Category: Media
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Faster, Faster, Faster!
There was a Buzzfeed piece recently, exploring those people who listen to podcasts at super-fast speed. I don’t just mean 1.2x or something, but some of them listen at 3x speed or even faster. Elsewhere, a Guardian writer thanked Netflix for allowing him to skip all the intros to TV series and the ability to…
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Diversity in Media – Measuring Social Class
On Sunday I wrote a piece on Ofcom’s Diversity in Television report, and in particular, noted my disappointment that it didn’t measure social class. The feedback I got can basically be summed up with the question: “Yes, but how do you measure class?” So I thought it was worth exploring the issue a bit further.…
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Diversity in UK Media – Ofcom’s Report Doesn’t Go Far Enough
Last week Ofcom published the first in what it says will be a regular series of reports into diversity and equal opportunities in television. It focuses on the biggest UK television broadcasters: BBC, Channel 4, ITV, Sky and Viacom (owner of Channel 5 amongst others). Diversity remains a key concern in the media industry, from…
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Dwindling Choices
A couple of weeks ago, Ofcom released its annual Communications Market Report. It’s always stuffed full of information about the UK media marketplace that can be fascinating to dissect. In 2016, ownership of DVD players (including Blu Ray and games consoles with DVD functionality) was 67% of UK households. This year, it’s just 63% of…
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Netflix and Disney
Last week came news that Disney would be pulling its movies from Netflix at the end of the current arrangement, and that Disney would in future launch its own streaming service. This licensing agreement generated a vast amount of coverage, much of it ill-informed, and ignoring wider issues in the market. There are a few…
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What Does “Digital” Mean?
The OED defines “digital” in five key ways, but the key definition that interests us here is as follows: Digital technology; digital media, as digital television, digital audio, etc. Basically, nearly everything these days is digital. Even if it ends up in analogue form like AM or FM radio, it almost certainly originates digitally. Text…
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The Nightly Show
Before ITV launched The Nightly Show into the 10:00pm weekday slot I said that we should avoid comparisons with US late evening talk shows since contrary to popular belief, it’s not trying to be one, and we should hold off looking at the ratings until it had settled into something a bit firmer. This kind…
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RIP Steve Hewlett
Earlier today, the death of journalist and broadcaster Steve Hewlett was announced by Eddie Mair on Radio 4. He was 58. Since September last year, when Hewlett had announced he had cancer, he’d been giving Mair a series of interviews describing his various treatments, struggles and trials. The interviews ran fairly regularly on Monday editions…
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Amazon Echo – A Longer Term Test
I bought my Amazon Echo on its official UK release back in September last year. I wrote about it at the time, but I thought it might be worth checking back in here to see exactly how I’m using it. Right off the top, I’ll note here that I use Alexa multiple times a day,…
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Girls on Trains
That sounds a bit creepy. I’m actually talking about the phenomenon that is Paula Hawkins’ novel The Girl on the Train. It has been the book that everyone has been reading for the past year or so. Indeed, it if it weren’t for the fact that everyone watches iPlayer and reads Kindles, you’d have seen…
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Diversity in Radio
Yesterday, two things happened. I got an email from Sound Women telling me that the organisation will be closing down at the end of next year. And I went to a radio and audio conference in London. I’ll explain the link in a minute. But let’s just say for the moment, that I learnt a…