Category: TV
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Top Gear USA
Mediaguardian reports that NBC has ordered a pilot of Top Gear to be made in the US and hosted by Americans. Now aside from the fact that with the writers’ strike now in its 11th or 12th week, the networks need non-scripted programming to fill out the end of the season, could the choice of…
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TV News Technology
Today’s Broadcast reveals that Channel 4’s News At Noon now has a new on-screen touch set that allows the presenter to playout items. Krishnan Guru-Murthy is able to “play material directly from the ITV broadcast server, including live rendered graphics and flash sequences. He can also play in sound bites and pre-cut pictures or bring…
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British Version of Wallander
It’s taken an awfully long time to arrive, but Broadcast magazine this week reports that BBC1 has commissioned a three part series based on Henning Mankell’s Wallander novels. The three novels being adapted are Sidetracked, Firewall and One Step Behind, although Broadcast speaks of them as the “first three novels in the series.” That’s not…
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Digital Switchover – USA
Reading Robert X Cringely’s 2008 predictions, there’s one that I’m 100% certain of: 2) This one is really for 2009 but I know we’ll see the effects in 2008. The DTV conversion, where U.S. analog broadcast television stations are turned off in February 2009 and we all have to switch to digital TVs or to…
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Bad Language
Evidently a few people complained about the Christmas special of the Catherine Tate Show on BBC1 which was broadcast on Christmas Day. Their complaints were about the language, even though the programme went out at 10.30pm. My complaint would simply be that Tate is unfunny. She does have a handful of amusing characters, all of…
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Quality
A recent entry on Boing Boing pointed to an article in Rolling Stone magazine which highlighted the fact that producers mix tracks so that they sound good when they’re ripped to an mp3 player, at the same time, removing the subtleties that a wider dynamic range allows. Boing Boing’s Cory Doctorow comments “…it seems to…
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Terrible Misfortune
There was a Charlie Brooker Screenwipe end of year special this week And if you read this entry before Saturday 29 December, you can see it here. Alternatively, find it on YouTube. Anyway, Brooker took a well aimed swipe at The Jeremy Kyle Show, and you can’t really fault him for doing so. He concentrated…
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Voting on Strictly Come Dancing
OK, OK. I watch SCD as it’s known to afficiandos. Anyway, I have a serious question. In these days of total accountability, why does the BBC not publish absolute voting numbers for the programme. The reason that I, or anyone else watching the programme, am interested, is that on Sunday, the two celebrities who faced…
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Correcting More Misleading Audience Figures
As you may know, it’s the fiftieth anniversary of the Today programme on Radio 4 this week, and there have been one or two pieces about it. A large piece in The Observer and something written by presenter John Humphrys himself in The Mail on Sunday. All very interesting, but the Mail piece has a…
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Voting
From today’s Observer: “Given that more people vote to evict contestants from the Big Brother house than in general elections…” This is something that you keep hearing. It’s simply not true. It’s nowhere near true. The story I’ve just linked on the BBC News site tells us that 27,128,130 votes were cast in total the…
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Premium Rate Services On ITV
So finally Deloitte’s report on premium rate services on ITV has been published. Well I say “published” but in fact, what we’re getting is an 11 page summary detailing failures on three specific programmes, and mentioning a number of other shows in passing. Once again, it’s turned out that ITV producers and researchers were regularly…
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In The Air Tonight
You can’t move for Phil Collins at the moment. Geneis has just embarked on a new tour of North America for the first time in something like fifteen years. There’s a new book out about the band. But mostly, there’s that Cadbury’s ad: Over in the States, there’s a new ABC sitcom called Carpoolers which…
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Kids – Don’t Do Video Piracy
Tonights episode of The IT Crowd was as great as ever, and opened up with a mock video piracy warning: