Category: TV
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TV Logos Viewers Don’t Understand
Far be it for me to suggest that some elements of TV production deliberately obfuscate information, but here are three things that appear daily on UK TV, but which many – perhaps most – viewers simply don’t understand. There are different reasons for each of them, but they both put information in plain sight, while…
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It’s Different This Side of the Pond
Yesterday I saw my first TV ad – at least in quite a few months – for Wonder Woman 1984, the next instalment of the blockbuster DC Extended Universe film series. The TV ad tells me that the film is opening in UK cinemas on 16 December. Hmm. Now this is a film who’s release…
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Why ‘Access’ and ‘FYI Daily’ Exist
The other night I was looking for something to watch mindlessly for a bit and noticed that action film John Wick: Chapter 2 was on Channel 5. That would be suitably mindless. So I flicked over and was presented with a needless bit of fluff about some terrible-looking new Robert De Niro film. I was…
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Eye Level
This Sunday sees ITV launch a reboot of one of their most famous detectives – Van Der Valk. Based on a series of novels by Nicolas Freeling, which were mostly published in the 1960s, the TV series began life in 1972 with Barry Foster starring as Commisaris Van Der Walk of the Amsterdam police. Produced…
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Red Moon
I’m currently watching For All Mankind on Apple TV+. The series is one of a handful that Apple has made free for a “limited time.” Coming from Ron (Battlestar Galactica) Moore, it was for me the most intriguing of Apple’s launch series, and I’m a little under halfway through it and really enjoying it. The…
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The Nadir of Local TV
Local TV has been a failure since the start. It was started on a fallacy, and has proved uneconomic, with most of the stations licenced (Ofcom has stopped licencing new services) rolled into a single service with minimal local output. But London Live has lived on. Owned by Evgeny Lebedev, also the owner of the…
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The Premier League in an SVOD World – Running the Numbers
This week, Amazon Prime in the UK has begun the first of its streaming-only games offered to Prime subscribers. You will recall that during the last UK round of Premier League TV rights, a package comprising of the entirety of one mid-week “matchday” and all the Boxing Day games was offered. In the end Amazon…
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HBO Max in the UK… Or Not
Yesterday AT&T held an event called WarnerMedia Day that largely detailed the launch plans for their new streaming service HBO Max, which builds off the successful HBO. So lots of announcements of how you’ll be able to see Friends episodes and watch the new Game of Thrones sequel on their platform. From a UK perspective…
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Further Apple TV+ Thoughts
This Friday Apple TV+ launches globally. In the UK, the PR launch is already well underway. Stars from some of the first tranche of Apple shows have been made available to various media outlets – Jason Malmoa was on Graham Norton for example. And there has been an absolute blitz of outdoor advertising for the…
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Amazon Prime Premier League Fixtures – Redux
I’ve repeatedly tried to explain why the Premier League was foolish to package rights to every fixture across two of their Match Days as a single TV package when they sold their latest UK TV rights last year. Amazon Prime ended up buying those packages after neither Sky nor BT felt they were worth buying.…
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What Do Disney+ and HBO Max Mean for Sky?
Disney+ and Sky Earlier this year, we finally got some detail on Disney’s upcoming new service, Disney+. The new streaming service will launch on November 12 this year in the US at a monthly cost of $6.99 – discounted a little to $69.99 if you pay for a year up front. Or you can pay…
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Champagne Superova: Sport and TV
Sunday was an incredible day for sport. Personally, I spent quite a lot of time flicking between ITV4 and Eurosport’s coverage of Stage 9 of the Tour de France, with South Africa’s Daryl Impey winning from a breakaway on France’s national day. But I was also watching quite a lot of cricket – especially early…