Month: May 2011

  • “Crisis? What Crisis?”

    Fifa is in a mess. I have no love for the organisation, yet I love football. I’ve read Andrew Jennings’ books, follow the reports, and have seen how the organisation essentially looks after itself with little real concern for the planet’s most popular sport. It’s a personal fiefdom for the likes of Sepp Blatter as…

  • iTunes Woes – When Consolidate Breaks

    This is a bit of a plea. Any solutions welcome… I have a big iTunes library. It’s something like 250GB because I keep certain old podcasts, have lots of music (ripped at high bit-rates), quite a few audiobooks (also in high quality) and now have a few films (mainly from “triple play” DVD/BluRay/digital sets). Anyway…

  • Elbow at St Paul’s Cathedral

    Last night Elbow played an exclusive set for Absolute Radio in the crypt of St Paul’s Cathedral – the first time that a rock band has ever performed there. It looked and sounded stunning. Watch an interview here and listen to the set on-air on 5 June. Looking down through the grate in the main…

  • Rain

    It was very wet today.

  • Why I’m Not Going To The Cinemas As Much As I Once Did

    Cinema has always been a media that has felt under threat. Radio, television, video, DVD, BluRay, video games and so on, have all at one time or another been listed as being a reason that the medium is going to fail. And it’s true that it has adapted – or had to adapt – over…

  • RAJAR Q1 2011 – A Little Thing

    Last year BBC Four broadcast a wonderful one-off programme called The Joy of Stats. It featured Professor Hans Rosling who’s talks at places like TED have made him extremely popular and watchable. In particular he’s been employing a type of motion chart that’s really useful for observing multiple pieces of data over long periods of…

  • Book News

    Two interesting developments in the book world in the last 24 hours: Waterstones has been sold by HMV; and Amazon says it’s selling more Kindle books that Hardback and Paperback titles Waterstones has been sold by the slightly ailing HMV group for £53m to Alexander Mamut’s A&NN Group, and James Daunt (he of Daunt Books…

  • A Binaural Test

    Binaural Test Traffic by adambowie00 This isn’t the most exciting entry ever. If you fancy listening to some light traffic, then I suggest you plug some headphones into whatever device you’re viewing this on, and take a listen. The headphones bit is mandatory, as this is a binaural recording made via some newly purchased Roland…

  • Sony Awards Redux

    Listening to this week’s Radio Academy RadioTalk, I heard Talksport programme director Moz Dee and Media UK’s James Cridland talking about potential changes to the Sony Radio Academy Radio Awards (Thanks for the shoutout James!). There’s always a feeling that the ceremony goes on too long. And it is a long awards’ ceremony. Although if…

  • All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace

    I am very excited about this: It starts on Monday 23rd May at 9pm on BBC2.

  • New BBC News Blogs – A Retrograde Update

    BBC News is seemingly completing its movement of correspondents’ blogs across to the a new system. And frankly, they’ve made some significantly retrograde steps. I’d happily acknowledge that previously the blogs were somewhat hidden, and lots of website readers were probably missing out. And I know that this has meant a shift in the backend…

  • RAJAR – Q1 2011

    It’s early May, and that means it’s another RAJAR – that exciting time when radio stations in the UK learn their new listening figures. As ever, it’s a mixed bag, with ups and downs. In the up box is radio listening overall. It’s once again recorded a record reach, with 91.6% of the population listening…