Category: TV
-
Don’t Bring Back TFI Friday: And Why Are Today’s Most “Dangerous” Presenters All Working on Radio 2?
This isn’t a proper review of TFI Friday since I must admit that I dipped out a few times during near two hour run-time of last night’s show – and it over-ran massively last night, even becoming a joke in the show. TFI Friday was a terrific programme of its time. Because Chris Evans first…
-
The Champions’ League – Part Two
This is a follow up to yesterday’s piece anticipating BT’s changes in packages having won exclusive Champions’ League and Europa League rights, although I’m mostly talking about Champions’ League coverage here. Well BT has announced its new football deal and there were some things we expected, and some things we didn’t. Yes, Gary Lineker is…
-
The Champions’ League – Part One
On Tuesday we will hear what BT has in store for its coverage of the Champions’ League and Europa League. It outbid Sky and ITV to win exclusive rights for the next three seasons. The expectation is that they’ll announce Gary Lineker as co-presenting with Jake Humphries over Tuesday and Wednesday nights, with a £5…
-
Ofcom on Audience Attitudes to Broadcast Media
Ofcom, the UK broadcast regulator, carries out an awful lot of research, most of which it publishes on its website. But people are lazy, and they mostly just look at executive summaries and press releases. But there’s a lot more to it than that. There are often copious appendices with much more detail, and beyond…
-
Goodbye Comedy Central UK
Or more particularly, Comedy Central Extra. But it comes to the same thing. I noticed a rather dispiriting Tweet earlier today from Hadley Freeman. As @ComedyCentralUK has INSANELY stopped showing The Daily Show, I'm RT-ing Jon Stewart's take on the UK election http://t.co/wyjqNa5Xaw — Hadley Freeman (@HadleyFreeman) May 12, 2015 That can’t be good. As…
-
The Failure of London Live
“Local TV” has not been a rip-roaring success. It was former Culture Minister Jeremy Hunt’s passion project, before a reshuffle saw him move to Health. But once the train had started rolling it couldn’t be stopped, and Ofcom has dutifully carried out DCMS’s wishes and rolled out a series of stations. It’s still doing so.…
-
Streaming TV Boxes
So here’s a question. You live in the UK, and you want to buy a cheap streaming box to pop under your TV and get all the main channels. Perhaps you don’t have a smart TV, or it’s not smart enough and doesn’t have the features you really want. There’s a plethora of devices hitting…
-
Watching HD TV
At home, I have two ways to watch broadcast HD television. I can either watch via Freeview or Sky HD (Strictly speaking, my TV also has Freesat built in, but I’ve never enabled it). In a Freeview world, should I chose to watch one of the biggest channels: BBC1, BBC2, ITV, C4 or C5 I…
-
Bosch and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt
I remain unconvinced about whether or not streaming services are really the future. They’ve certainly had more hits than misses recently, but those will come in due course. “Traditional” media never strived to create a deliberate failure after all. But that all said, Amazon and Netflix have had a couple of stormers in the last…
-
Is Golf Becoming as Invisible as Cricket?
According to a report in the Telegraph, the Royal & Ancient is considering whether or not they extend their 50 year broadcasting agreement with the BBC for future coverage of golf, or whether some or all rights go to Sky. In reality, I suspect that this is a negotiating tactic to try to squeeze a…
-
Why is Discovery So Poor in Amazon and Netflix?
Over on The Medium is Not Enough, Rob Buckley notes that Amazon has quietly launched a number of new US series onto the service with hardly any publicity. And I find it particularly interesting because I really hadn’t noticed despite spending quite a few hours on Amazon over the weekend. While a lot of this…
-
Mozart in the Jungle
A mini-review of this new Amazon series, because I think it deserves it! First things first: there’s no doubt that this is a terrible title for a TV series. It’s supposed to shout something like “classical music in New York City” but I’m really not sure it does. I complain when titles are boring, but…