Category: Media
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Privatising Radio 1 and Radio 2
In today’s FT, the former chairman of Endemol UK, Peter Bazalgette argues for the BBC selling off Radio 1 and Radio 2. As part of an argument to solve the BBC’s problem of facing losing a “top-slice” of the licence fee, Bazalgette has noted that the BBC still has a 55% share of radio. His…
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Digital Radio – What Now?
(First off, it’s worth me reiterating that these are my personal views and don’t necessarily reflect those of my employer) The following is a revision of a comment I made to a blog posting by The Guardian’s Matt Wells last week. I think it largely addresses the issues of where radio – and commercial radio…
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Radio News
GCap’s announcement on Monday about its plans for the future were big news this week in the radio world (I’ll get around to some of my thoughts in due course), and the media sales trade magazine Media Week gave its cover lead to the story. GCap’s withdrawal from Digital One and the knock on effect…
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BAFTAs 2008
9.00pm The BAFTAs begin and we’re told by our host, Jonathan Ross, that this is has been a great year for films. We see a montage of clips from various films. For some reason, Transformers is in there. 9.01pm It’s clear that the sound is completely out of kilter with the left and right channels…
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MMR and Autism
The Guardian has a front page report on yet another study which should finally dismiss any links people might believe can be made between the MMR vaccination and autism. This is accompanied by a leader. But as you can see, there’s also an advert on P17 of G2 for a company called Wellcare which plainly…
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Bedroom TV
A couple of week’s ago Charlie Brooker wrote about the fun madness that is Bedroom TV – a channel where members of the public video themselves lip-syncing to pop songs. Fast forward a week or so, and we put together a leaving video for a much loved colleague who was departing after more than ten…
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BBC Shops
A couple of weeks ago I noted that the BBC Shop in Norwich had shut down, and it was pointed out to me that all the shops had been closed last year, apart from the one in TV Centre itself – but that’s only really open to BBC staff, and those who are visiting (studio…
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Valuable Advertising Space
Imagine making your first trip to London. You want to see the sights, so where do you go? I’m not talking about shopping or museums – just the sights. Well you’ll probably want to see Buckingham Palace, Tower Bridge and the Tower of London. The London Eye’s an essential trip these days if the queues…
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Top Gear USA
Mediaguardian reports that NBC has ordered a pilot of Top Gear to be made in the US and hosted by Americans. Now aside from the fact that with the writers’ strike now in its 11th or 12th week, the networks need non-scripted programming to fill out the end of the season, could the choice of…
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The Tens
I spent the ten o’clock hour flicking a bit to see the return of Sir Trevor and News at Ten, and to see what the BBC was doing. The opening title sequence was actually pretty good, although it felt like there were a few too many bongs. ITV had an exclusive interview with someone related…
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TV News Technology
Today’s Broadcast reveals that Channel 4’s News At Noon now has a new on-screen touch set that allows the presenter to playout items. Krishnan Guru-Murthy is able to “play material directly from the ITV broadcast server, including live rendered graphics and flash sequences. He can also play in sound bites and pre-cut pictures or bring…
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Dates For Your Diaries
Well… dates for my diary anyway. But I thought that I’d share them (it’s that time of year after all). A couple of programmes coming up that seem well worth listening to and watching: Sunday 6 January 2008, BBC Four – BBC Proms featuring the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela. This is the performance…
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Dave
In Media Guardian’s review of the year, they’ve got a piece celebrating the success of “Dave.” Dave, you’ll no doubt recall, is the channel previously known as UK TV G2. And in an “inspired” piece of marketing, it was renamed Dave; minimal changes were made to programming, and success has followed. The numbers are hard…