Tag: TV

  • YouTube-ing

    YouTube is a wonderful thing. From music, to how to’s, to clips from films and TV, to game walkthrough’s and a myriad of thousand other subjects. But I confess, that I’ve always struggled with the “YouTubers.” Now that’s not to say that there aren’t personality-driven YouTube videos that I watch. There are the guys at…

  • Discovery and Sky Do a Deal

    [A follow-up/continuation of the piece I wrote the other day about the fallout between Sky and Discovery in the UK and Germany.] On Sunday morning there was an epic final at the Australian Open. Somehow the top 8 men’s players in the world conspired not to make the final, and we got a “throwback” final…

  • Sky/Discovery Carriage Dispute

    Channel carriage disputes are relatively rare in the UK, but we’re in for a sizeable one right now, with Discovery publicly stepping forward and saying that from the end of this month, Sky subscribers may no longer get access to a Discovery channels. It seems that the two companies have been unable to reach agreement…

  • Grand Tour

    We’re several weeks into Amazon’s megabudget Top Gear remake, “Grand Tour,” and you can’t fail to have noticed it has arrived. There have been ads everywhere from the sides of buses to TV, and of course, all over the front page of the Amazon website. Even Amazon’s packaging covers their grinning faces right now. We’ve…

  • Celebrity RIP Tweets

    We have just come through 2016, and for many, it won’t be fondly remembered. Election and referendum results notwithstanding, there were a number of deaths – often of people very much revered. Today, when someone dies, we learn about it almost instantly. The news will turn up in social feeds. Alerts on our smartphones will…

  • An Egregiously Bad Chart

    The chart above is screen-grabbed from an otherwise excellent ITV4 documentary called When Football Changed the World. It looked at the state of the game as the old First Division broke away to form the Premier League at the end of the 80s and start of the 90s. It interviewed plenty of key figures from…

  • The Music Industry As Depicted in TV Dramas

    We may currently being experiencing peak TV, but even that doesn’t really explain the recent glut of TV series set around the music industry. A couple of weeks ago, Netflix’s new magnum opus was released – The Get Down from Baz Luhrmann. The series is rumoured to have cost a record amount, at least on…

  • John Oliver on Brexit

    On Sunday night, HBO in the US aired a new episode of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. The second half of the show was a long explanation/opinion piece from Oliver about what Brexit is (this is a show aimed at Americans after all), and was essentially a 15 minute piece imploring Britain to Vote…

  • Euro 2016 – Staying on TV

    As Euro 2016 kicks off in France tonight, my inbox has become flooded with nonsense PR stories. My email address has recently been sold to a number of PR agencies and I get a wide variety of emails asking me if I’m interested in writing about things I’m not interested in writing about. I silently…

  • Champions’ League on BT

    Since I had a look at the Europa League viewership the other day, I thought it was only fair to consider the Champions’ League Final – particularly as some every-so-slightly misleading press information seems to have escaped. First off, it’s worth saying that this year’s final was one of the worst directed finals I’ve seen…

  • Do You Know What Product Placement Is?

    Ofcom has just produced a slightly dry sounding report on “UK Audience Attitudes Towards Broadcast Media” based on some of its Media Tracker findings. If you work in UK commercial radio, then the good news is that most people don’t think you’re running too many ads right now. 51% of commercial radio listeners say that…

  • Satire, Parliament and Dennis Skinner

    Last week Labour stalwart Dennis Skinner was ejected from the House of Commons for the rest of the Parliamentary day for calling the Prime Minister “Dodgy Dave” during his statement on his father’s off-shore affairs to Parliament. The Speaker, John Bercow, didn’t like it, and Skinner was forced to leave. Skinner regularly entertains with his…