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London Riots
Enough has really been said already about the looting and rioting that took place last week, without me needing to wade in with any more “insight”. That said… I’m very disturbed by all the talk of “shutting down” social media if such events arise in the future. Do we also close down the Royal Mail…
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London Surrey Cycle Classic 2011
I spent a fair amount of yesterday morning in Richmond Park watching this “London Prepares” dry-run of the 2012 Olympic Cycle Race pass out into Surrey, and then back again later on. Eventual winner, Mark Cavendish is in this photo – wearing the green helmet and sunglasses. More photos here.
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Why Local Television Plans Are Doomed
Jeremy Hunt, the Culture Secretary, has just released details on the latest part of his plan to start very local television services in the UK. I talked a little about this earlier in the year. Allow me to expand a little more. As you may or may not be aware, local TV is something of…
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It’s Not Rioting – It’s Looting
I’ve been a bit disappointed in the coverage we’ve had so far about the events of Sunday evening. What became very clear from following reports on news media and the internet is that this was organised criminality. I was returning to Enfield Town station from a lovely day out cycling when I saw reports of…
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Some Good Recent Radio
I sometimes find This American Life a little irritating. It’s hard to quite put my finger on why I find it this way, but I do. That said, it’s mostly excellent and well worth subscribing to their podcast. A couple of weeks ago they broadcast When Patents Attack – a thorough look at the patent…
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Internet Listening and RAJAR
I thought I’d expand a little on one aspect of RAJAR that has been reported on a bit, and has been seen by some as surprising. I touched on the internet listening numbers a little in my summary piece on this quarter’s RAJAR figures. I said: One oddity in the figures is the apparent fall…
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RAJAR – Q2 2011
Another quarter flies by, and the new radio listening figures are published. The first thing to say is the overall listening is up. More people than ever before are listening to the radio every week – 91.7% of the population spending 1.076 billion hours tuned into the radio. One number that always attracts attention is…
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F1 on Television
The news that the BBC is sharing Formula 1 rights with Sky leaves me personally unperturbed. While some of the rule changes introduced in recent years do seem to have led to some actual over-taking, other forms of motorsport seem more interesting, and seem less like engineering competitions. However, my own ambivalence towards the “sport”…
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Satire and Parliament
Over the last few days, there’s been a bit of a Twitter-ruckus (is that a word?) about the lack of More 4’s Global Edition of The Daily Show this week. Graham Linehan has full details (and this New Statesman piece essentially regurgitates Linehan), but essentially the episode had to be pulled because the main item…
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Following Le Tour
No. Sadly, I don’t mean spending large parts of July in a camper van driving between the Pyrenees and the Alps, joining the multi-national throngs clinging to the mountainsides. I mean following the Tour, on-air and online. Assuming that you’re not “available to view” during the daytime on weekdays, your first decision is whether to…
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eBook Readers – Reappraised to an Extent
I love books. Real, physical books. Two arrived in the post just today! And I have 30 pages left to read in the thriller in my bag. In fact, why am I typing this in my lunch break and not reading it? As such, I’ve not bothered buying something like a Kindle. They seem vastly…
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Phone-Hacking Media Talk
Last night I spent a fascinating hour at a “live” recording of The Guardian’s Media Talk podcast, presented by Matt Wells, in a packed room with somewhere around 100 Guardian readers in attendance. It was devoted completely to the hacking scandal, and featured some of the key players in the case including Nick Davies, the…
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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