Month: July 2010

  • Observed #1

    A couple are kissing passionately alongside a train that’s about to depart from platform 8 at KIngs Cross sometime around midnight. Another couple, hurrying towards platform 11 observe the scene and discuss it: Her: “Aah. They’re in love.” Him: “No. They’ve only just met this evening.” Her: “No – they’re definitely in love.” Him: “You’re…

  • Boris Bikes Are Go!

    To celebrate the new bike hire scheme in London I made this Audioboo: Listen! [Update] Here’s what else happened after I recorded that Audioboo. I cycled across Westminster Bridge and headed up Whitehall until I found a docking area near the police station opposite Charing Cross station. When I first docked the bike, I didn’t…

  • Crystal Ball Gazing at the Radio Academy

    The latest Radio Academy podcast – the last of the series indeed – is about to be published by producer Heather Davies. It features, Trevor Dann talking to Global’s Nick Piggott, the BBC’s Chris Kimber and myself about radio five years hence. I’m sure that, as Nick wisely said at the podcast’s start, a large…

  • Sky’s HBO Deal

    Sky has completed a £150m deal for exclusive rights to all HBO’s back catalogue and future programming for the next five years. There’s a certain irony that over the years various Sky One channel controllers have claimed that they’re going to make Sky One the UK’s version of HBO. I’ve pooh-poohed that in the past,…

  • TouchPoints 3

    In 2006, the IPA launched a new research survey called TouchPoints. It was a radical new look at measuring media usage across different types of media rather than each industry looking at their own world. The idea was to make it easy for advertisers to plan across different types of media. They also measured the…

  • Daily Star TV Ad Redux

    A few months ago I noted that the Daily Star was claiming to be “Britain’s most successful newspaper” in a TV ad. It was basing those findings on the then most recent ABC figures from January 2010, which then showed a small percentage increase in year on year sales results. Those TV ads are running…

  • Ashes Not To Be Listed

    A Media Guardian report this morning suggests that the new Government is not going to add The Ashes to the sporting Listed Events, ignoring the recommendation that they should be included in David Davies’ report from last November. The Guardian report is headlined “Ashes to stay on Sky” which is only really true of the…

  • Trying to Decode Kindle Stats

    Amazon has been trumpeting its latest Kindle stats, proclaiming that it has sold 143 Kindle books for every 100 hardback books sold over the last three months. I say “stats”, but they actually keep their cards very close to their chest. They’re mostly talking about ratios. And they’re not necessarily comparing like with like. While…

  • RAJAR MIDAS Survey

    Note that this is cross posted from the Absolute Radio Onegoldensquare.com blog. I wouldn’t have access to these figures otherwise! And a hat-tip to Matt Deegan for suggesting looking at iPhone only figures in relation to radio apps. Yesterday RAJAR published the topline findings (PDF) from the latest MIDAS research. MIDAS – for the uninitiated…

  • A Video

    This is a short video I made a few weeks ago at the seaside in Broadstairs. Featured are my brother and his family, so you may well not be interested. But it’s shot on Super 8 – Kodak Ektachrome 100D to be precise – and filmed with the same Canon Auto Zoom 318M that my…

  • Exposed and Sally Mann

    A not altogether succesful photo trying to shoe-horn in a CCTV camera with Tate Modern. There are a couple of very good photographic exhibitions on in London at the moment that I’ve been to in the last couple of weeks, but both include some quite “difficult” material. Exposed at Tate Modern, is subtitled voyeurism, surveillance…

  • Ed Vaizey on Digital Radio

    As mentioned yesterday, Ed Vaizey, the new Minister for Culture, Communications and Creative Industries, has today given a speech at a London conference outlining the new government’s support for digital radio, and launching an action plan. How his speech has been been interpreted depends on where you read about it. At Media Guardian the headline…