Month: November 2008

  • TV Remakes

    We seem to be going through a significant period of remakes at the moment. Actually, that’s a little unfair as television has always remade successful programmes. How many Agatha Christies or Robin Hoods have we had over the years? And when isn’t there another Austen, Dickens or Hardy production on the cards? But recently we’ve…

  • 24: Redemption

    For whatever reason, I’ve recently ended up on a few PR companies’ lists for “Bloggers’” events. I’ve been invited to a few film screenings here and there – although I’ve not been able to make disappointing number of them. That’s more the shame because screenings tend to take place in and around the West End,…

  • Internet Retailing At Christmas

    Let me first apologise for mentioning Christmas while we’re still in November. I take no pleasure in bringing forward a retailing period that’s already appearing far too early, and is very occassionally considered a religious festival (for goodness sake, a man died today in a stampede at 5am in Walmart in New York). As someone…

  • Radio 2 Audiences and The Age of Listening

    Here’s an interesting question related to the Ross/Brand affair. Yes, I know I said I was bored of the whole thing, but this is genuinely interesting. Did Russell Brand actually cost Radio 2 listeners when he was on-air with them? (Or perhaps more reasonably, did he cost them listening hours, when regular Radio 2 listeners…

  • Morals

    Yesterday I was about to go into a newsagent, when a couple of kids stopped me just outside. If they gave me the money, would I go in and buy them a packet of cigarettes? “Sorry, no,” I replied. It’s a moral thing – I’m not buying their cigarettes for them. They’re under-age, and I’m…

  • Body of Lies

    Another year – another Ridley Scott film. Scott is responsible for some of my favourite ever films. They tend to be earlier films like Blade Runner and Alien than later ones, but American Gangster last year was superb, while 2006’s A Good Year (also starring Russell Crowe) was abysmal. So where does Body of Lies…

  • Local News

    This morning, the BBC Trust rejected plans for a local BBC video news service. Concurrently, Ofcom published the results of its Market Impact Assessment and concluded that the plans would have had a significant negative impact on commercial news providers. The BBC proposal would have seen it producing more localised news which would be delivered…

  • BBC Trust on Jonathan Ross

    The BBC Trust reported today on lots of things. Of most interest to the press was the Jonathan Ross/Russell Brand fiasco. But frankly, that’s so dull now, I can’t be bothered to get into it at all. Tomorrow’s papers will be all over it. Of far more interest, in the same report, is the response…

  • To Publish Or Not To Publish?

    A simple one first of all. It seems that the names of the people allegedly responsible for the death of Baby P are being passed around quite freely via electronic media. But for legal reasons, they’ve not been named publicly in the mainstream media. It can obviously lead to a lynch-mob mentality that says that…

  • Voting Openness on TV?

    So John Sergeant has quit Strictly. Don’t say that I don’t cover the important issues of the day. What’s that about Congo or pirates off Somalia? What I still find perplexing is the lack of openness in whole TV voting world even post the telephone voting scandals we’ve had over the last eighteen months or…

  • Irony Layered on Irony

    There’s a new series of The IT Crowd starting this week on Channel 4. Hurrah! In the last series, one of the episodes opened with Roy and Moss sitting down to watch a DVD. We then saw a brilliant mock DVD piracy advert to warn viewers of how bad the criminals you’re supporting are if…

  • Asda DAB

    A story in Marketing magazine leads me to the Asda site where it has launched a series of own brand electrical items. These include an Asda DAB digital radio that sells, online at least, for the princely sum of £24.47. A DAB radio for under twenty-five quid is fine by me, and thankfully, the set…