Category: Media

MediaGuardian are reporting that The Independent is considering going tabloid – in the London region at least, possibly alongside its broadsheet version in newsagents. And this could all happen by 30 September! It’d be a brave and yet very interesting decision to make. I’d love a newspaper to have the look and feel of Liberation…

Noooo. Alex Cox writes that his column next week will be his last. He’s been writing a weekly column for the film section of BBCi for quite some time now. It’s entitled A Director’s Diary but I suppose it’s moved well beyond that. Alex is ever-so-slightly left-wing, and I suppose wouldn’t be popular amongst the…

Wow. I guess I’m just living in cloud-cuckoo land. Why do I listen and watch the BBC’s news when it’s so biased? Today the Daily Telegraph, bastion of all things “fair and balanced” is launching Beebwatch, with an article penned by editor Charles Moore. Naturally he has at hand half a dozen instances of bias…

How exciting is this? I can’t wait. OK – time to step back a little. I think that while old news programmes and a number of documentaries will find their way onto websites, episodes of drama series won’t. There are already discussions under way to limit the amount of time the BBC can hold onto…

Just watched an entertaining piece about US efforts to present themselves to the Iraqis by rebroadcasting American news programming locally with Arabic voiceovers. The Guardian had a similar story this morning. Although ironically, ABC was showing an interview with The Dixie Chicks over their comments about the war and their feelings about Bush. (Incidentally, their…

This article in today’s G2 in The Guardian provides a pretty accurate overview of the live TV news coverage of the war to date. Sadly the online version is missing the fabulous printed cover of G2.

It was quite interesting to read the shortlist of books for the Independent’s Foreign Fiction prize. Interesting because I’ve actually read a couple of them. �9.99 is a very entertaining satire of the advertising industry, and The Athenian Murders is an excellent modern/ancient muder mystery. Very postmodern. I must admit that I bought a copy…

OK – so last it was The Brits. Somehow, these are still painted as a creditable awards ceremony, even though they’ve patently been nonsense since the 1989 Samantha Fox/Mick Fleetwood fiasco. Somehow, for a brief moment, I always find myself watching some of it. It’s a bit like caring what The Sun has on its…

Good to see the numbers game is alive and well. I mean of course, estimating the number of marchers at a protest rally. The BBC are saying 5,000-20,000, while CNN are saying 2,000. Associated Press (via ABC) has the police putting numbers at 3,000 with organisers saying 20,000, and finally the LA Times has police…

So why can the French produce a nice DVD magazine for only �7.50 (just under �5) that has a full film on the cover, while we can’t? I just bought a recent issue of the said magazine that featured the full version of A Simple Plan. Bargain!

David Thomson has written an interesting piece in today’s Guardian about the lack of politics in today’s films, with producers scared to introduce it, or maybe not even knowing how.

Well, no-one can really claim to be too surprised about the BBC/Crown Castle/BSkyB consortium winning. This is probably the best that can be done with very limited spectrum, and I’ll explain why. There were two main problems with ITV Digital/OnDigital. 1) Reception was poor. By trying to squeeze as many channels as possible onto the…