Month: March 2009
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YouTube and PRS
Wherever music collection agencies and internet sites exist, there are problems. The latest disagreement is the very public falling out between Google, owners of YouTube and PRS the UK collection agency. And when that story reaches the Ten O’Clock News, you know that it’s a significant one. When thousands of music videos start to disappear…
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Comic Relief – The Other Channels
This Friday is Comic Relief night, and I shan’t go on my usual rant about all the plugs that amount to free primetime advertising for Sainsburys, Rymans, Subway, TK Maxx and other participating retailers will receive on BBC1 that evening. Oh… Anyway, what I have noticed is that traditionally the other channels tended to sit…
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Naked = Ratings
When Horizon is good, it’s very good. But when it’s bad, it’s terrible. And tonight we had possibly the worst Horizon I’ve seen in quite a while. What’s The Problem With Nudity was as blatant an example of ratings grabbing as I’ve seen in a long time. Did nobody see that excellent recent Screen Wipe…
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The Convention on Modern Liberty
On Saturday I attended what I genuinely believe was an important event – The Convention on Modern Liberty in London. Satellite events were taking place all over the country, with the plenary sessions and keynote addresses. It was a great day with a vast array of speakers. We had to pick and choose which sessions…
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David Simon Article
If you enjoyed The Wire, and in particular the fifth season, then you’ll really find this piece by David Simon worth reading. It’s food for though next time somebody says that bloggers or citizen journalists will fill in what traditional media is no longer able to. With UK regional newspapers falling nearly as fast as…
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6 Music and RAJAR
A week or so ago, Media Guardian got very excited about some RAJAR figures. They had the half hour figures for some BBC 6Music programmes. These figures showed that the peak listening for the “controversial” George Lamb was 40,000 while Adam and Joe on a Saturday morning peaked at 69,000 – the highest of the…
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TV Formats
Have you seen the new ITV gameshow presented by Chris Tarrant yet? It’s called The Colour of Money and has nothing to do with the Terry Pratchett novel of the same name. ITV’s clearly very excited by it. It’s presenter comes from the global phenomenom that was Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, and the…
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“The Real…”
There’s a documentary on Channel 4 this evening entitled “The Real Pink Panther” which, as The Stage points out, is completely misnamed, as “The Pink Panther” was a jewel and not the criminal (“The Phantom”). This was my comment for that story which wouldn’t seem to post, but was worth putting here: I’ve got a…