Month: February 2006

  • Expositary Titles

    I think it was Charlie Brooker who first pointed out in Screen Burn (coming to BBC4 this Thursday as Screen Wipe) who first pointed out how expository programme titles are now. Thus tonight, we have a collission of “Reals” with The Real Dad’s Army on C4 up directly against The Real Rain Man on Five.…

  • Ricky Gervais

    For the last twelve weeks, the Ricky Gervais podcast has been at the top of the iTunes chart in both Britain and the US. Indeed it even got awarded a Guinees Book of Records award as the most listened to podcast (albeit that there are other podcasts out there, distriubtedly significantly beyond iTunes, that may…

  • Bird Flu Horror

    Tonight’s Evening Standard had a headline: “Lock Up All Chickens” on at least one edition. Don’t they know that most chickens spend all their lives caged up anyway, often in spaces the size of an A4 piece of paper. A few weeks ago the FA announced that from next season, energy company E.ON would be…

  • Billions and Billions

    Nice piece from Emily Bell in Media Guardaian today about how a billion people probably didn’t watch the BAFTAs (Particularly since only 3 million watched it in this country). I’ve talked about this before here, here, here and here.

  • Manufacturing Consent

    ITV4’s a strange beast. I really like it. Lots of old ITC shows in the early evening – Strange Report, The Persuaders etc. Then it moves into some more recent stuff cult stuff like Dark Skies or First Wave. Then, in the post 9pm slot, there might be football, a film or a recentish lower-tier…

  • Contact Zero

    David Wolstencroft was very successful with his first book Good News, Bad News. It was pretty well reviewed, and then had the book chosen to be a Richard & Judy bookclub choice, which is never exactly bad for sales. As a co-creator of Spooks (you can’t miss this fact as it’s all over the cover,…

  • More BBC Podcasts

    The BBC has announced a new raft of podcasts to be added to those it already serves. The highlight seems to be an audio version of the key Newsnight interview (in the same way as Today offers the 8.10am interview). It’ll be interesting to see how the hourly World Service news download works. If I…

  • Virgin Mobile’s TV Service

    Virgin Mobile has announced the launch of their mobile with TV service. Conspicuously absent from the press release are: the cost of the service to consumers what the TV channel package actually consists of and when it’ll be available from. So, just the salient points then.

  • West Side Story

    I’ve just been watching, again, the BBC documentary that recorded the creation of the 1984 Leonard Bernstein conducted “operatic” version of West Side Story. It was on BBC Four a few weeks ago, and I’d not watched it since it was first shown in 1985. It’s a fantastically interesting document of the wonderful musical’s first…

  • Scary Fact of the Weekend

    At around 9.15pm on Saturday night, BBC2 was showing the pairs short routine in the figure skating at the Turin Winter Olympics (or are we calling it Torino? Nobody seems too sure). Over on ITV, David Seaman, Bonnie Langford and their cohorts were performing in Dancing on Ice. How many people do you think were…

  • Mobiles with VoIP

    Nokia are making phones with wi-fi that’ll enable them to make VoIP calls. (They’re not the first, incidentally). I’m guessing that Orange, and some of the other networks, won’t be offering these phones in a hurry to their customers. The networks are desperate enough for revenues as it stands. They certainly don’t want us making…

  • Kathryn Flettwatch

    I know I should be doing other stuff with my time but, in a week that was sorely missing any reality shows for Flett to get her teeth stuck into, here’s the great woman on Who Do You Think You Are?: It’s a wildly successful format, but there’s no denying there’s something faintly naff about…