Month: October 2004

  • King Kong

    You may or may not know that Peter Jackson is currently remaking King Kong out in New Zealand, as his follow up to the Lord of the Rings. The people who did the Onering website, are behind KongisKing which features some fantastic video diary updates from Jackson and his cohorts. And unlike those people at…

  • Channel 4

    Is something in the wind? The last couple of days have seen two stinging attacks on Channel 4 being published by ex-chiefs and executives. Yesterday, in the Sunday Telegraph, Sir Jeremy Isaacs, the channel’s first chief executive, said that the channel relies too much on such programmes as Big Brother and How Clean Is Your…

  • Fun With Batteries

    OK – from the outset, can I just point out that I seriously don’t recommend that you attempt to replicate the “experiments” I’m about to describe. I should also point out that while I didn’t plan on doing either of these things, it doesn’t take a genius to work out that it’s possible. Experiment 1…

  • America Wakes Up To 21st Century Radio

    Last week something really big happened in American radio – Howard Stern, the archetypal “Shock Jock” announced that he would be leaving terrestrial radio, and heading to one of the two satellite radio service operators, Sirius Satellite Radio. This is big news for two reasons. One, Sirius is the smaller of the two competing systems…

  • Christopher Reeve

    Very sad news about Christopher Reeve today. Only last week, I dug out my old Superman bubble gum cards from the first film. That series was nearly as popular as Star Wars with my brother and I when we were younger. And I still struggle to recall what the fatal flaw with the plan that…

  • A Teaspoon of Sugar…

    Well maybe not quite a teaspoon of sugar. I’ve just been watching this week’s Panorama all about sugar and the underhand goings on that the sugar lobby have been up to. As I mentioned earlier in the year, big sugar has tried to flex its muscles in the past. Sugar is a big big business,…

  • Death by Hollywood

    0747571104

  • Pompeii

    0091794935

  • BBC News 24

    In December 2002, Richard Lambert published a report through the Department of Culture Media and Sport reviewing the BBC’s 24 hour television news channel. The Independent Review of BBC News 24 (PDF) was published at a time when the channel was underperforming in comparison to Sky News, and questions were being asked about what it…

  • Pete McCarthy

    This has come as a bit of a bolt from the blue. He was only 51, and a very talented performer and writer. Disdainful though I sometimes am of that category of books, I do like reading them.

  • Jack Tanner

    Well, BBC Four are giving us a reshowing Tanner ’88 nightly from Saturday 23 October at 11.00pm until the following Thursday. And we get the newly filmed introductions that were done for the Sundance Channel’s reshowings. With the election happening the following Tuesday, I guess that Tanner on Tanner will be shown over the weekend…

  • Science on TV and Radio

    I know, I know. I’m always going on about this. But I don’t apologise for revisiting it, because it’s so important. This year marks the 40th anniversary of Horizon, and the new series started a few weeks ago, and has already produced a couple of very interesting episodes. This week’s was an examination of whether…