amazon for the DVD.

I drew all these titles at random from the carousel on iTunes films homepage. I'm sure that there are films I can rent cheaper than I can buy them at Amazon, but then I could probably rent those at Blockbuster or Love Film or whatever too.

Maybe the situation's better for newer titles, since £10.99 compares well with new DVD's typically priced around fifteen quid on the high street in their week of release. National Treasure 2, brand new on DVD, is priced at £10.99 on iTunes. What about Amazon? 99p more expensive at £11.98. iTunes wins!

Of course you don't get the extras with iTunes, and the 1.4GB download might into your bandwidth capacity if you've got a cap. It's also more than likely to take you a while download. The size isn't suprising since the resolution is 640 by 480. Mind you PAL DVDs are 720 by 576, so iTune's resolution is inferior.

Then there's the sound - iTunes offers Dolby surround. Most DVDs offer Dolby Digital 5.1 sound - again vastly superior, especially if you have a home cinema set-up.

If buying movie downloads is to become as "successful" as it has been with music, then the price has to be more attractive. DVD prices are undoubtedly on a downward spiral (I use quotes because the growth in download revenues does not make up for the loss of CD revenues), with new released reaching the 3 for £20 price point ever faster, and even the movie companies realise that sales may well have peaked overall. But if they want to pick up some of the slack, then the pricing needs to be competitive. I don't think that it currently is. I could also go into a great rant about DRM, but I'll leave that for others. Needless to say, that alone is reason enough for me not to buy.

So in summary, iTunes movies are more restrictive than DVDs (you can't lend them to friends or sell them on eBay), are worse quality than DVDs, have fewer features than DVDs (no extras or commentaries), and as often than not more expensive than their DVD equivalents.

This won't matter to some people who'll be glad to find something that they can easily and legally put on their brand new 3G iPhones (coming soon we're promised), but overall I'm not convinced. Buy the DVD - you can use it in lots of hardware, and grab a copy of Handbrake. Drop the file onto your iPod Touch, PSP, Asus EEE, Xbox 360 or whatever, and watch it how you like.

A couple of people have asked me why I haven't blogged more on the sale of Virgin Radio to TIML that was announced on Friday evening.

The problem is that you have to tread very carefully when blogging about your employer. So I'm not going to say a great deal more, but as ever, what I do say represents my personal thoughts and not necessarily those of my employer.

Anyway, I suggest you go and read James Cridland's thoughts on the sale which, unsurprisingly, are balanced and fair.

I was slightly amused by this:

A few weeks ago I met someone from Virgin Media, and he noted that Virgin Radio, my previous employer, had rather unhelpfully accepted sponsorship from Sky for their breakfast show just when Virgin Media was launching.

This does highlight the issue that Virgin Radio has always faced - the use of the Virgin brand name can be both a blessing and a curse. The assumption often made by both the public and other businesses is that all the Virgin brands are related, when in fact they're largely all licencees of the Virgin Group. This has led to problems in the past with some brands not willing to advertise on Virgin Radio because we are considered a partner to one of their brands' competitors. For example, at times both British Airways and Coca-Cola wouldn't spend because of the existance of Virgin Atlantic and Virgin Cola, despite Virgin Radio having nothing to do with them (Entertainingly, we've always had the fridge at work stocked with "the real thing").

John Plunkett at Media Guardain has a blog on the sale too. Although note to John: in the last year, Fat Bottomed Girls by Queen has been played precisely once on Virgin Radio (Sunday March 9 at 8.50pm - he must have been listening). And I've refrained from pointing out to one commentator that at 160kbps, Virgin Radio is second only to Radio 3 as having the highest bitrate of any UK DAB station (alongside Classic FM).

Elsewhere it's been a busy time for radio in the past few days. Planet Rock has been sold to an entrepreneur named Malcolm Bluemel, much to Brian May's chagrin. It will continue to be named Planet Rock.

And Xfm South Wales has been sold to Town and Country Broadcasting headed up by Jason Bryant - late of these parts. The issue for GCap with that particular station was that they weren't going to be able to network its programming as they're able to on other Xfm services in Manchester, London and Scotland. Since the station only launched at the end of last year, and its format promised lots of local programming, Ofcom rules mean that they're not able to back out of that promise for a couple of years. If other Town and Country services are anything to go by, making the service truly local will be a key aim for the newly renamed Nation Radio.

Meanwhile Moz Dee at Talksport has been busy signing up people. Stan Collymore has joined for a show and co-commentator work. Despite his, er, eratic private life, he's actually a really good football summariser. He'll be missed by Five Live. And today they announced that Danny Kelly's joining Talksport. He's going to be sharing presenting duties with Collymore - Talksport having just pulled off a classic "double-dip" piece of PR, by announcing the two halves of the deal separately!

Sadly, this probably means that the Baker and Kelly show probably isn't going to be returning imminently following the Wippit fiasco of last year. In the meantime, Danny Baker's back doing 606 on Five Live during Euro 2008.

Finally, NME Radio has begun test transmissions. They've got plenty of their own stunt broadcasting through their launch period with Ricky Gervais doing a show, and the first DJs being announced. At time of writing, it's not on DAB in London, but I'll keep looking out for it. I note that they've got a promotional RSL in NW London due later in the year.

Actually, the list of upcoming RSLs is fascinating. I see that for the Wimbledon tennis tournament, instead of the usual single FM service running in parallel with the fortnight, they've got two additional services covering centre court and number one court. The other unmissable service coming soon is surely Watchtower radio - RSLs covering various Jehovah's Witness conventions. They have a grand total of thirteen services due to come on stream. Also noteworthy is Lune Valley & Barrow Agility FM which will be covering a dog ability show.

Anyway, I've rambled on enough now. But If you've stumbled across this blog because you saw Kathryn Jacob's My Media piece in Media Guardian today, then hello! I hope there's something of interest here and I'm not too obscure for you.

[UPDATE] This Media Guardian interview with Clive Dickens is well worth a read. And there's another piece giving some background on Times of India.

If you're interested, Albion are the people who'll be coming up with the new brand. When the new brand is announced, you'll read about it here, er, well, second/third/fifth/something like that. In other words, once it's public knowledge. They've got domains to register after all!

...or product placement/licence agreements.

In my review of Iron Man yesterday, I neglected to mention the crass product placement throughout the film. We saw an LG phone used on more than one occasion, with the US network, Verizon, getting an on-screen namecheck too. Then there was Audi. One scene of Tony Stark (aka Iron Man) driving his R8 was shot in such a manner that it actually felt like a car commercial. And in another scene, it was an Audi 4x4 that a family felt threatened in.

But the crassest piece of product placement came when Tony Stark returned to the US from his confinement in Afghanistan and announced that he wanted an "American cheesburger." Shortly thereafter, one his mandarins hands Stark a prominently labelled Burger King paper bag from which emerges a burger of some nature. Again the Burger King branding is clear for all to see.

This week, there was an attack in the press aimed at Burger King for another movie tie-in with Indiana Jones. Burger King are giving away toys to people who buy meals. These toys are aimed at the under 12s, a market that Burger King had promised not to target. I have some sympathies because although the latest instalment in the Indy franchise is a 12A, the movie undoubtedly targets kids, even if its star is of pensionable age.

But the use of fast food is the least of my real concerns for the new Indy film. Surely the licencing agreement that just goes too far is the National Lottery Indy scratchcard. Featuring Harrison Ford in full Indy regalia on the front, and being advertised by an abysmal national TV and cinema commercial (which notably doesn't feature Harrison Ford or any clips from the film, this is an appalling piece of advertising on every level.

Yes, many Indy fans probably are of a similar age to myself, having been a teenager or younger when Raiders first came out and well over the minimum age to be allowed to gamble, but given the full array of Indy toy merchandise to be seen, it's clear that children are still fans of the series. If the screening I went to see the film is anything to go by, they're still the main target market for the film's distributors.

The advertising code prohibits the targeting gambling advertising to children. Section 11.10.2 reads:

(a) Advertisements for gambling must not exploit the susceptibilities, aspirations, credulity, inexperience or lack of knowledge of children, young persons or other vulnerable persons.

