Tag: TV

  • Don’t Bring Back TFI Friday: And Why Are Today’s Most “Dangerous” Presenters All Working on Radio 2?

    This isn’t a proper review of TFI Friday since I must admit that I dipped out a few times during near two hour run-time of last night’s show – and it over-ran massively last night, even becoming a joke in the show. TFI Friday was a terrific programme of its time. Because Chris Evans first…

  • 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…

  • Goodbye Comedy Central UK

    Or more particularly, Comedy Central Extra. But it comes to the same thing. I noticed a rather dispiriting Tweet earlier today from Hadley Freeman. As @ComedyCentralUK has INSANELY stopped showing The Daily Show, I'm RT-ing Jon Stewart's take on the UK election http://t.co/wyjqNa5Xaw — Hadley Freeman (@HadleyFreeman) May 12, 2015 That can’t be good. As…

  • Should We Be Surprised That 60% of TV Programmes Get Zero Ratings?

    On Twitter James Cridland highlighted a stat reported within a Media Guardian story on Local TV: Astonishing stat deep in this story: 60% of all UK TV programmes get offically *no viewers* according to BARB. http://t.co/AosYmY0K9t — James Cridland (@JamesCridland) April 22, 2015 Is this a shocking number? Are vast swathes of television going unwatched…

  • The Failure of London Live

    “Local TV” has not been a rip-roaring success. It was former Culture Minister Jeremy Hunt’s passion project, before a reshuffle saw him move to Health. But once the train had started rolling it couldn’t be stopped, and Ofcom has dutifully carried out DCMS’s wishes and rolled out a series of stations. It’s still doing so.…

  • Streaming TV Boxes

    So here’s a question. You live in the UK, and you want to buy a cheap streaming box to pop under your TV and get all the main channels. Perhaps you don’t have a smart TV, or it’s not smart enough and doesn’t have the features you really want. There’s a plethora of devices hitting…

  • Watching HD TV

    At home, I have two ways to watch broadcast HD television. I can either watch via Freeview or Sky HD (Strictly speaking, my TV also has Freesat built in, but I’ve never enabled it). In a Freeview world, should I chose to watch one of the biggest channels: BBC1, BBC2, ITV, C4 or C5 I…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • Is Golf Becoming as Invisible as Cricket?

    According to a report in the Telegraph, the Royal & Ancient is considering whether or not they extend their 50 year broadcasting agreement with the BBC for future coverage of golf, or whether some or all rights go to Sky. In reality, I suspect that this is a negotiating tactic to try to squeeze a…

  • 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…

  • What I Watched, Listened To and Read Over Christmas

    You may or may not have enjoyed my Radio Times suggestions. I didn’t always follow them myself. But in the spirit of honesty, this is what I did watch over Christmas: The final two episodes of Cabin Pressure were recorded back in February, but only reached the airwaves over Christmas with the story being essentially…