Podcasts, Radio, TV, Books, Cycling, Photography and More
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YouTube and Podcasts
Introduction Earlier this week, Google announced that their Google Podcasts app will be discontinued in 2024. They are instead pointing listeners to YouTube Music: “Looking forward to 2024, we’ll be increasing our investment in the podcast experience on YouTube Music — making it a better overall destination for fans and podcasters alike.” To facilitate this…
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The Sycamore Gap
Such awful news that possibly the most famous tree in the country was cut down by a vandal. I was lucky to visit the area in 2017 and of course I had to capture photos the iconic tree.
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Kennedy 35 by Charles Cumming
Kennedy 35 is the third of Cumming’s BOX 88 series of novels featuring the secret Anglo-American spy organisation that exists in the fringes of the intelligence services. In the present day, Lachlan ‘Lockie’ Kite is the head of the UK division. We find him hoping for some rapprochement in his marriage to Isobel who has…
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Box 88 and Judas 62 by Charles Cumming
I have read a few Charles Cumming novels over the years, but hadn’t caught up with his latest spy series. Box 88 introduces us to Lachlan Kite and the secret Anglo-American intelligence organisation that he is part of – BOX 88. The story is told in two timelines – a contemporary one where Kite is…
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The Franchise Affair by Josephine Tey
Penguin has recently re-published some of their classic crime and espionage novels in new “bottle-green” covers, remembering the classic green covers of their crime novels of old. For no reason at all, I picked up a novel I’d vaguely heard of but never read from a Waterstones display. The Franchise Affair was first published in…
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Edison Podcast Metrics UK – Top 25 Q2 2023
[Updated with more information on the recall methodology and to note that BBC data is based on BBC Sounds listening.] Having trailed it at The Podcast Show in London, Edison Research today published the first full findings of their Podcast Metrics survey for the UK. The survey was conducted by interviewing 2,273 weekly podcast listeners…
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Channel 4 and DOGs
Taskmaster returned to Channel 4 this week, with an all-new line-up of contestants. Having got drenched in rain on my way home, I was ready for some stupid challenges performed by comedians. But when I turned on, I was treated to the above image. In the TV world a “Digital On-Screen Graphic”, or DOG, is…
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Popularity Contest – Streaming vs Linear in 2023
The most recent episode of the new(ish) podcast Search Engine with PJ Vogt asked the simple question, “Why is it so hard to figure out how many people watched Stranger Things?” The question was posed by actor Maya Hawke who appears on the Netflix show. And it opened up an in-depth discussion about audience measure…
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Spotify Grifts
I confess that I’m fascinated by a series of grifts that have been reported on recently with respect to Spotify royalties. Let’s go through some of them, and explore whether they hold up. The 30-Second Get-Rich-Quick Track This comes from a JP Morgan finance analyst who claimed in an FT piece that someone could create…
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ESPN, Charter, The Cable Bundle and the Future
I have been fascinated by the recently resolved standoff in the US TV industry between the second biggest cable provider in the country, Charter Communications, and one of the biggest TV providers, Disney. Over the US Open tennis final at the weekend, and the start of the opening weekend of the new NFL season, millions…
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Doppelganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World by Naomi Klein
Naomi Klein is the author of such bestselling titles as No Logo, The Shock Doctrine and This Changes Everything. She’s a social activist, who has worked on Bernie Sanders campaigns and writes about globalisation. Naomi Wolf is the author of books such as The Beauty Myth, Fire With Fire and The End of America. She…
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Douglas Adams and Nigel Kneale
Over the weekend I managed to get along to two separate, and largely unconnected events – except that both were based around writers who found prominence in science fiction. And one is much funnier than the other. 42: The Wildly Improbable Ideas of Douglas Adams Unbound has just published this new book beautifully edited by…
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Tour of Britain 2023 – Photos
I’m trying some new photo formats. This isn’t quite working yet. I may return to it to fix things…
Hadrian’s Wall
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