Month: October 2006

  • Football and Gambling

    Five Live had a report today about how gambling, and to a lesser extent porn, are becoming quite serious addictions amongst some young footballers. You can listen to the report here. It’s ironic, then, that so many shirt sponsors in the British leagues are now tacky internet gambling companies. Step forward Aston Villa, Blackburn, Middlesborough…

  • Inside Look At Google/YouTube Deal

    Fascinating insight into the recent Google/YouTube machinations from an anonymous insider posted at Mark Cuban’s blog (via Waxy).

  • About C4 Pulling Out of Quiz TV

    A measured piece about Channel 4’s withdrawal from the quiz TV market. Of course they can’t continue to claim public service status with a channel like this. Mind you, can ITV1?

  • Warning about Hostess Bars

    Following the photo the other day, this time around Westminster council “City Guardians” were leafleting last night at the intersection of Brewer Street and Great Windmill Street in Soho yesterday evening. Nonetheless, just metres away three tourists were being tempted into such a bar by a tall brunette. Evidently there’s a concerted effort to close…

  • W1 Clip Joint

    I’ll not be going in there, then, originally uploaded by James Cridland. Since I actually took this photo I thought I’d comment. I still find it amazing that the police acknowledge the existence of what it obviously some kind of clip-joint. They even put a man and a sign outside it, yet they can’t close…

  • DTT – Loads of Space

    One of the other things it mentioned in that Broadcast article about C4 getting out of Quiz Call is that although it’s giving up the channel, it’s hanging onto the Freeview slot. The worrying thing about that is that Quiz Call on Freeview has to be the most overcompressed channels on the platform. I certainly…

  • More Illegal Clips on YouTube

    Following on from the FA the other day, Media Guardian today reports that a rights protection company called NetResult has got YouTube to remove over 1,000 clips for copyright violation. The article goes onto report that NetResult believes that there are “as many as 10,000 more illegal clips on the website.” Right. I think they’ll…

  • Quiz TV Investigations

    It was interesting to see this evening, that now MPs are looking into the phenomenon of quiz TV. Of course the name itself is misleading because the programmes work on the basis of “questions” that don’t have certain answers – they’re largely guessing games. Last week, Broadcast magazine reported that Channel 4 is planning on…

  • Footie on YouTube

    The latest company looking at copyright violations on YouTube seems to be the FA. Unsurprisingly, along with any music video of any note, most of the key goals from around the world and other football incidents (Defoe’s arm chewing for example), quickly find their way onto YouTube. All this is copyright of course, with Sky…

  • List Shows

    I hate list shows. I mean, I really hate list shows. Weekends are forever full of four hour shows counting down whatever in a pointless way. And a selection of non-entity Z-list celebs spout off about the clip they just watched on a screen seconds before the cameras rolled for their contribution. Armando Iannucci parodied…

  • Fun With Mobile Phone Contacts

    If you’re familiar with the alphabet, you’ll appreciate that any list of names sorted in alphabetical order that includes mine, will place me somewhere near the top. Indeed, unless you have friends named Aaron, Abraham, Abel or Abi, I’m quite possibly heading your list. Now think about your mobile phone contact list, and you’ll appreciate…

  • Lost Moves to Sky

    So the big TV news is that the rights for Lost have switched from Channel 4 to Lost. According to Mediaguardian, Sky’s paying £20m which, if I read the story right, is for seasons 3 and 4. So that works out at around £500k an episode. That’s pricey. Channel 4, it seems, had the opportunity…