Category: Media
-
Writers Who’ve Annoyed Me In The Last 48 Hours
Sorry – there’s no good reason for this entry apart from allowing me to let some steam off. First of all there was Kathryn Flett in The Observer. She gets 1600 words to write about television from the last week, and she manages to waste precisely 884 of them on I’m A Celebrity. She’s so…
-
The Future of Radio
Today was an important day in radio, as Ofcom reported its statement on the future of commercial radio in the UK. As most of the country is probably aware – certainly readers of this blog should be – we are just beginning a massive five year switchover from analogue to digital TV. By 2012 the…
-
Correcting More Misleading Audience Figures
As you may know, it’s the fiftieth anniversary of the Today programme on Radio 4 this week, and there have been one or two pieces about it. A large piece in The Observer and something written by presenter John Humphrys himself in The Mail on Sunday. All very interesting, but the Mail piece has a…
-
Premium Rate Services On ITV
So finally Deloitte’s report on premium rate services on ITV has been published. Well I say “published” but in fact, what we’re getting is an 11 page summary detailing failures on three specific programmes, and mentioning a number of other shows in passing. Once again, it’s turned out that ITV producers and researchers were regularly…
-
Good Timing
Today sees the BBC make its big job cuts announcement which will get loads of press coverage. So it’s completely random that ITV’s reporting on its phone-in scandal today as well. What are the chances?
-
Audience Figures
The press is always talking about TV audience figures, and commonly fails to understand them at all. I’ve often railed against the ludicrous claims perpetuated around the football World Cup or the Olympics, so it was quite interesting to see this story from earlier in the year. But let’s get a little more current. There’s…
-
Tommy Walsh
Can I just point you towards Tommy “Ground Force” Walsh’s My Media is today’s Media Guardian (Free registration required). A couple of choice excerpts: Normally … I get my local paper, the Hackney Gazette, because I like to know what’s going on, and on a Sunday the Sunday Express, which my wife likes. … I…
-
Thankless Task
The Sun cut its price in London and the South East today, from 35p to 20p. People in London and the South East obviously need to save our pennies more so than people in the rest of the UK. Goodness, with one bedroom flats going for £300,000, you need to save all the 15 pences…
-
Will the Standard Survive
In today’s Media Guardian, Alan Ruddock ponders whether the venerable London Evening Standard will survive the onslaught that has been News International’s London Paper and Associated’s very own London Lite. It has been a year since the two free papers launched, and neither of them are yet profitable. The Standard has unsurprisingly taken something of…
-
Still on the Payroll
Via Roy Greenslade’s blog come this link to a story about a mythical Fleet Street feature writer. Wonderful stuff!
-
Scotland for Scottish People
In this week’s Marketing magazine, Ray Snoddy discusses the Alex Salmond proposed Scottish Broadcasting Commission (not online currently, but it should appear somewhere here – free registration may be required). The gist of the argument is that national news emanating from London, does not cover Scottish issues properly and indeed ignores them. Many discussions about…
-
Piracy On The High Street
The last time I went to the cinema, there was a table just past the ticket desks where, should a guard have been on duty, they checked bags for nefarious things such as video cameras. In fact, I had my DSLR in my bag at the time and was looking forward to having a conversation…
-
Various Bits
A couple of entertaining bits from this week’s Media Guardian. Anthony Lilley of Magic Lantern productions bemoans the BBC’s iPlayer, and in particular the pointlessness of the limitation in how long after a programme’s aired you can still get a download. And allied to that is the expiration date on programmes. He does point out…