adambowie.com

Category: TV

  • Chronicle of BBC Three’s Death Foretold

    Today news began to leak out about how the BBC is next going to be saving money. BBC Three is going “online-only”. The official announcement isn’t until tomorrow, but there seems enough truth to the rumours so far. From a selfishly personal perspective, I’m rather glad that it’s BBC Three that’s getting the [online] “chop”…

  • The Worst Place in the World for a Big Live Global TV Audience

    In a nice piece from Marina Hyde in today’s Guardian, she links to a New Yorker piece from a few years ago that disavows the idea that a billion people might watch the Oscars. Starting from the fact that only 15% of Americans watch their own movie awards, it seems incredibly unlikely that the numbers…

  • Battle of the Streaming Services

    This morning, Amazon UK announced a shake-up of its streaming offering, hitherto called LoveFilm. From next week, the service gets rebranded as Amazon “Prime Instant Video”, but perhaps more importantly, it gets rolled into the regular Amazon Prime offering. So far, so good, unless you were attached to the LoveFilm name. However there are price…

  • Viewing Habits

    On the train home this evening, I noticed an outdoor advertisement for Sky Atlantic’s big new series, True Detective. So I posted this on Twitter: Fascinating to see @skyatlantic advertising its new drama without an airdate. The way we watch drama now or niche? pic.twitter.com/SXYWihw5M4 — Adam Bowie (@adambowie) February 17, 2014 Now I was…

  • TV Apps’ Shortcomings

    You know when something should be easy but it just isn’t? Well this is what I often find with apps on smart TVs and other devices. They’re just there to try us. While they function adequately for normal use, it’s those edge cases where they break. Here are two examples. Last weekend, I decided I’d…

  • Possible Sale of Channel 5

    In recent days it has been fairly widely reported that Richard Desmond, owner of Channel 5, Express Newspapers and other more “specialist” TV services, is looking to sell Channel 5. Desmond bought Channel 5 for a knockdown price of £103.5m in 2008, and he’s run it pretty shrewdly, keeping costs down and turning a profit.…

  • Is There Room for Horror on UK TV?

    I mentioned that I’d enjoyed Mark Gatiss’ version of The Tractate Middoth over Christmas. And although that is certainly more of a ghost story than a horror story, it made me wonder why we don’t get more horror series on British television. Series like American Horror Story, and arguably The Walking Dead, prove that there’s…

  • Radio and TV Favourites

    I think my favourite TV programmes over the Christmas and New Year period were a series of films that I didn’t spot at all when I was going through the Radio Times. Endeavour: Everest was a series of three films made by Leo Dickinson shot in and around Mount Everest between 1976 and 1991. They…

  • Down The Line

    Since the BBC moved large parts of their new output – notably Five Live and BBC Breakfast – up to Salford, one inevitability is an increased number of “down the lines” from London. It’s almost inevitable in the case of politicians, but other experts or guests, who cannot make it up to Salford the night…

  • Ashes Highlights This Winter

    Returning to a familiar topic, I note that there are no Ashes highlights on Channel 5 this winter. Instead they’ll be broadcast on Pick TV – Sky’s free-to-air channel available on most platforms including Freeview. They’ll be broadcast nightly at 10pm, just before play begins the following day. Live coveragewill of course be on Sky…

  • BT and Champions’ League Football

    I must admit that like many others, I was surprised to learn over the weekend that BT had bought all the Champions’ League live TV rights exlcusively. At a stroke they’ve knocked both ITV and Sky out of the picture starting from the 2015 season. I’m going to try to unpick the subject a bit…

  • The Future of The Sky at Night

    In the last day or so, there’s suddenly been a bit of press speculation about the future of The Sky at Night – the BBC’s long running monthly astronomy programme. And when I say long running, I mean it. It’s been going since 1957. In some ways this isn’t surprising. It always felt to me…

  • News Picture Quality

    Is the quality of the video we’re being served on the news decreasing over time? I rather suspect it is. What am I talking about? Well go back to last Wednesday morning, and watch BBC Breakfast. This is a programme with a significant viewership and sizeable resource. But one of the items on the programme…