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Arguing Your Point
Robert McCrum in today’s Observer has written about why It’s time to ditch the prize guys – arguing that it’s time for the Booker Prize to be radically reformed from the ground up. Except, it’s really not very clear why exactly he feels it needs this change. Certainly the Booker no longer gets the TV…
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Interviewing Sigur Rós
I’ve just been watching Verity Sharp interview the members of Sigur Rós for The Culture Show, who have a new concert film – Heima – coming out next month which looks wonderful. And seemingly there’s a Culture Show special specifically about the band coming up in November. The interview was somewhat better than one they…
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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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Comment Spam
I’ve just been looking at this website’s “activity log” and was amazed to see how often comment spam comes in. Thank goodness that I’ve got some basic filtering in place. Yesterday there were 170 attempts to comment here (with one genuine comment), all of which failed because they didn’t pass my cunning challenge response box.…
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CDs v Downloads
For most things, if you opt to download the material rather than get physical media, if there’s any difference in price, it’s cheaper to download. Think of iTunes v CDs, or software that you can download from many sellers. There’s no postage or packaging to account for, and minimal physical production costs. So it’s odd…
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Good Timing
Today sees the BBC make its big job cuts announcement which will get loads of press coverage. So it’s completely random that ITV’s reporting on its phone-in scandal today as well. What are the chances?
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Slide
Slide is one of the more recent Hard Case Crime novels – those wonderfully trashy hard-boiled crime novels. In this instance we follow the twin stories of “Slide” and “The M.A.X.” as Max Fisher likes to call himself. The book itself, I discover, is the sequel to Bust which came out last year, also under…
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Audience Figures
The press is always talking about TV audience figures, and commonly fails to understand them at all. I’ve often railed against the ludicrous claims perpetuated around the football World Cup or the Olympics, so it was quite interesting to see this story from earlier in the year. But let’s get a little more current. There’s…
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Tommy Walsh
Can I just point you towards Tommy “Ground Force” Walsh’s My Media is today’s Media Guardian (Free registration required). A couple of choice excerpts: Normally … I get my local paper, the Hackney Gazette, because I like to know what’s going on, and on a Sunday the Sunday Express, which my wife likes. … I…
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Dave
Another day, another “new” TV channel. UK TV has decided to rename the stupidly named UK TV G2 as the even more stupidly named Dave. UK TV has never exactly inspired a great deal of confidence in me regarding its branding. For years, there was simply a channel named UK Gold with a basic premise…
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Paul Merson
Idly flicking through the free local paper, I came across this ad: It’s for a new betting shop that’s just opened locally. Obviously that’s exactly what we need more of. But much more than that was one of the celebrity attendees to the opening. Paul Merson! He was a wonderful footballer who played for Arsenal…
Podcasts, Radio, TV, Books, Cycling, Photography and More
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Yellowface/All The Lovers In The Night
Yellowface by R F Kuang I first came across R F Kuang with last year’s very enjoyable Babel, an alternate history of the British Empire told in a world where magic exists and is controlled by an elite group of individuals. Yellowface is very different, but no less enjoyable. It’s a book about books, and…
Hadrian’s Wall
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