{"id":1459,"date":"2006-04-27T13:15:31","date_gmt":"2006-04-27T13:15:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/2006\/04\/news_in_tv\/"},"modified":"2006-04-27T13:15:31","modified_gmt":"2006-04-27T13:15:31","slug":"news_in_tv","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/2006\/04\/news_in_tv\/","title":{"rendered":"News in TV"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As television commoditisation increases evermore, there&#8217;s much discussion at the moment about BBC1&#8217;s weak Wednesday nights. Davina&#8217;s chat show has been lambasted, and the lack of a drama series at 9pm means that even Paul McCartney on the fur trade doesn&#8217;t get as many as 2 million. ITV are putting out a stream of dramas at 9pm (currently Murder City) while BBC2 has The Apprentice &#8211; for a couple more weeks anyway.<br \/>\nThis week&#8217;s Broadcast speculates that another episode of Eastenders might be forthcoming on Wednesdays, while we also learn today that the BBC is to make a &#8220;Holby City&#8221; cop show to sit alongside stalwarts Casulaty and Holby City. If it were to go on a Wednesday, as <a href=\"http:\/\/media.guardian.co.uk\/broadcast\/story\/0,,1761940,00.html\">Mediaguardian<\/a> speculates, then it&#8217;d give BBC1 a banker nearly every night of the week.<br \/>\nBut is this what the viewer really wants?<br \/>\nIt&#8217;s certainly what the BBC seems to be planning. The Creative Future outlined the other day promises that the BBC should &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/pressoffice\/pressreleases\/stories\/2006\/04_april\/25\/creative.shtml\">create fewer titles with longer runs, find creative space for outstanding writers and cherish the programmes audience love best like EastEnders, Casualty and Holby City.&#8221;<\/a><br \/>\nThe problem with that is that interesting and different dramas have fewer outlets. It&#8217;s not that the schedule will then be so full that there isn&#8217;t any space for this kind of drama, but the money will certainly be used up.<br \/>\nIn any case, can the BBC really run their Holby cop show up against The Bill on ITV? It&#8217;s not really extending choice for the viewer is it?<br \/>\nLooking at the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/pressoffice\/pressreleases\/stories\/2006\/04_april\/25\/creative_detail.shtml\">full list<\/a> of recommendations, it seems better than the highlights suggest.<br \/>\n<UL><LI>Pilot and develop dramas across platforms that generate intense experiences for different audiences<\/LI><br \/>\n<LI>Commission at least four major radio landmark dramas for Radio 4 a year <\/LI><br \/>\n<LI>Reduce the number of individual titles broadcast and consolidate the offer, investing in longer runs of series, growing value through on demand and multiple transmission whilst retaining range and breadth<\/LI><br \/>\n<LI>Maintain the BBC&#8217;s cultural legacy by nurturing and empowering writers. This will require more investment in training and new production models such as writer-producer or team-writing. <\/LI><br \/>\n<LI>Cherish and invest in titles like EastEnders, Casualty &#038; Holby City that speak to the broadest audiences <\/LI><\/UL><br \/>\nIt&#8217;s just that I suspect that the emphasis, and money, will be directed towards the last item in that list. Charter Renewal&#8217;s just about over for a few more years, and the ratings game can begin again in earnest.<br \/>\nMeanwhile, Channel 4 is produly <a href=\"http:\/\/www.brandrepublic.com\/bulletins\/media\/article\/555905\/channel-4-launches-videoondemand-service-lost-desperate-housewives\/\">announcing<\/a> the fact that they&#8217;ve secured a deal to let UK viewers watch episodes of Lost and Desperate Housewives on its website for 99p. Once you&#8217;ve paid, you can watch the episode an unlimited number of times within 24 hours.<br \/>\nThis seems like an exciting deal, until you <a href=\"http:\/\/www.clickz.com\/news\/article.php\/3588801\">realise<\/a> that <a href=\"http:\/\/abc.go.com\/fes\/index.html\">ABC<\/a> in the States you can either pay $1.99 to download and own episodes of both series, ad free, for your PC of video iPod. Or alternatively, you can watch streamed versions of the shows <em>free of charge <\/em>on the website. The downloaded episodes have no ads, while the streamed ones include ads and don&#8217;t let you fast-forward. I suspect that UK IP addresses will get blocked, but in an age when I can already, ahem, &#8220;get&#8221; ad-free downloads of these shows free of charge, going down a free-streaming route with ads, seems a sensible low-hassle route to go. With series that have multi-episode stories (or &#8220;arcs&#8221;), allowing your viewers to catch-up seems like a good idea.<br \/>\nThe other thing that strikes me as strange with the 99p deal, is that there already multiple opportunities to catch-up with episodes of Lost. With at least one repeat on the main Channel 4 service and many more on E4. If I were to get a deal on buying the DVD boxset when it comes out, that might make it worthwhile, but the DVD rights are completely separate from the broadcast rights.<br \/>\nI don&#8217;t predict that this&#8217;ll be a spectacular success. However, some marks for at least attempting to do something. ITV really need to get on this bandwagon quick. Why aren&#8217;t all the soaps available for catch-up online? Include ads (I know there are regional and even ownership issues), and just allow pausing.<br \/>\nAnd if I was Five, I&#8217;d go so far as to actually allow full downloads to watch on iPod and PSP of, say, The Gadget Show. I reckon there could be some quite creative ways of making money out of the venture by perhaps having sponsorship credits or others. The broadcast edition I saw the other day didn&#8217;t have much in the way of actual ads anyway, and I suspect, like Fifth Gear, their premium rate phone competitions earn more cash than the ads do. Fifth Gear gives away a car each week, so I reckon we&#8217;re looking at between 50,000 and 100,000 callers paying a pound a time to enter these competitions.<br \/>\nThere are still issues with PACT about giving away content like this, but someone needs to steal a march on this. They might be pleasantly surprised about what kind of cut-through they achieve.<br \/>\nAs for ad-funded programming, like the Sure football programme on ITV at the moment&#8230; give it all away!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As television commoditisation increases evermore, there&#8217;s much discussion at the moment about BBC1&#8217;s weak Wednesday nights. Davina&#8217;s chat show has been lambasted, and the lack of a drama series at 9pm means that even Paul McCartney on the fur trade doesn&#8217;t get as many as 2 million. ITV are putting out a stream of dramas [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1459"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1459"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1459\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1459"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}