(c) No child or young person may be included in a gambling advertisement. No-one who is, or seems to be, under 25 years old may be featured gambling or playing a significant role. No-one may behave in an adolescent, juvenile or loutish way.

So the National Lottery must consider that Indiana Jones is not "of particular appeal to children or young persons"? At least that's my reading of the code. Maybe the National Lottery/Camelot has some kind of internal documentation to prove that this is the case, but I find it very disturbing that an action hero that appeals to children is being used to promote gambling.

Of course, lottery outlets don't allow the sale of lottery tickets or scratchcards to under 16s, but then we all know that kids don't find ways of getting hold of alcohol or cigarettes either...

Personally I think that both the National Lottery and Paramount are culpable in a licencing deal too far.

So finally, after months, and years even of sale process, Virgin Radio, my employer, is being sold. The purchaser is TIML Golden Square Ltd, which is a subsidiary of Times of India Media Group. One era ends, and another begins!

More from The Times here. Also, the BBC (carefully saying that the sale is "reported" The BBC updated their report, satisfied that a sale has been agreed!), the Telegraph, and perhaps most fully, the FT.

In exactly 265 days, analogue TV in the US will be switched off, and everyone will need to switch to digital TV. That is, the whole country is switching over on a single day. All 300m or so of the population. One day.

Does that really seem like a smart idea? I don't think so, as I've said before.

This week, Nielsen Media Research reported that 25m US homes have at least one TV that will currently not be ready for use next February when the switchover's due to take place. What's more, ten million of those homes are not ready at all. In other words, as things stand, they'll simply lose all their TV services completely.

It's no joke if 15 million people suddenly have reduced access to TV - that's a lot of people not watching the networks, and advertisers not being able to reach them as easily. The other 10 million are an even scarier story.

Seemingly, this survey "is one of the first in-depth assessments of the nation’s readiness for the digital TV transition." I find it astonishing that it's down to a private company like Nielsen and not the US government, to carry out this kind of work. How successful are politicians going to be in the next polls is they've managed to deprive millions of Americans of their TV services? I'm guessing that they're not going to be altogether happy.

And of course it's the minorities that are going to lose out - African-Americans and Hispanics in this instance. It's always going to be the poorer people who are going to lose out.

Since January coupons have been made available for US residents to claim to put towards a converter box (think Freeview box in the UK). But there are only a limited number of these being made available. When they run out, they run out. Currently that's likely to happen in August. And of course most of the information being made available is on the web. But the poorer you are, the less likely you are to have web access.

The coupons have a $40 value, and at the moment, there are no boxes on the market that are priced as low as this. So poor consumers (and we're in the thrall of a credit crunch of course) have to spend real money. They're more likely to be putting it towards rising food or gas prices than their TV, assuming of course, that they even understand what's going to happen.

At the start of the year, Robert X Cringely made his annual predictions, and making a disaster out of this transition was one of them. As the switchover day approaches, I can't help but agree with him more and more.

I hope everyone at Digital UK is watching the US market very carefully. We can learn from the mistakes of others...

By the way, if anyone can point me to Nielsen's full report, I'd be interested to see it.

If you woke up yesterday morning to learn that the audience for Wednesday night's Champions' League Final in Moscow peaked at a very creditable 14.6m, then you're using overnights. These are the figures that broadcasters and others get the next day to record how many people saw a programme on TV last night.

They're produced by BARB, they're the product of approximately 5,100 homes around the UK which have special boxes attached to their TVs. The box records the channels you watch, and a remote control device is used to record when you're actually in the room, and how many of you are watching a particular programme. So if you invited ten of your closest friends over to watch the game, then you can tell the machine accordingly.

But the problem is that we live in a short-term world, and overnights aren't the full picture. The Mediaguardian story I linked to above, for example, includes a note that The Apprentice over on BBC1 only attracted 5m viewers, down from the previous week's 6.7m. That's not surprising as it was an attractive match (unless, like me, you went out instead). And those topline numbers will now probably be the only ones anybody quotes. But there's a problem.

Loads of people will have recorded this week's Apprentice. Overnights don't include recorded programming, which tends to only get counted in the "consolidated" data which is released a week or so later.

Ordinarily, there'd also be a weekend repeat on BBC2, but since this is likely to be the episode missed by more people than any other, it's getting a 10pm repeat on Sunday night! These numbers also need to be added in.

Finally, there are all those people who'll have watched the episode via the iPlayer. As I write, it's the single most popular programme on the iPlayer, and I think it's safe to assume many people spent yesterday lunchtime catching up with it.

But since even trade magazine Broadcast only reports overnights these days, that final figure will only be available to those with subscriptions to BARB data, and it won't be published in all the daily papers.

To be fair, the Champions' League Final tickets will also massively under-represent the true audience. Pubs will have done great trade on Wednesday night, and this "out of home" viewing will not have been included in the overall figures.

At the Radio 3.0 conference today in London, outgoing GCap chairman Richard Eyre called for the BBC to privatise Radios 1 and 2.

Eyre, stressing that he was speaking in a personal capacity, said it was no longer appropriate that the BBC should spend nearly £100m a year on the two mainstream national stations - which he estimated could be sold for £1bn - when the licence fee was under pressure and its public service rivals were calling for a share of its income.

"If GCap is worth £375m then Radio 1 and Radio 2 must be worth a billion," Eyre said.

Well that's fine. But as I've said before, such a move would be disastrous for the rest of the commercial radio industry. Between them, the two stations currently command a 27.1% market share of all radio listening, compared with all commercial radio having 41.1%.

Now while those two stations would undoubtedly lose some audience with the introduction of adverts, the fact of the matter is that they have by far the best spectrum in the country for popular music radio. No other groups could compete. ILR's would lose cash.

Look at radio revenues over the last five years - they're basically static, sitting around the £600m mark.

Source: RAB

Into that mix add two stations that would command overnight 40% of all commercial radio listening and you can see where the money's going to go.

Of course no commercial operator could afford to fund the stations to the extent that the BBC does, so expect the less popular and more expensive areas to immediately be dumped. These cost a lot but don't really pull the audiences in as Chris Moyles, Jonathan Ross and Terry Wogan do. They'd keep their jobs.

It'd be great if you're the company that bid for them, but otherwise, your company would be screwed. It'd be utterly monopolistic.

And any hope for re-booting DAB, launching C4 Radio or similar would be immediately scuppered.

Finally, you'd be disenfranchising the 12 million or so BBC Radio 1 and 2 listeners who don't listen to any other BBC radio services.

I noted recently that NBC had bought Merlin, a new series commissioned by the BBC and produced by Shine for broadcasting this autumn. At the time, I hypothesised that this was probably the first British series since The Avengers that had been bought by a major US network for its primetime schedule.

Well, Power begs to differ. The company is producing Crusoe, a retelling of Daniel Defoe's classic novel, which will be broadcast this autumn on NBC.

According to the Mediaguardian article: "Power, the show's UK producer, claims this is the first time a US network has directly commissioned a British supplier for nearly 40 years."

I'm not entirely sure that this is true. The series that again's being compared here is The Avengers, yet that was commissioned by UK TV company ABC for the ITV network. The Emma Peel episodes were still commissioned by the UK, with onward sales to the US ABC network. While those sales undoubtedly facilitated things like the switch to colour 35mm, that's not the same as a direct commission which is what Power has had.

Crusoe is being shot in London, South Africa and the Seychelles. Power obviously has some strong connections with South Africa, with much of the recent (awful) miniseries/film Flood having been shot there despite near enough the whole story being set in London. Still Power was also behind Casanova, so they don't just make dodgy mini-series.

Isn't TV great at the moment? We're nearly into summer, and Euro 2008 will overtake BBC1 and ITV1, but the sounds of cupboards being scraped are already being heard.

Starting last Sunday, and continuing for the next three weeks, is a new run of everyone's favourite - Ultimate Force with Ross Kemp. I say "new", but I don't really mean it. These are the last three episodes of the fourth series that ITV1 wimped out of showing back in 2006. The credits reveal that they were made in 2005, and yet only now, three years later, are these episodes finally making it to air. Fear not, I didn't watch two hours of this nonsense, but sped through it at 48x speed, laughing at an Afghanistan-set episode which was obviously shot somewhere in Wales where eighties episodes of Doctor Who and Blake's Seven were made.

