Month: July 2008

  • BBC Fined 400k By Ofcom

    As a consequence of the BBC running fraudulent competitions, Ofcom has fined the Corporation £400,000. Undoubtedly, mistakes – whether deliberate or not – were made. And some kind of remedial action was necessary. When ITV or GCap were recently fined, you didn’t hear me complaining. But both of those organisations are commercial companies, and therefore…

  • Hulu

    For the most part Hulu is pretty useless for UK residents since it’s geo-locked to the US. We can’t watch re-runs of NBC, Fox and Comedy Central shows. But there does seem to be an exception – Dr Horrible is available on Hulu and doesn’t seem to be restricted to the US which is just…

  • Countdown to Countdown

    So Channel 4 has managed to get itself into a bit of a mess with its longest running series – Countdown. Just before the weekend, Des O’Connor announced that he was retiring from the show. And this was followed quickly by Carol Vorderman announcing that she too was leaving. Over the weekend it became clear…

  • Knock It Off, Nigel

    Good news all – there’s a new “Knock Off Nigel” campaign airing on TV and radio (in reality this has been running for a few weeks now, but since ITV has seemingly given up for the summer – apart from ITV4’s Tour coverage – and Channel 4 is a no go area for me with…

  • RAJAR

    I wrote a little piece for the One Golden Square blog on RAJAR last week which it’s worth directing you to. I’d also suggest you read Martin Kelner in today’s Guardian.

  • Is Google Advertising Dodgy Adobe Products?

    We all know that internet advertising is booming, and much of that growth is coming from “search” – that is, advertising that you see dependent on your search terms on Google, Yahoo, MSN or wherever. But to what extent should the advertisers be checked out by Google and its ilk before that advertising goes live?…

  • DRM Free

    2008 really is proving to be the year that we finally lose DRM – in music at least! Earlier this week Sky announced that it had done a deal with Universal to be part of its forthcoming music subscription service. Seemingly, for a monthly fee, subscribers will be able to stream what they like and…

  • Please Apple – Do Something

    No – this isn’t yet another post about the release of a new mobile phone. This is far more important. This is about Apple’s iPods. Actually, it’s not even really about that. You see love or loathe Apple, broadly speaking the iPod is a great device. It does the job it was designed for simply…

  • Misinterpreting Research Figures

    If you read the right sort of newspapers, you couldn’t help but fail to notice that the fifth and final series of The Wire premiered on FX channel in the UK this week. Then this morning, the various media sites, including Mediaguardian publish the fact that “only” 38,000 people watched the show last night. More…

  • Bonekickers

    Victorian street somewhere. Indeed I recall once watching a now forgotten film in Bath’s Little Theatre which actually featured that very cinema! So it was exciting to learn of a major new BBC1 drama series set in and around Bath, using (an un-named) Bath University as a major location. What’s more, the drama comes from…

  • Heroes on the BBC

    The recent news was that the BBC has bought “lifetime rights” to Heroes. This essentially means that Sky or another broadcaster won’t be able to come in and outbid the Beeb. I expect that also means that the BBC is also compelled to buy future series whether they’d like to or not. It was a…

  • Copyright Again

    Now it seems that the EU has decided that artists and performers should get 95 years’ copyright on their performances following an enormous amount of lobbying on behalf of the record industry (which also does quite nicely out of this). This is a massive mistake, and let’s hope that the UK government doesn’t meekly fall…