Category: Media

Today Ofcom have published, at great length, a document on their findings of the Make Poverty History campaign being in breach of the Broadcasting Act. I’ve spoken before about this – to a limited extent. As I’ve always said, nobody could rightly complain about the aims of this coalition of charities. But they do have…

I’m quite excited by The Guardian’s new look that should appear on Monday in the “Berliner” format – essentially tabloid, but around a centimetre wider and 9 centimetres taller. There’s a piece from Press Gazette going through the paper. What this re-launch isn’t is just a shrinking of the current design into a tabloid format.…

In the last couple of weeks, there have been a lot of reports talking about television and radio digital adoption. Let’s go through a summary of the various points made recently. Television Digital Consensus Report video Networks Ltd (the company behind DSL-delivered Home Choice) commissioned a report from the London Business School into what the…

Lord Birt, the former Director General of the BBC, and now a “blue skies thinker” for the government has been reported as saying that Radio 4 is a “national treasure”, “but would benefit from the challenge of a strong rival”. I have a couple of problems with this. First, I can’t find the exact quote…

Anyone else noticed how Fever Pitch has been renamed A Perfect Catch for the UK. Of course it’s an Americanisation of the Nick Hornby novel, and has already been made into a film starring Colin Firth (is it me, or is the US DVD cover of the Firth version a little misleading?).

Make sure that you send some decent headshots to the guys at Media Guardian.

For years, it was always really difficult to get hold of proper US newspapers in Britain. Certainly you could get the International Herald Tribune, and also USA Today. But not The New York Times. Tower Records used to carry quite a few papers but they weren’t cheap and were limited to the Sunday editions. WH…

Well that’s actually a misleading headline. The BBC is carrying a report about television programme exports. Based on a survey carried out by Pact – the organisation that operates in support of independent television producers. The report goes on to list Gillette World Sports as the biggest selling TV programme in terms of countries (or…

As I said at the time, they made everyone with a cameraphone check it in at the recent Hitchhiker’s screening. Yet at last night’s Star Wars screening, they just wanted to make sure we switched our phones off (and didn’t bring in video cameras on tripods – that kind of thing). All I needed was…

The new look Independent launched today. The fact that it’s moved from six to seven columns per page is absolutely an advertising thing since newspaper advertising is sold by the column inch. Get an extra column and you have all those extra inches to sell! But the paper did need a redesign. Nothing too radical,…

Ofcom have today reported that digital TV has reached nearly 60% penetration. In the last quarter: Sky has grown by around 2.5% Freeview’s grown by 17.3% Cable’s gown by 0.5% Pretty obviously, Freeview’s driving this forward. And there’s still not a real free-to-view satellite option since there’s no way of getting cards to watch ITV,…

My letter about TV ratings was published in today’s Guardian (free reg. reqd.). I hadn’t really meant it to be published with my company’s name attached as I was writing in a personal capacity – a small ticking off resulted, but no harm done (you never know if some other division of our owners would…

I think this story sums up everything that’s wrong in the world of Star Wars. If you pay for it, you get a trailer earlier. And you get the full size version that no-one else gets. This is like paying for a commerical that’s served to you! Compare and contrast the Star Wars world with…