Of course die hard fans will already have the DVDs which were released some time ago, or watched them on ITV4. It's very odd that they're only now showing up on ITV1. I believe there are some odd TV accountancy rules which mean that the cost isn't born by the channel until the show has aired. Mind you, the last three episodes of the Royal Navy set drama Making Waves have never been shown!

I wonder if Kemp is a little embarrassed by all of this now. He recently made Ross Kemp in Afghanistan for Sky One, and it wasn't actually that bad. I'm sure lots of running around without helmets or much protective gear in dodgy ITV dramas that are basically made for export, is now not as smart as it might once have seemed.

Over on Channel 4 tonight, here is what they're showing during peaktime:

20.00 How to Look Good Naked
21.00 Gordon Ramsay's F Word
22.00 The World's Smallest Man and Me

If that's not a schedule to make your mouth water and wish that the licence fee was top-sliced for the benefit of Channel 4, then what is?

How to Look Good Naked: "Will an entire orhcestra be prepared to bare all?" Not before the watershed it won't. And in any case this is simply worthless television. Bizarrely, this is the show which'll have a special edition made for the Edinburgh TV Festival later this summer.

Gordon Ramsay's F Word: You don't hear much about Gordon Ramsay these days do you?

Sorry - you hear about him ALL THE TIME. He's never off the telly. When he's not making Kitchen Nightmares, he's making the US version of Kitchen Nightmares (which in no way is faked in way at all). Or he's making Hell's Kitchen in the US. Or he's writing a book. Or he's running a marathon. Or, very occassionally one assumes, he's actually working in one of his many hotels (Wikipedia has quite a list).

The World's Smallest Man and Me: It has one of those descriptions-as-titles to ensure that even the most stupid person understands from the outset what the show is about. On that basis alone I couldn't ever bring myself to watch it. But then, even worse, it's presented by the moronic Mark Dolan. Now to be fair, I know only a single fact about Dolan, and for all I know he's witty and the very personification of charm itself. But that single fact I know is that he presents easily the worst programme on British television - something that makes The Word look like The Ascent of Man. I am of course talking about Balls of Steel. And for that, there's no forgiveness.

What's wrong with Balls of Steel, an "hilarious" hidden camera show made by that stable of fine television, Objective Productions? Well what's right? ITV1 showed An Audience Without Jeremy Beadle on Friday night as a tribute to the man. What came through from that is the lack of malace Beadle showed to people who were set-up on his programmes. That's simply not the case with Balls of Steel whose producers simply mock those people who are set-up on the show. Half an hour of the testcard would be preferable. And Channel 4 would be more honest if they got people to phone up on premium rate phone numbers and then simply had the public chat to one another.

I've not got a great deal of time for famed scientologist, and sometime movies star Tom Cruise, but when these muppets squirted him with water at a film premiere, brandishing the Channel 4 name, I think he was entirely right to be upset. If the film company had withdrawn press credentials from Channel 4 for other programmes, then this show would have swiftly disappeared.

I can only imagine the amount persuasion it takes for the production team to get victims to sign release forms to air the footage. I'm staggered that Channel 4 persist with this rubbish. And they want some of the BBC licence fee to support this crap?

So yes, I don't care how "Louise Theroux" your new Channel 4 series is Dolan, you're forever stained in my eyes from three series of this.

Meanwhile, on Friday, ITV1 is showing Brtiain's Best 2008, presented by Piers Morgan, who ITV has suddenly decided is some kind of talent. I'm not quite sure what he's actually good at doing. I understand his books are mildly entertaining, but I'm not about to rush out and buy one. And there was that series he presented on BBC1, YOu Can't Fire Me, I'm Famous. But ITV has rushed to grab him because of Britain's Got Talent - Opportunity Knocks for the new millennium. I'm not entirely sure what he, or indeed any of the judges, have got to give them the experience to judge talent. Simon Cowell has obviously worked in music for a long time, and Amanda Holden is an actress, but Morgan is journalist. So to my mind, his views are as relevant as, well, mine. Which is to say, yours as well. It's not even as though he's witty - from the little I've seen of the programme, he's just a bit sleazy if the contestant is female, young and attractive (all virtues he doesn't have). Still - good luck with him ITV!

With Ofcom's review underway, and with the usual calls for the BBC's cash to be spread a bit thinner, with "top-slicing" and the like, commentators are often keen for the UK to adopt a model similar to public television in the US. There, cash is raised by subscribers pledging money directly. Relatively little state and federal funding is actually received by broadcasters - something in the region of $500m or so for radio and television. So pledge drives are required to get viewers and listeners to support stations, and corporate sponsors are sought out to provide cash.

That's the future some would like to see the BBC have. But in retaliation I'd say look at the dismal state of US broadcast news. ABC, CBS and NBC broadcast their nightly news programmes at 6.30pm and that's it for most of the country. The programmes are relatively parochial, because the networks have cut back on their overseas bureaux. There was even talk recently about third placed (in news terms) CBS doing a deal with CNN to buy in their news, thus ending a news provider that famously once had Edward R Murrow broadcasting from the London rooftops during the Blitz.

There's no word yet whether or not this will come to pass, but that does bring us to the US cable news channels. You've got CNN (CNN International, the service we get to see on this side of the pond, is a different beast), Fox News and MSNBC. Again, these services tend to concentrate on domestic news to a large extent, and are made up of a series of personality-led programmes (see the current fight between MSNBC's Keith Olbermann and Fox News's Bill O'Reilly). While I'm sure Murdoch would love the ratings that Fox News brings in the US in place of the rather more restrained and truly balanced Sky News, brings, I'm not sure that this would help us in our understanding of events around the world.

PBS, of course, has The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer - a significantly more measured and reliable news programme. But this programme is struggling because it's lost one of its major corporate sponsors, and is unable to make up the shortfall of cash.

"Not only are corporations cutting back on all forms of advertising during the current economic slowdown, but public television’s model - soliciting long-term commitments - is also increasingly out of step with the changing needs of corporations, which no longer sponsor public television programs for purely philanthropic reasons."

No wonder so Americans are finding themselves left with, well, the BBC on either BBC America where a US-oriented service has recently launched, or on PBS (although that's not without it's problems).

Is that really a future that we want in the UK?

It's obviously too complicated a story for me to comprehend, but some recent scheduling decisions really don't make a great deal of sense to me.

First of all there's Saturday nights. No, I'm not talking about Pushing Daisies on ITV1, although that really did make no sense. I'm more interested in the general start and end times of the various primetime BBC1 (and ITV1) shows. Broadly speaking the Saturday night schedule for BBC1 at the moment looks something like this:

The Kids Are Alll Right
Doctor Who
I'd Do Anything
The National Lottery - 1 vs 100
Casualty
Love Soup

The start times for Doctor Who for the seven episodes we've seen so far this series have been, in order:

18:20
18:45
18:20
18:20
18:20
18:45
19:00

Next week, there's a week off to make room for the Eurovision Song Contest. Now, does that make any sense to you? The knock on effect is felt for all these programmes. Check out the start times for all 12 episodes of Love Soup:

21:00
21:30
21:30
21:05
21:05
21:20
21:40
21:45
21:45
21:45
22:10
22:25

You really do need to pay attention, or have Sky+, to keep tabs on that show. It really can't have helped the ratings especially.

Now I always thought that the schedules were largely dictated by the press times of the listings magazines. Furthermore, the BBC got a slight lead on ITV, as the commercial operator had to set start times a little earlier for the benefit of its advertisers. I'm not sure the latter part of that's true any longer, but the Radio Times et al still need to go to press something like 8 days before the first Saturday of the week.

And it's undoubtedly true that the BBC's done its best to ensure that I'd Do Anything does not overlap Britain's Got Talent on ITV to too large an extent (although it's happy to let it over-run a little in the hope of damaging its competitor).

But while I don't believe that schedules should be so set in stone that they can't make allowances for big sporting events or other one-offs such as this week's Eurovision, some semblance of normalcy can't do too much harm surely? There's a bit of a debate over at MediaGuardian about the shifting forward by 24 hours of The Apprentice next week due to an England friendly in the regular Wednesday night slot. But shifting one episode for one week is perfectly acceptable. It's the regular moving around that I dislike.

