Category: TV
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A Bit Of Audio To Listen To
I’ve heard a few really entertaining media related pieces of audio in the last couple of days. The first is a Daily Mayo podcast from last week when Gabby Logan was sitting in for Simon Mayo. She was interviewing ITV Executive Chairman, Michael Grade. Unfortunately, because it was last week, and the BBC only keeps…
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Pushing Daisies – Episode 2
This is just too brilliant. Just when you think that ITV has done something interesting and innovative – showing US series Pushing Daisies in a primetime slot (albeit Saturday night at 9pm) – they do something so boneheaded, you just can’t believe it. ITV has spent a fortune promoting this series – I’ve seen copious…
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Bear Grylls
Sadly, Harry Hill’s TV Burp finished its run last weekend, so he’s not going to get to comment on the new series of Born Survivor with Bear Grylls! Now regular readers may recall that in the past I’ve been a little cynical about the absolute reality of everything Bear did in the last series. Then…
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!@$%ing Bugs
I came late to it, but I really enjoyed the first series of Gavin and Stacey. So when the second series started on BBC Three a few weeks ago, I started watching it. As a rule, I can’t stand BBC Three. But, with both Gavin and Stacey, and Pulling, it actually has a couple of…
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HD on Freeview
So today, Ofcom has announced that it’s planning a reorganisation of Freeview to allow one of the current six multiplexes to be made available for high definition services. New Freeview boxes will come onstream, and improved compression rates will to allow these new services to squeeze into the space. At the same time services currently…
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Merlin
Very interesting news from the US where NBC has just announced its schedule for the next year from the autumn (fall) through to next summer. Most interesting for Brits to note is that Merlin, a series being made by Shine for the BBC, and starring Anthony Head, is going to air on Sunday nights from…
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Sky And The Champions’ League
Media Guardian are reporting that Sky has won the majority of the Champions’ League games for the three years beginning in 2009. It’s thought that they offered more than £240m representing nearly a 50% increase over what they had previously paid. For that sum, they get all the games bar one – a single Wednesday…
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Taxi To The Dark Side
The winner of this year’s Oscar for Documentary Feature was Taxi To The Dark Side. This film was shown on BBC2 as part of the Storyville strand. Having just won an Oscar, the BBC are obviously rushing to repeat the film for those of us (including me) who missed it. So when and where is…
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BBC Three – Designed For Two Year Olds
We all know that bright and shiny things attract children (and magpies). You only have to look at CBeebies to see examples of that: Teletubbies, The Tweenies, Bob the Builder etc. I can only assume somebody over at BBC Three is aged about two and a half. Otherwise they wouldn’t have decided that a bright…
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1 Billion Viewers
Yesterday the news broke that the Premier League is considering giving everyone an extra fixture which will be played in one of five cities internationally. I’ll leave others to debate the pros and cons of such a scheme – or “brand extension”. But plenty of reports claim that “an estimated 1bn people watched the Premier…
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Timewatch – The History of a Mystery (1996)
“Someone” uploaded my favourite ever episode of Timewatch. It’s an episode that examines, seemingly at face value, the claims of such books as The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail (you know, the one Dan Brown has evidently written). At the time this documentary was shown, there’d been a rush of similar titles. Indeed, the…
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Derren Brown: The System
I do enjoy most of Derren Brown’s programmes. The last series was a bit poor however, with episodes in which he essentially “kidnapped” a person and had them “wake up” in Marrakesh, not really going anywhere. But he’s a great magician and showman who positively reinvigorated magic on television. The System began with Brown claiming…
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V Chips
From January 1 2000, every TV set in the US has had to have something called a “V Chip” built into it. Effectively this is a parental control system similar to those found on systems such as Sky digiboxes, that allows parents to limit what their children are allowed to watch. A rating code for…