Month: April 2008

  • UKTV Gold Rebrand

    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…

  • RAJAR – And the Digital Age

    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…

  • BBC Three Sitcoms

    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…

  • ITV on iTunes

    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…

  • Random Musings

    I can’t help but agree with Roy Greenslade on the subject of London’s evening freesheets. They’re both still uniformly abysmal with not a single thing to read. The trouble is that even the paid for Evening Standard is woeful with its ridiculous vendetta against Ken Livingstone and Mail-lite features. A bit more news would be…

  • UK Advertising Revenues 2003-2008

    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…

  • His Girl Friday’s Fast

    As you may or may not know, His Girl Friday is one of my favourite films of all time. The film is screwball comedy and was made in 1940, starring Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell. It was written by Charles Lederer, Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, the latter two of which had written the play,…

  • Just Because I’m Taking Photos Does Not Make Me A Terrorist

    A good piece on the BBC News website regarding the “guilty until proven innocent” attitude that seems to be taken more and more with regard to taking photos in public. (Via Boing Boing) Austin Mitchell MP is also leading the charge against this nonsense. And obviously, those CCTV cameras are always on you!

  • A Bit Of Audio To Listen To

    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…

  • Today’s Most Entertaining Media Stories

    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,…

  • One Nation Under CCTV

    I absolutely love this new Banksy image on the side of a building around the back of the Rathbone Place Post Office sorting office. There were plenty of other onlookers since the painting appeared over the weekend. More photos via Flickr.

  • Net Neutrality

    There’s been an awful lot of fuss in the last few weeks about “net neutrality” in the UK. The supposed reason for this is the immediate success of the BBC iPlayer which is eating up bandwidth like it’s going out of fashion. As the iPlayer arrives on the Nintendo Wii, the BBC announces that 42…