Tag: TV
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Christmas Day 2021 Radio Times
Merry Christmas! It’s that time again, when you’re sitting down looking for something to watch or listen to. I’m here to “help”: Click on the image or here to see the listings larger. Click on the image to see the image larger. I’ve been annotating the Radio Times for quite a while. Take a look…
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Christmas Eve 2021 Radio Times
It’s my annual look at the country’s premier TV listings magazine as I run my virtual rule over what’s on regular telly (and radio), annotating my copy as I go. As ever, click through for larger versions. Larger TV listings here. Larger radio listings here. For what it’s worth, I’ve been publishing these since 2009,…
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Broadcast v Streaming
On an episode of Richard Osman’s House of Games that aired at the start of this week, there was a question in the Distinctly Average round that made me sit up. The celebrity contestants are paired up and each must answer a numerical question that is usually based around making an estimation. They’re not expected…
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The Olympics on TV in the UK
The 2012 London Olympics were perhaps the high point for UK viewers who wanted to watch the Olympic Games. For a home event, the BBC pulled out all the stops with coverage across BBC One, BBC Two and BBC Three (then still on broadcast). There was a vast array of other broadcasts too, with up…
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CNN+
It’s interesting to see that CNN is launching a new subscription streaming service which it is imaginatively titling CNN+, because all streaming services from “legacy” providers have indicate that they’re streaming by adding that “+”. The service will launch in 2022 and will co-exist with CNN’s existing brands including CNN and CNN International. But there…
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Who Pays For the Super League?
Unless you’ve been asleep, you will know that, at time of writing, 12 named football clubs have agreed to join something called the European Super League. Another three teams are as yet unnamed. Obviously the whole thing is a sporting farrago, which guarantees the founder members permanent places in this league regardless of how well…
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Super Bowl Technical Shortcomings
While it’s a few hours too early to know how many millions of Americans watched this year’s Super Bowl, it’ll certainly be the biggest audience of the year, being the major television event. Even with the Tokyo Olympics still scheduled for this summer, there won’t be as many people watching at one time as there…
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Amazon and Rugby
This weekend the hastily arranged Autumn Nations Cup competition kicks off, with eight European nations playing each other in two pools initially before a finals weekend determines the winner. The competition is there to replace the usual Autumn internationals made up of southern hemisphere sides playing a series of big games in Europe. I’m sure…
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Why ‘Access’ and ‘FYI Daily’ Exist
The other night I was looking for something to watch mindlessly for a bit and noticed that action film John Wick: Chapter 2 was on Channel 5. That would be suitably mindless. So I flicked over and was presented with a needless bit of fluff about some terrible-looking new Robert De Niro film. I was…
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Eye Level
This Sunday sees ITV launch a reboot of one of their most famous detectives – Van Der Valk. Based on a series of novels by Nicolas Freeling, which were mostly published in the 1960s, the TV series began life in 1972 with Barry Foster starring as Commisaris Van Der Walk of the Amsterdam police. Produced…
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The Nadir of Local TV
Local TV has been a failure since the start. It was started on a fallacy, and has proved uneconomic, with most of the stations licenced (Ofcom has stopped licencing new services) rolled into a single service with minimal local output. But London Live has lived on. Owned by Evgeny Lebedev, also the owner of the…
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The Premier League in an SVOD World – Running the Numbers
This week, Amazon Prime in the UK has begun the first of its streaming-only games offered to Prime subscribers. You will recall that during the last UK round of Premier League TV rights, a package comprising of the entirety of one mid-week “matchday” and all the Boxing Day games was offered. In the end Amazon…
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Further Apple TV+ Thoughts
This Friday Apple TV+ launches globally. In the UK, the PR launch is already well underway. Stars from some of the first tranche of Apple shows have been made available to various media outlets – Jason Malmoa was on Graham Norton for example. And there has been an absolute blitz of outdoor advertising for the…