The other strange scheduling decision is that of what's shown at 10.00pm on Tuesdays on BBC2. For the last few weeks it's been Later... with Jools Holland Live! Instead of the usual hour long programme, for this series they've made it shorter and broadcast it live at 10.00pm on Tuesdays. Then, if you prefer the longer version, you can still find it on Friday's after Newsnight Review where it always used to sit.

My question is simple: which one of those should I be watching? On the one hand, I can see a shorter version of the show on Tuesday squeezed in between programmes on abortion and Newsnight. Or I can watch a neater edited version, with more actual music on a Friday. In fact, given that the music performances are the reason people tune in (it can't be for Holland's ingratiating interviews), then the Tuesday edition is a waste of time. I suppose it fills a half-hour slot that otherwise would go begging, but that's not reason enough. And even more so, it's to get Later's ratings up. As an aside, it's worth listening to this podcast with Mark Cooper of the BBC talking about music television on the Beeb.

And now it seems that this pattern is to be repeated with the programme that will share the time period throughout the year - The Culture Show. There'll be a foreshortened Tuesday show, and then a longer version in the late night Friday slot. In this instance, that'll simply mean pieces that we didn't see on Tuesday only making it to air on Friday. On that basis, why would I bother with the Tuesday show aside from it being on a little earlier? There just doesn't seem to be any logic. Now I will admit that the Saturday 7.00pm-ish slot on BBC2 (with a same night repeat later on) was pretty poor scheduling. But this again feels like it's in the wrong place in the schedules, and makes little to no sense.

"But here, research is still king and the audience is apparently saying it wants lots of familiar oldies, especially from the 1980s, and - at the time of writing - Rockstar by Nickleback more or less on the hour every hour."

Last night I was flicking around the outer reaches of Sky, and came upon CCTV just as the top of the hour was approaching. So I decided to see how the awful Chinese earthquake was being reported in south western China on the English language version of the Chinese state TV service.

Well of course it was the main story, but what was really interesting were the pictures, or lack of them. Unlike the BBC or Sky, who seemed to have a reasonable quantity of imagery of collapsed buildings as well as stills of people being pulled from the rubble, CCTV mainly had images from other cities that had felt the force, but where buildings hadn't fallen, and where the worst damage was limited to cracks in those buildings' infrastructure.

Certainly they had people from the Chinese seismelogical organisations explaining the quake, and an interview with the Chinese premier explaining how help would be on its way. But little in the way of "action" footage.

It can't really be embarrassing for the Chinese government to admit that a major earthquake can cause large amounts of damage can it?

Meanwhile over on the BBC's dot.life blog, Rory Cellan-Jones blogged about Robert Scoble being one of the first to share reports about the earthquake, as he used Twitter to pass on links and other people's "twits" to his gargantuan following on that service.

The tenet of the piece is that Twitter is becoming a news source. But I'm not sure I agree with this. As I said, when the UK had our insiginificant little earthquake a couple of months ago at 1am in the morning, I Twittered it, and read other people's Twitters prior to Five Live, Sky News and BBC News 24 beginning to report it. But does that really mean that Twitter's a news source? I'm not so sure. I still want verified information.

Twitter can be a way to pass on news stories, but it's limited to where the technology is available, and the use to which it's made locally. For example, I suspect that if something big happened in Brazil, it'd be Orkut I'd look towards. But as ringsting-iom wrote in his comment on the BBC blog, the mobile networks went down very quickly, so getting Twitters out isn't easy.

And I don't recall a similar Twitter explosion following the cyclone that hit Burma where of course the military junta keep everyone under very close scrutiny (and are now causing the unnecessary deaths of thousands of its citizens by being very suspicious about all the aid being offered to them).

First hand citizen journalism will continue to play an important role in what gets reported, but it's not the same as a properly resourced news organisation with the facilities to check and double check what's happening - not what I think might be happening.

I'll once again preface this piece by saying that these are my personal views and don't represent those of my employer.

I wrote a week or so ago about the poor showing of commercial radio compared to BBC radio in the recent RAJAR results for Q1 2008. What we saw was commercial radio fall to a low share of hours while the BBC continued to rise.

And I mentioned at the time that all radio hours are holding up, but does that really show the whole story? I hope nobody minds too much, but I need to dispel a common myth. Commercial radio will often gloss over the "all adult" numbers and point to 15-44 year olds where commercial radio has been traditionally stronger.

But what's been going on there? Well here's the chart for overall listening among this audience:

The audience is holding fairly firm, although there has been slippage. But let's look a bit closer and compare commercial share with BBC share in this market:

This is one scary chart. Commercial radio is still leading the BBC, but it's obvious that the gap has closed considerably in recent years and we're now down to 51% plays 47%. At the current rate, the BBC is going to overtake commercial in the coming year.

So why is that? Well let's look at the commercial sector a little more closely:

This is even scarier. It's clear that the losses are coming from local commercial radio. National commercial radio hasn't done too badly - helped by national brands coming on-board largely via digital radio. But those small gains don't make up for the losses sustained by local commercial radio.

So why is this?

If there was a simple answer, I'm sure they'd all be doing it. But I'll return to investing in the product. That can be the only way to regain some of those audiences. Is that going to be achieved by networking? I'll let you decide that.

But let's return to something I glossed over a little earlier on - that overall decline in 15-44 listening. It's modest, but is it a sign of things to come? Am I just painting a picture of gloom? Well here's a chart that's a little better to look at - 15-24 listening:

Overall - a flat picture of listening hours. So they've not all gone to last.fm then! Phew.

Commercial radio's lead over the BBC is a bit better than among 15-44s, although there is a little recent dip that commercial radio could do without. But the next generation is still there to be won.

The one disappointment remains the continued slippage in local commercial radio. It's still significant, and again is only partially made up for by national brands.

So some scary charts, but ones that need to be faced up to. Some remedial action is needed, and it can't all be the BBC's fault.

[Now updated a bit]

Are we all excited by Freesat which launches today?

Actually it's a good time for it to come onstream. OK, so the website (as linked to by the BBC Press Office) doesn't work, but it can't all be smooth.

Onboard from day one are all the BBC channels, all the ITV channels and all the Channel 4 offerings. There's no mention of Five's digital output, which is odd as I thought that these channels were broadcast unencrypted on Sky Digital. But then Five's not part of Kangaroo either...

Much more interesting is the various channel's HD offerings. Naturally BBC HD is there, but the soon to launch ITV HD will be "launching exclusively on Freesat." Does that mean that ITV is deliberately withholding the channel from SkyHD and Virgin Media HD customers? If so, that seems like a strange attitude.

In fact initially ITV HD will be availble as a red-button service - a logo will appear when a programme is available in HD. I assume that this is due to the regionality of ITV meaning that having more than a dozen simulcasts is a mighty expensive issue. BBC HD doesn't have this issue as it's a separately programmed channel - effectively an HD version of BBC1/2 with repeats to fill the empty slots.

I assume that Freesat will have its own EPG, separate from that of Sky Digital, but it still seems a little odd that there's not a spot of SkyHD for ITV HD. Perhaps it'll be for a limited time?

We're told that by the end of the year there'll be upwards of 200 channels broadcasting on the platform, which means either that there'll be an awful lot of shopping channels, or some channels that currently get some subscription revenue from Sky or Virgin Media, are going to be completely free-to-air.

I've already speculated that UK TV Gold, in whatever guise it comes in when it relaunches, is a sure thing for being completely free-to-air - that's been the major part of the success of Dave. But could channels like National Geographic or Discover go down this route? We'll have to wait and see.

Sky has been doing very well lately, with continued growth despite some serious digital challengers in Freeview and, to an extent, Virgin Media.

But Sky HD is in fewer than half a million homes. This chart suggests that a free-to-air HD offering could be successful.

Source: BSkyB plc

The biggest concern that Sky must have is churn of current subscribers. With the credit crunch likely to make people reappraise their bills, and with a relatively inexpensive box available which won't even mean a new dish installation, downgrading to a free offering could be quite attractive for a lot of people.

