Tag: TV
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Eleven Sports in the UK Reported to be in Trouble
I wrote something on Twitter about this, but thought I’d elaborate a little here too. There was something of a shake-up in rights prior to the start of this football season when newcomer Eleven Sports entered the UK market and snapped up rights from Sky (La Liga) and BT Sport (Serie A and UFC) amongst…
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Sporting Disdain
There’s a major sporting occasion that has been getting underway this week and climaxes at the weekend. It’s in Europe this year, and it features teams of individuals who normally spend much of their time competing against one another in an individual capacity. I’m very excited about it. Yes, it’s the UCI Cycling Road Championships…
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Sporting Value
The new Premier League season is well under way, and it’s at this time of year that the big sports TV players tend to gather up their marketing spends and splash the cash around, trying to persuade those of us who don’t subscribe that we really should be. BT Sport has an entertaining video of…
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Succession
I’ve been keenly awaiting Succession for a while. It comes from Jesse Armstrong who created Peep Show and more recently has done a lot of work with Armando Ianucci on things like The Thick of It and Veep, the latter being from HBO as this is. What’s interesting is that, simplistically, this is a fictionalised…
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Virgin Media and UKTV (And ITV) – Continuation
On my commute to work this morning, I saw a digital outdoor sign advertising a programme on Yesterday. I can’t recall the programme, but I can tell you that at the bottom, a large blue strap had added “Not available on Virgin Media.” Things are ramping up in Virgin Media and UKTV’s dispute. The Guardian…
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Virgin Media and UKTV
We seem to be in the middle of a real old-school rights agreement brouhaha at the moment. Virgin Media has just removed all UKTV’s channels from its platform after what we must assume was a lengthy period where the two parties failed to meet terms. UKTV is 50% owned by the BBC, and 50% owned…
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Marketing TV
If you’re a TV channel and you’ve got a new show you want to tell people about, it should be relatively simple. You make a trailer or two for it, and then you run that trailer around programmes that the audience for the new show are already watching. You might want to be a bit…
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Sexist Coverage of the World Cup
No, I am not talking about Patrice Evra’s applauding of fellow ITV pundit and England footballer Eniola Aluko (nor his muttered “no clapping” moan in a subsequent match). Nor am I talking about the various people who are upset that women deign to commentate on a football match. (Incidentally, “Remote Controller” in the new issue…
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Televising The World Cup Around the World
Two media stories which have interested me a lot about the World Cup so far. In the UK, we’re fortunate to still have Ofcom’s Listed Events. This is a list of sports events that are considered national events, and must be available to audiences free-to-air. Despite various attempts to either redefine the list, or scrap…
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Bulletproof
Oh dear. Sky One’s big new glossy action drama is pretty awful. Before I explain why, I will admit that I’m not the target audience for this show. But nevertheless, this show is just all over the place. Bulletproof is trying to be a 2018-vintage action cop show set in London. Imagine The Sweeney or…
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Winding Down Local TV
In the dim and distant past of 2011, Jeremy Hunt, then Culture Secretary, kicked off “Local TV.” “For consumers, what this will mean is a new channel dedicated to the provision of local news and content,” he said. In due course, he saw through the legislation to create a series of local TV services. This…
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Netflix: $8 Billion and 700 NEW Shows?
How much programming is Netflix actually making? The answer is a lot, but I think that the widely reported numbers are a little misleading. Heavily retweeted earlier today was this: Wow. Fact of the day: Netflix plans to spend $8bn on content this year. That’s roughly 700 (!) new series and 80 films. Shows how…