Category: Media
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Film Partnerships…
…or product placement/licence agreements. In my review of Iron Man yesterday, I neglected to mention the crass product placement throughout the film. We saw an LG phone used on more than one occasion, with the US network, Verizon, getting an on-screen namecheck too. Then there was Audi. One scene of Tony Stark (aka Iron Man)…
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Virgin Radio Sold
So finally, after months, and years even of sale process, Virgin Radio, my employer, is being sold. The purchaser is TIML Golden Square Ltd, which is a subsidiary of Times of India Media Group. One era ends, and another begins! More from The Times here. Also, the BBC (carefully saying that the sale is “reported”…
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Digital TV in the US
In exactly 265 days, analogue TV in the US will be switched off, and everyone will need to switch to digital TV. That is, the whole country is switching over on a single day. All 300m or so of the population. One day. Does that really seem like a smart idea? I don’t think so,…
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Overnights
If you woke up yesterday morning to learn that the audience for Wednesday night’s Champions’ League Final in Moscow peaked at a very creditable 14.6m, then you’re using overnights. These are the figures that broadcasters and others get the next day to record how many people saw a programme on TV last night. They’re produced…
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Privatising Radios 1 & 2
At the Radio 3.0 conference today in London, outgoing GCap chairman Richard Eyre called for the BBC to privatise Radios 1 and 2. Eyre, stressing that he was speaking in a personal capacity, said it was no longer appropriate that the BBC should spend nearly £100m a year on the two mainstream national stations –…
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Crusoe
I noted recently that NBC had bought Merlin, a new series commissioned by the BBC and produced by Shine for broadcasting this autumn. At the time, I hypothesised that this was probably the first British series since The Avengers that had been bought by a major US network for its primetime schedule. Well, Power begs…
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Fine TV
Isn’t TV great at the moment? We’re nearly into summer, and Euro 2008 will overtake BBC1 and ITV1, but the sounds of cupboards being scraped are already being heard. Starting last Sunday, and continuing for the next three weeks, is a new run of everyone’s favourite – Ultimate Force with Ross Kemp. I say “new”,…
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Future of Public Service Broadcasting
With Ofcom’s review underway, and with the usual calls for the BBC’s cash to be spread a bit thinner, with “top-slicing” and the like, commentators are often keen for the UK to adopt a model similar to public television in the US. There, cash is raised by subscribers pledging money directly. Relatively little state and…
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The Mysteries of Scheduling
It’s obviously too complicated a story for me to comprehend, but some recent scheduling decisions really don’t make a great deal of sense to me. First of all there’s Saturday nights. No, I’m not talking about Pushing Daisies on ITV1, although that really did make no sense. I’m more interested in the general start and…
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It Tests Well
“But here, research is still king and the audience is apparently saying it wants lots of familiar oldies, especially from the 1980s, and – at the time of writing – Rockstar by Nickleback more or less on the hour every hour.”
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Chinese Earthquake and the Media
Last night I was flicking around the outer reaches of Sky, and came upon CCTV just as the top of the hour was approaching. So I decided to see how the awful Chinese earthquake was being reported in south western China on the English language version of the Chinese state TV service. Well of course…
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What Does Commercial Radio Have To Do?
I’ll once again preface this piece by saying that these are my personal views and don’t represent those of my employer. I wrote a week or so ago about the poor showing of commercial radio compared to BBC radio in the recent RAJAR results for Q1 2008. What we saw was commercial radio fall to…
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Freesat Launches
[Now updated a bit] Are we all excited by Freesat which launches today? Actually it’s a good time for it to come onstream. OK, so the website (as linked to by the BBC Press Office) doesn’t work, but it can’t all be smooth. Onboard from day one are all the BBC channels, all the ITV…