In the short term, the channel list is a little sparten with no UKTV channels, no Discovery channels, no EMAP or MTV music channels and of course, no Sky channels. The news offering is a little light just now - you'd expect CNN to be there for example. Sky News is probably politically a no-no for BSkyB.

What's most exciting is that the spec of Freesat means that the return path for interactive services is via an ethernet connection. Sky boxes use an internal modem and the phone line for interactive gaming, shopping and paying for films or sports events. Ethernet seems a very 21st and sensible solution. And most excitingly, it opens the door for the iPlayer to be available via the service.

Once there are a few more channels on board, Freesat is going to be a very compelling offering.

Lots of today's RAJAR press coverage focuses on the "battle" between Radio 1's Chris Moyles (34) and Radio 2's Terry Wogan (69). There are charts like the one below, a version of which appeared in today's Times.

It all looks pretty close between the two breakfast DJs.

But is that chart completely fair? Chris Moyles is seemingly getting very close to catching Wogan. I'm sure it's a great story for BBC PR to be talking about. But it's not really comparing like with like.

The numbers being talked about are weekly "reach" figures - the number of different people, in the course of a week, who listen for at least 5 minutes to a particular show. But while Terry Wogan's show runs for two hours daily from 7.30 - 9.30am, Chris Moyles' show runs for three and a half hours from 6.30 - 10.00am. If you have a longer show, you have more opportunity to generate a higher reach figure.

It's an old radio trick to bump up listening figures by extending a show since ordinarily journalists and others will just compare the overall figures with one another without regard to a show's a length. Indeed, if you're being really unscupulous, you might compare your new longer show's figures with your previous shorter show's numbers. Unless you're doing something really wrong, you should see a nice increase!

But occassionally it does cause difficulties. If you look at the reporting of the London breakfast show marketplace, you'll see that Capital 95.8 is crowing because Johnny & Denise is the biggest commercial breakfast show with 943,000 listeners. But Johnny & Denise run from 6.00 - 10.00am, whereas Jamie Theakston & Harriet Scott on Heart only run 6.00 - 9.00am. If you compare the audiences for those shorter hours, then Jamie & Harriet get 893,000 listeners, while Neil Fox over on Magic gets 831,000 (his show ordinarily runs 5.30 - 9.00am), and Johnny & Denise get "just" 829,000 listeners. That 9.00 - 10.00am hour is pretty big, and if your DJs are willing to work it, then you get quite a bump in your overall figures.

Depending on how you cut the cake, you get different results.

So what would the chart look like if we compare like with like hours for Wogan and Moyles, using Wogan's more restricted 7.30 - 9.30am hours? Something like this:

OK - it's a little hard to see without rescaling the charts a bit (something I currently can't do with Google Spreadsheets), but instead of a difference of 380,000 between the two in the most recent results, the "fair" difference is actually 1.02 million which is still quite considerable.

So always be a little aware about what's being compared and between who.

As ever when talking about radio, these are my own opinions and do not represent those of my employer.

In radio stations up and down the country, radio station bosses have been examining their RAJAR results last night and first thing this morning.

Media Guardian has plenty of detail about the overall results. And you can get the raw figures direct from RAJAR.

But there's an interesting blog piece my Media Guardian radio correspondent John Plunkett highlighting the least positive aspect of today's results: the continued growth of BBC radio at the expense of commercial radio.

Now you might say that as someone who works in commercial radio, I would say that this is a negative. As an intelligent reader of this blog, it's quite likely that you listen to lots of BBC radio. And you wouldn't be alone - I do too. And everytime the future of the BBC is threatened, I worry about the future of the whole UK broadcasting environment. The USA is not a model I want to follow.

But with this RAJAR, the BBC's share of radio listening has grown from 55.4% to 56.8%, while commercial radio's share has fallen from 42.4% to 41.1% (Note for the curious: the "missing" 2% or so, is to stations that aren't on RAJAR including web and international listening).

Now those might seem quite small percentage changes, but actually 1% of radio listening is 100,000 hours per week - a not inconsiderate amount. And more to the point the BBC's share is now higher than it has been since the advent of commercial radio (and RAJAR). And that's despite many additional commercial stations having launched throughout the duration of this chart.

The problem is that the BBC is just too successful. And it's in that environment that the likes of Peter Bazalgette is again suggesting that Radios 1 and 2 are privatised.

Now I've argued before that that would be catastrophic for commercial radio, with those two services taking the lion's share of revenues.

One thing is clear: depite more calls on leisure time than ever before, radio listening is not decreasing overall. All radio listening increased by 1.5% quarter on quarter - surely a testament to the medium.

But whose fault is it that the BBC is "too good"? Have commercial operators done less than their level best in recent years? Has the BBC's guaranteed income meant that it's been able to sign all the top talent, leaving the bare bones for commercial radio? Is it because the BBC is able to cross-promote its radio services on television to a far greater extent than a commercial operator is able to (having to pay for advertising airtime)? Or has commercial radio simply not invested in their product enough, perhaps having to worry more about servicing the needs of their shareholders rather than those of their listeners?

While I'm sure that champagne corks are popping up the road at Broadcasting House, the political ramifications of a completely dominant BBC are also likely to be carefully examined.

Unlike television, the playing field isn't level. The BBC has the lion's share of the most attractive spectrum with four national networks on FM compared to a single national commercial network in Classic FM. But commercial radio would never be able to support such institutions as Radios 3 and 4 (Channel 4 Radio, if and when it finally launches will surely be closer in tone to Five Live without the sport, and not Radio 4 as is widely perceived). But there are commercial alternatives to Radios 1 and 2. Your local commercial pop station probably shares a considerable amount of the Radio 1 playlist, and Radio 2's audience has certainly decreased in age over recent years (Q4 2007's RAJAR shows that the average age of a Radio 2 was 53, in Q4 1996 it was 59 - and that downward pattern has been consistent), as specialist music gets pushed to the outer reaches of the schedule (following the sad death of Humphrey Lyttleton, will any jazz be returning to Radio 2?).

If and when there's a full replacement to analogue radio in one or more digital formats, then commercial radio will have a more level playing field. And it's encouraging that a further half a million DAB radios were sold in the first quarter of 2008 taking the market total to 7 million. At the same time, 18% of all radio listening is now digital (whether via DAB, digital television or the internet). But we're a way off a full digital future at the moment with continued uncertainty about which digital path should be taken. And the funding inequity is always likley to be in place, especially in a marketplace where advertising expenditure is threatened by both a recession and the growth of the internet.

Leaving aside digital for the moment, the only other direct way that commercial radio will be able to compete is "networking" - sharing programming across many stations in a group or groups. Ofcom has recently relaxed the rules on networking and already Global Radio and GCap Radio have announced plans to network parts of their main daytime output - much off-peak programming is already networked. While that might be a profitable short-term solution, followed to a logical conclusion there is the danger of depriving local communities of local programming. And let's not forget that localness is all but gone from television already.

Networking also reduces the entry points for new talent into the industry. Remember that most of our top DJs actually started in local commercial radio. If there are no slots left to try new people, then we reduce the opportunities for discovering future talent. But go away and read Matt Deegan on this subject.

Overall, it's important that the BBC does do the sort of things that commercial radio can never do. That doesn't mean not producing services that are attractive to 15-44s, but to do this intelligently, and always remembering that "crushing" the opposition is not likely to help anybody's cause. Commercial radio doesn't deserve special priviliges - commercial radio companies are in the business to make money after all. But state funded services mortally wounding these business is not smart either.

As ever, the views here do not necessarily reflecft those of my employer.

So following the story that emerged a couple of weeks ago about Richard and Judy defecting to UKTV for their next chatshow, the question was which channel would they end up on.

Well today we learn that it is UKTV Gold that's going to get the "Dave" treatment. Dave, you'll recall, was previously called UKTV G2 or some such nonsense. But it got rebranded Dave, and importantly (though rarely mentioned) it booted UKTV History off its full Freeview slot to get massive exposure. Then, by carefully repeating lots of Top Gear, Have I Got News For You, Dragons' Den and QI, it became very successful as a free to air channel.

