Category: Media
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Ofcom on Audience Attitudes to Broadcast Media
Ofcom, the UK broadcast regulator, carries out an awful lot of research, most of which it publishes on its website. But people are lazy, and they mostly just look at executive summaries and press releases. But there’s a lot more to it than that. There are often copious appendices with much more detail, and beyond…
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The Power of Newspapers… Or Lack Thereof
After the 1992 election when John Major defeated Neil Kinnock, The Sun published a now famous headline: “It’s The Sun Wot Won It.” I suspect that this is now a standard text that pupils examine in their GCSE Politics courses. Did The Sun really win it? Or were they just reading the runes and backing…
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“Now Available to Download”
There was mass hysteria* yesterday when Disney and Fox announced that all six Star Wars films would be available to download in HD from Friday! Goodness, how very lucky we are. I mean, how else was I going to be able to watch any of the films? It’s not as though they haven’t been released…
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Around the Web
They’ve been there a while now. At first, just a few. But now they’re everywhere. And the invasion is growing. What am I talking about? “Content Discovery Platforms” typified by those “Around the Web” discovery link panels you often see on news sites and advertising supported blogs. Essentially, these are the tables of links that…
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Trademark Issues Ahead?
Mobile operator Orange – now EE – has recently ended its sponsorship of UK cinemas’ “Orange Wednesdays” which for ten years got you 2 for 1 cinema tickets every Wednesday – a day which is traditionally a quiet day with new releases coming just ahead. So it was interesting to read that the replacement is…
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Buying a Copy of The Times
It really shouldn’t be this hard. If I want to buy a newspaper, and there are some of us who still do, then it’s pretty easy. I go into a local newsagent, garage or supermarket, pick up a copy and hand over some money. Yes, the newsagent might want me to place an order with…
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The £5 Billion League
You know how this is supposed to be austerity Britain? Well you wouldn’t know that looking at the sums announced earlier today as the conclusion of the next three years’ of live Premier League coverage were concluded. The total cost of the rights was £5.136 billion for the seasons 2016/17 to 2018/19. Sky has retained…
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The Open Goes to Sky
As has been widely anticipated in the press, today saw news that Sky Sports has won a five-year contract beginning in 2017 to broadcast The Open golf tournament exclusively live. The BBC will have a two hour 8pm-10pm highlights package. Sky is said to be paying twice as much as the BBC, and they will…
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Things I’m Not Going to Embark on this January
This isn’t a blog about New Year’s resolutions. I’d be a few weeks’ late if it was. But January is an interesting time for another reason – it’s when those curious partwork publications kick off their new runs. You know the sort: often advertised heavily on TV, with cheap first issues (although much more steeply…
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Ghost Posts
In an age of CRM’s and programs like WordPress, it’s incredibly easy to publish something to the internet before perhaps thinking things through. And while you can just as quickly “un-publish” said pieces, it’s never quite as simple as that. Many other parts of the internet ingest whatever it is that you’ve published pretty much…
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Predictions 2015
This week’s Media Podcast is full of their contributors’ predictions for 2015. Lots of websites have lots of predictions, but for whatever reason, I’ve never bothered doing something like in the past. But why would I let that stop me? So I’ve put together a list of some things that I think might happen in…
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The Price of Rental
I missed Guardians of the Galaxy in cinemas earlier this year. But it was well reviewed, and I did plan to catch it. The good news is that it came out on “home video” recently. So I could either buy it on DVD or BluRay, or watch it in download/streaming. If I choose to rent…