Month: July 2018

  • The Death of MoviePass?

    A few months ago, I tried to work out what the business model of MoviePass (and putative UK equivalent cPass) might be. I concluded that the operators were going to need very deep pockets, and there was absolutely no certainty that the model works. And that seems to have been an accurate prediction. The service…

  • RideLondon Classique 2018

    This last weekend saw a massive collision of all things cycling. It was the final weekend of the Tour de France – fabulously won by Geraint Thomas. That had been pushed back a week to stay clear of the World Cup. Meanwhile it was also the Saturday night of the Dunwich Dynamo, from London Fields…

  • Geraint Thomas Wins the Tour

    It has been thrilling over these last three weeks to see one of cycling’s real Mr Nice Guys win the Tour. I couldn’t say exactly when I first became aware of him, but Britain’s success on the track meant that I’d seen him pick up medals ahead of his gold at the Beijing Olympics in…

  • Virgin Media and UKTV (And ITV) – Continuation

    On my commute to work this morning, I saw a digital outdoor sign advertising a programme on Yesterday. I can’t recall the programme, but I can tell you that at the bottom, a large blue strap had added “Not available on Virgin Media.” Things are ramping up in Virgin Media and UKTV’s dispute. The Guardian…

  • Virgin Media and UKTV

    We seem to be in the middle of a real old-school rights agreement brouhaha at the moment. Virgin Media has just removed all UKTV’s channels from its platform after what we must assume was a lengthy period where the two parties failed to meet terms. UKTV is 50% owned by the BBC, and 50% owned…

  • Radio is Fastest

    If you wanted to know what was happening in Moscow as fast as possible last night, your best bet was the radio. I’ve mentioned before that when a big fixture goes to penalties, I always listen on the radio, because I get the news first. More regularly, if there’s a match that’s both being covered…

  • Is IP TV Really Ready for Primetime?

    Last night YouTube TV went down for an hour. That’s not YouTube the platform, but the premium TV service that YouTube offers customers in the US a range of broadcast TV channels in exchange for a monthly fee. The service went down right in the middle of the England v Croatia World Cup semi-final in…

  • Marketing TV

    If you’re a TV channel and you’ve got a new show you want to tell people about, it should be relatively simple. You make a trailer or two for it, and then you run that trailer around programmes that the audience for the new show are already watching. You might want to be a bit…

  • From the Cheesegrater