UKTV is going to try the same trick, and obviously the first question is what girls' name will they adopt? Kylie? Tracey? Clare? Sonya? 'Chelle?

Entertainingly, "the rebranded channel will aim to appeal to women under 30." Seemingly, the best way of doing this is to employ a couple of people who have been doyens of daytime TV for years, and will be 52 and 60 this year. Obvious really.

I should preface this entry by saying that it could be a little dull if you're not interested in radio research; that the views expressed here do not necessarily reflect my employer; and that I have no particular insider knowledge, beyond having used RAJAR for a long time.

RAJAR is the organisation that publishes radio listening figures in the UK. Figures are currently collected by carefully giving out over 130,000 diaries to people to keep for a single week over the course of a year. This is obviously a vast undertaking, but the UK has several hundred radio stations, the majority of which are local; so each locality has to have a representative sample of diaries if radio listening for those stations is to be accurately recorded.

The nature of this methodology means that listening figures are produced quarterly - and this Thursday at 7am, Q1 2008 figures will be published. Radio stations across the country are eagerly awaiting them!

Back in the mists of time - well 1998 - Kelvin MacKenzie, once editor of The Sun bought the station then known as Talk Radio. He rebranded it talkSPORT, but he had a problem. He felt that the RAJAR diary methodology discriminated against his station. In particular, he felt audiences were perhaps listening to his station but writing BBC Radio Five Live in their diaries. BBC stations on the whole have better awareness amongst the public, and that's especially the case for national services compared to their commercial competitors who don't have the marketing muscle of Auntie. On top of that, the diary methodology doesn't work well for one-off events - by its very nature, it's a 12 or 13 week average. So if you buy the rights to, say, a boxing match on a given Saturday night, you can't tell if you achieved an increased audience as a result for that one-off event. Sports rights aren't cheap, and aside from things like the Premier League, they don't always run every week at the same time.

So he sought help with a research company called GfK who had a sister company that produced a special kind of watch. GfK took audio captures of all the services they were monitoring, while the watches also regularly captured the ambient sound of wherever the watch wearer was. By examining the uploaded audio the watch had captured alongside the time of capture, and comparing it to its big database of radio (and TV) audio, the idea was that the system could tell you what service, if any, was being listened to.

Kelvin's company paid for the implementation of this technology, and he even took to publishing an alternative set of ratings. These showed far more people listening to his, as well as other services.

But in testing, the watch methodology didn't pass muster. So while he'd undoubtedly put meters on the map, and stirred up the industry, which led to plenty of calls to adopt metering, the system he'd adopted simply wasn't up to scratch. It also didn't really help his cause that he showed that BBC2 was getting more viewers than ITV - unlikely given the popularity of such trifling shows as Coronation Street, X Factor/Idol or Emmerdale.

The other viable system in the marketplace was from Arbitron, a massive US research group who are responsible for American radio ratings. They had their people meter (PPM), and over the last few years it has been tested extensively in the UK.

Arbitron's technology differed because it relied on a hidden signal embedded into stations' output. This signal is inaudible to listeners, but the pager-style devices Arbitron manufactured were able to detect them, and thus measure what station a listener was listening to and when.

Since the start of 2007, a test has been conducted in London, initially in partnership with the TV ratings company BARB and RAJAR. UK TV ratings rely on boxes in around 5,100 panellists' homes. The boxes also measure replayed material via video or PVR devices. But they do miss out on out-of-home viewing, e.g. watching the football in a pub. For some major games in large tournaments, that can be a substantial audience. Think of England featuring in the recent Rugby World Cup Final - a game played at 8pm in the evening.

But although theoretically with PPMs all seems fine, there are still issues that need to be addressed before metering can work, and RAJAR has now determined that they're not easy to overcome in the short term, so they're ending the project despite having spent £3.5m to date.

As RAJAR states, there are some key elements that PPMs seemed unable to cope with to a satisfactory extent. Foremost of these is the breakfast peak. Unlike television, which sees peak audiences in the evening, radio's natural peak is at breakfast time. Most people live relatively busy lives and breakfast doesn't afford much leisure time; they're getting washed, dressed, eating breakfast, getting themselves or other family members off to work or school, and so on. So radio is the natural partner for keeping you entertained and informed. You can listen in the bedroom, the bathroom, your kitchen or living room. You may well then listen in the car on the commute to work, or on a portable radio or mobile phone on a train journey. So far, so obvious.

Yet PPMs seem to have under-reported this peak - to the point where this is no peak. In all likelihood that's because people simply don't take their pager devices into the bathroom with them, and then into the kitchen or living room. Thus listening at radio's most critical time of the day is missed out by them.

On top of that there are other issues: the devices can't cope with listening via earphones especially easily. And they're simply not convenient to carry everywhere you go. Panellists are expected to take them everywhere, but would you carry one on an evening out, or on a shopping trip on a Saturday? If you forget your pager half-way to the station in the morning, would you return to the house to collect it, or leave it at home and not record a day's listening? Short of implanting a chip in your head (not something the libertarian in me is desperately looking forward to), or perhaps using a mobile phone solution (since that's a single device that you just might carry everywhere), it's hard to see how meters will ever work in a fully satisfactory manner.

As a consequence, RAJAR has pulled out of this development for the time being, and is looking to other methodologies going forward. In the first instance, they're examaning the use of online diary completion technologies.

Some people are going to be disappointed - not least Kelvin Mackenzie (no longer directly involved in radio) who has called it "an absolutely shocking decision." He points to TV having used electronic boxes for years.

But Mackenzie is simply wrong, and his comparison with TV is specious. He knows that TV is viewed in a limited number of locations. And he well understands that the methodology that medium uses is also weak for smaller stations (the sample isn't really big enough for full figures for every programme on every niche channel in a multi-channel world), and nor does it properly cope with out-of-home viewing, as mentioned above.

I have a feeling that Mackenzie's won't be the only dissenting voice we hear over the coming days, but until we have something that's proven to work, the £600m commercial radio industry cannot rely on a device that doesn't even recognise the most important listening time of the day. And it's not just commercial radio that recognises this - Jenny Abramsky of the BBC is similarly supportive. It's going to be very easy to give radio a kicking over this, but RAJAR is absolutely doing the right thing in launching a thorough industry wide review under Morag Blazey.

Interestingly, yesterday saw Media Guardian's Radio Reborn conference (I didn't go, but James' notes seem very fine), which I believe included some Arbitron data to prove some points. Unfortunate timing for them really given yesterday was the day RAJAR made these announcements.

However it should be noted that at the same time, Canada is adopting PPMs to a greater extent.

But there are still ongoing issues in Arbitron's home US territory, where some groups - particularly those catering to ethnic stations - are still facing difficulties with PPM technology.

There's certainly still a watching brief over PPMs. But in the short term, they're not an adequate replacement methodology in the UK.

There's a fun "debate" over at The Guardian about whether or not Pulling is actually better than the much feted Gavin & Stacey.

I like them both. I missed out on Gavin & Stacey initially, for the most part because it's on the demented BBC Three which, as you probably know, I'm a massive fan of. But then BBC Two ran the whole first series one Saturday night, and I warmed to it immediately, watching all the episodes back to back.

Pulling is just riotous fun, with believable characters - albeit at the extreme of things.

I'm not sure about the wisdom of running the two back to back for the past few Sunday evenings. Gavin & Stacey is much the safer sitcom, and frankly could be running on BBC One or BBC Two. Pulling is edgier fare, and the lower ratings it has been attaining reflect that. You could just about watch Gavin & Stacey with your mum. I'm not sure she'd appreciate Pulling as much.

Still all this pales into insignificance as we learn that Two Pints of Lager... has been recommissioned...

ITV is dipping its toe in the iTunes water by making available some of its back catalogue on the iTunes television store.

This is no bad thing, but I think that it does again highlight some of the issues that dealing with Apple can introduce. Despite some of the series being over forty years old (The Saint - series 4), the price of each episode is fixed at £1.89. That's just too much.

Last year the Daily Mail actually gave away the whole of Brideshead Revisited, so charging £1.89 an episode feels steep. Certainly there are savings to made by buying the whole series, but at &17.99 its still a couple of quid more than the boxed set on Amazon. The DVDs, of course, work in many more places than in iTunes and on an iPod. They're also in higher resolution, and come with various extras all of which are lacking from the iTunes store version.

Now I don't want to poo-poo this venture, as it's genuinely a good idea to get these programmes out into as many places as possible. But it's quite telling that no current programmes are being made available. The most up to date show that has been released so far (and to be fair, today's day one) is Lewis - series 1, obviously. Wouldn't want to let series 2 out of the gate just yet.

I think the problem really still lies with iTunes insisting on a fixed price for a programme, be it a brand new one hour drama or a decades old half hour comedy. Retailers should be able to adjust their prices as bricks and mortar retailers do. It may be that you can sell this week's Headbangers for 49p, but Foyles War should cost £3.50.

It's undoubtedly an experiment, and ITV is to be applauded. But what we're all waiting for is Kangaroo - the joint BBC Worldwide/ITV/Channel 4 service that Ashley Highfield is leaving the BBC to run. Kangaroo is going to try to effectively be a commercial version of the iPlayer. While details remain unclear, I'd expect both paid and ad-funded models to be tested. Video DRM is always going to be more of an issue, but even if all the service does is put everyone's programming in one place and playable with one piece of software, then it's got to be better than the piecemeal channel by channel approach that's taken place so far.

Of course a cynic might wonder whether Kangaroo is the reason that only archive programming is being made available to iTunes at the moment. If I can buy Foyles War on iTunes for one price, and on Kangaroo at another price, then there's true competition. But ITV doesn't want the service it owns part of to be undercut by someone else. Nor does it want Apple to run away with a nascent market before it's had a go itself - that's something the music industry has come to regret on an enormous scale.

By the way, if all this talk of Brideshead Revisited makes you want to watch the series again, there's a free route: ITV.com has the whole series available to stream on demand. It tends to only work with Windows and using Internet Explorer, and it's ad-funded. But there it is, free of charge.

In fact ITV.com has a great deal of classic drama, comedy and kids programming available to stream including Press Gang, The Jewel in the Crown, Rising Damp, Cracker, Morse, Poirot, Sherlock Holmes, Prime Suspect and much more. The interface is clunky, and it's hard to work out what's there, but they've got a great deal.

On Friday, The Guardian published a very good chart showing the relative growth of each of the major media in the UK's advertising revenues.

The chart ends with a 2008 estimate that internet advertising will outstrip the whole of TV.

Yet I think we need to be a little careful here, and make sure that we're not comparing apples with oranges.

While I don't doubt that the sums being talked about are accurate, as we enter a recession it seems very odd that so much new money is entering the advertising market. While other media are showing either flat revenues or very slight declines, the internet is seemingly outstripping the entire market by a large factor.

Without the numbers behind the chart, it's hard to tell the exact numbers, but broadly speaking, the cumulative effect of this chart seems to show overall advertising growth of around 7% between 2007 and 2008. Obviously these are estimates, but with a struggling retail sector, I'd be amazed if this was truly the case.

The main thing to know is that the revenues being reported here for most media are display. And while there's a lot of display coming into online, that's still probably not where the bulk of Google's revenue growth is coming from. AdWords and the like are more akin to classified advertising which isn't included in the newspaper figure. This has certainly taken a pummeling in the local, regional and even national press, and I'd be surprised if even the Yellow Pages hasn't taken a significant hit.

Anyway, an interesting chart - but treat with caution. Advertising money does not grow on trees even if you are the internet.

I've heard a few really entertaining media related pieces of audio in the last couple of days.

The first is a Daily Mayo podcast from last week when Gabby Logan was sitting in for Simon Mayo. She was interviewing ITV Executive Chairman, Michael Grade.

Unfortunately, because it was last week, and the BBC only keeps their podcasts alive for a week, it's no longer there. But fear not - readers of adambowie.com can listen in using the player below (at least until someone gets annoyed and tells me not to).

In the interview Logan gave Grade a really robust grilling and covered pretty much all the ITV issues of the day. I'd say that he gave a fairly full and frank account of himself. It's all well worth a listen.

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The other great piece of audio is a recording of Tim Robbins keynote speech from the National Association of Broadcasters convention in Las Vegas on Monday. Robbins being Robbins he didn't bother sticking to the topic he was supposed to be talking about, but instead gets into the moral turpitude of much of the media today. It's actually a very funny speech.

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(It's a bit lo-fi I'm afraid, but then it was obviously recorded on a dictaphone or something. There's another version here (via Graham Linehan) in case the one above breaks).

Finally, not a piece of audio, but an interesting piece from The Guardian about Global Radio's recent announcement that Heart and Galaxy will be networking much more in the future. Broadly speaking, they're going to maximise the amount of networking they can do under the recent changes to the rules regarding local programming announced by Ofcom. It's fair to say that we expect to see much more of this in the future.

[NB. Some readers, especially those who see this blog's RSS feed, may have seen an "early version" of this entry a day or so ago. This subsequently disappeared while I sorted a couple of technical issues out. These have been resolved now.]

Two stories have tickled me today from Broadcast magazine ("The Voice of British Broadcasting" - but mostly TV. Radio's on p14 folks!):

Ian Wright has "quit" as a BBC pundit. He's claiming that the BBC's coverage of football is too stuffy. And he feels as though he's the "comedy jester" of the team. In response, the BBC said "we wish Ian Wright all the best in his career with TalkSport" which is rather dry... I rather suspect that the reason that Wright is "quitting" is because his BBC gig has basically ended now that the BBC has no live football to broadcast. Yes, there's Euro 2008 coming up, but Wright's TalkSport gig might have precluded him from taking part in that anyway. So all in all, a little disingenuous?

The other utterly bizarre news is that those doyens of daytime television, Richard and Judy, who had previously announced the end of their spell with Channel 4, are now moving to... wait for it... UKTV!

Really?

Yup. They'll be on an as yet unannounced new UKTV channel and will be appearing on a daily chat show from later this year and all of next year. Quite what this channel is, remains unclear. You'd expect it to appear on Freeview as well as Sky and cable, but there's not really an obvious channel choice. UKTV currently only has Dave as a 24 hour channel having bumped UKTV History into a daytime only slot.

It's possible that they could remove UKTV History from Freeview altogether, but given that there's surely some significant investment being put into Richard and Judy, they'd probably want to get an early evening repeat of the show on air, so unless they can grab some extra capacity from another channel, I don't know what they're planning to do. All will undoubtedly be revealed.

So today, Ofcom has announced that it's planning a reorganisation of Freeview to allow one of the current six multiplexes to be made available for high definition services. New Freeview boxes will come onstream, and improved compression rates will to allow these new services to squeeze into the space. At the same time services currently sitting on the multiplex ear-marked for HD will move across to other multiplexes.

Ofcom's put together this lovely chart to explain the changes:

The space will become available by the BBC and NGW upgrading their multiplexes to use 64QAM instead of the current 16QAM. 64QAM allows for higher compression rates, although there have been questions asked (and these are mentioned in the Ofcom document) about the relative robustness of 64QAM compared to 16QAM. Ofcom believes that these issues have been resolved in later generations of Freeview devices.

Although overall, it's probably in the interests of consumers that some HD channels are available via Freeview (and thus don't require subscriptions to either Sky or Virgin cable), we must be concerned about any degradation in picture quality of the current channels.

A case in point was Tuesday night when ITV1 was showing Roma v Manchester United in the Champions' League. The picture quality was absolutely fine. But then switch over to Schalke v Barcelona on ITV4 and it's immediately clear that the picture is more "blocky." That's simply because ITV4 has greater compression than ITV1 (and as such, isn't directly related to whether the multiplex uses 16QAM or 64QAM - more how much bandwidth is given over to the channel). Both channels are on the same multiplex (Mux 2), which already uses 64QAM.

It's also worth noting that the HD services will be using the progressive rather than interlaced format ("p" rather than "i"). Sky HD, largely uses 1080i. There is ongoing debate into what's better, although Blu-Ray discs, I understand, tend to use 1080p.

I'm sure that we'll hear plenty more about all of this. Separately, it's going to be interesting to hear what Ofcom's verdict is on Sky's proposals to use the capacity is currently has on Mux C for Sky News, Sky Sports News and Sky Three, and move to a subscription model using new compression techniques (as are being proposed for HD - they'll use DVB-T2 MPEG-4) to get more than three channels in.

On a broader scale, Ofcom hasn't explicitly talked about moving Freeview over to the MPEG-4 standard, although I can easily forsee this in the future, and the HD "back-door" route to get kit into homes is a good one.

The BBC has a list of ten stories that could be April Fools but aren't.

For some reason, the fact that Lily Allen has been recommissioned by BBC Three doesn't make the list - and it's not an April Fool!

Media Guardian are reporting that Sky has won the majority of the Champions' League games for the three years beginning in 2009. It's thought that they offered more than £240m representing nearly a 50% increase over what they had previously paid.

For that sum, they get all the games bar one - a single Wednesday night game.

It's not surprising that Sky have launched a blockbuster bid, as with Setanta and ITV getting the FA Cup and England rights, and Setanta slowly becoming a force in televised sport in the UK (albeit, a force that's probably still losing money), Sky just had to win this package.

But where does that leave coverage of the Champions' League for the average viewer? What's really worrying is the single match package which is still up for grabs could also be won by Sky.

That'd be terrible for the competition, and terrible for the British viewing public. The Champions' League Final is not a Listed Event. It's actually conceivable that none of the tournament, including the European Cup Final itself, will not appear on terrestrial television.

Uefa president Michel Platini is said to be keen to keep at least one fixture on terrestrial TV, but will the lure of Sky's lucre be too much?

It's ironic that in the run up to this round of bidding that concerns were voiced by rivals of a potential BBC bid about how the Champions' League sponsors would be catered for on the BBC; they get the sponsorship bumpers on Sky and ITV. Well now the big risk to sponsors must surely be the lack of a big audience seeing their names and association at all. Sony, Heineken, Mastercard et al have paid tens of millions for their sponsorship packages. The value to them is much reduced if the majority of the UK population don't see their brands.

It'd be hard to argue that the competition will suffer in the short term if it disappeared completely from terrestrial television - undoubtedly the BBC or ITV would pick up a highlights package. But you only have to look at cricket to see how a sport can shift from gaining a ticker-tape parade in London when the Ashes were won, to a vague "are England playing?" when the game moved completely off terrestrial.

So who will win that final match? Well, I can't see them giving it to Sky. In some ways, it's more valuable to Sky not to have that game - it acts as something to remind you that they have all the other games. And that's something that's especially important in the knockout phases when terrestrial viewers will only see one half of a two-legged fixture.

ITV will want to retain the rights, but not at any cost. If the lone match that's available is to only be on a Wednesday, then arguably shifting Coronation Street is not something that ITV will really want to do. They used to, but it didn't please their legions of fans. On the other hand, the competition undoubtedly draws viewers to the channel who wouldn't otherwise come - young men in particular.

The BBC would love to win the matches. They must be furious that they've lost FA Cup and England rights - especially since they've done so much to reinvigorate the FA Cup in recent seasons. And they're now without any live top-flight football (the Championship isn't enough). Eastenders doesn't get in the way on Wednesday nights!

Five are the dark horse, but will RTL bid?

It's worth remembering that OnDigital once had the Champions' League rights and it wasn't enough to keep that platform running, so I'll assume that there won't be any mad fools at BT Vision or similar gunning for the games.

What is clear is that you can expect an awful lot more Man Utd on your TV. Given the choice of a Man Utd, Chelsea, Liverpool or Arsenal fixture, TV bosses will pick Man Utd every time. Supporters of the other teams might as well start saving for Sky now.

So the Daily Mail has suddenly become devoted to going bagless - that is, seeing the end of the free plastic bag.

Earlier this week it launched a massive campaign, and by a complete fluke, and in no way pre-planned, the next day Marks & Spencer announced that it'd no longer be supplying free plastic bags for its food shopping. Instead customers would be encouraged to get bags-for-life and later it'd start charging 5p a bag if you still wanted one.

I'm not going to complain about this, as I've desperately been trying to cut down on plastic bags myself. I have a variety of reusable bags now to take with me when I go grocery shopping, and I carry a "fold-up" reusable bag in my rucksack for those unplanned shopping excursions.

At the same time, most retailers are beginning to ask if you want a bag rather than automatically giving you one.

But what I'd like to know is this - will the bulky Saturday Mail and its sister Sunday title begin to start being distributed without their own plastic bags? It's called poly-bagging, and given the number of supplements, leaflets, CDs and DVDs that come with the average paper now, some retailers demand plastic bags around the papers. You especially notice this at supermarkets and train stations.

So I'll be on the lookout this weekend to see if the Mail has the courage of its own convictions.The Mail on Sunday is giving away a Nigel Kennedy CD the weekend after this, so how will it be distributed without a plastic bag? We shall see...

In today's FT, the former chairman of Endemol UK, Peter Bazalgette argues for the BBC selling off Radio 1 and Radio 2. As part of an argument to solve the BBC's problem of facing losing a "top-slice" of the licence fee, Bazalgette has noted that the BBC still has a 55% share of radio.

His solution is to therefore sell off those two stations, which would overnight increase commercial share substantially, and reduce that of the BBC's.

But there are two reasons why we needn't and indeed shouldn't do this.

1. While the BBC is biggest amongst the overall adult population, it's doesn't have the biggest share among the commercially attractive younger audience. Amongst 15-44s, commercial radio has a 53% share, while the BBC has a 44% share (the 3% difference is made up of "other" non-RAJAR measured radio listening). So although the BBC remains a powerful competitor, commercial radio is no weakling amongst listeners who've grown up listening to a commercial alternative.

2. Selling off Radio 1 and Radio 2 would be disastrous for the rest of the commercial radio industry. There are only five national FM stations broadcasting in the UK: Radios 1-4 and Classic FM. What Bazalgette is proposing is to sell off the two popular music stations. This is fine if you're part of a commercial group that ends up winning these stations, but disastrous for everybody else. Commercial radio revenues are fairly static at the moment - about £600m - and they're not likely to grow significantly in the near future. Indeed one of the issues facing new entrants to the industry is that, like television, everybody's seeing a slightly thinner slice of the pie as more stations launch.

If Radio 1 and Radio 2 became commercial, you can be sure that the lion's share of that £600m would go to the owners of those stations; everybody else would be fighting for metaphorical breadcrumbs. The biggest stations always get the most advertising, and these two would strangle local stations who rely on national income.

It seems a strange thing to argue coming as someone who works in commercial radio, but I think you'll find the same is true if I was at ITV. They don't want to see their revenues halved if money had to flood into BBC1. As a nation, we're not large enough to support such a diverse selection of mainstream, and expensively produced services as we currently have. The advertising market just wouldn't sustain it.

(First off, it's worth me reiterating that these are my personal views and don't necessarily reflect those of my employer)

The following is a revision of a comment I made to a blog posting by The Guardian's Matt Wells last week. I think it largely addresses the issues of where radio - and commercial radio in particular - needs to move to today:

There's been a lot of talk about how technology has really been the main failing of DAB, with commentators continually addressing issues like the emergence of a successor to DAB, DAB+, and low broadcast bitrates of DAB stations as being reasons behind the lack of explosive success of DAB digital radio in the UK.

I think the technology arguments are a little specious. Sure, if you were launching digital radio in the UK today, you might well choose DAB+. But the only real difference with that is that you can squeeze more stations into the same space - and one thing we currently don't have is a shortage of space. With technology we're going to be constantly playing a catch-up game. If we backed DAB+ today, "DAB++" would be announced tomorrow and we'd be back to square one.

DAB essentially works on MPEG2 which is the same system that Freeview uses - the phenomenally successful Freeview that is - now in more homes than any other digital platform. What's under the bonnet doesn't really matter. In this instance, it's programme or station choice, audio clarity and usability that count.

Sound quality is a well trodden argument. Radio 3 has a high bitrate and needs it. Pop stations tend to be lower - yet even the original recordings these days, are compressed enormously (ironically, so that they sound "loud" on mp3 players and FM radio), so there's