Articles by Redvers

thinkbox Well, here’s a blast from the past about which I am ambivalent. According to the about us page, thinkbox is “the television marketing body for the main UK commercial…

The Cold War re-ignites, to a degree. When you do as I have done and start divorce proceedings from television, you are asking for trouble. Like lovers splitting up, you…

Stop everything until we know who’s up who. After who knows how many years since television bested radio permanently, that “ancient” medium bounces back… with the middle classes, anyway. “The…

Paul Waters has died. Starting his career with ATV, then moving on to BBC telefilm and then BBC radio, “Paulie” did mostly behind-the-scenes jobs until the invention of “Wake Up…

Such a little word. And we’ll be coming back to “but” shortly. However (which is “but” in adult clothing, I know; don’t write in). However, let us start by not…

An incident that only occurred in the mind of a Daily Mail journalist provides a Transdiffusion writer the opportunity of venting his spleen. Again. As a professed fan of the…

Cracker creator blasts ‘chav’ TV – The Observer I’ve been saying it – here and in other places – for years. Now Jimmy McGovern, one of Britain’s most talented writers,…

ITV is losing two useless items, one very quickly, one after a long, painful demise. Some terrible rubbish that ITV had cluelessly thought would steal Saturday nights has bit the…

CBBC: bosses to axe Top of the Pops It’s bad news from the point of view of television history – the loss of any show after 40+ years is always…

BBC scraps sports show Grandstand BBC.co.uk Oh, the wacky world of broadcaster reasoning. “BBC executives believe that in the new digital on-demand world, in which people consume news, sport and…

Flamboyant TV chief who was drawn to conflict dies You’ve got to love UK libel laws. They’re sufficiently nutzo that people from around the world flock to the UK in…

BBC trumpets new visual feast for viewers. Always at the forefront of technology, the BBC has announced that it is to begin trials of a new line standard. Since 1985,…

Google Earth software for Windows. Probably not all that relevant here, but bear with me. This excellent free program from the guys at Google is an amazing thing on general…

ABC News online special edition [Go.com] Peter Jennings, the anchor of ABC World News Tonight and a familiar face on US television over 5 decades, has died in New York…

In pictures: London blasts [BBC – caution, possibly disturbing images] At the point that terror came to London, two of Transdiffusion’s staff were coincidentally on trains heading to the scene….

The Story of ITV – Programme Three Well. A fortnight ago, I blogged a critique of ITV’s Story of ITV programme. The first episode had been a curate’s egg –…

ITV faces £6.6billion takeover bid from Time Warner consortium [Forbes.com] The ridiculous policy of letting foreign companies buy British broadcasters may be about to have a result, if the Mail…

From my inbox today: Mr Pot, meet Mr Kettle. I point out an error of fact and you deliver a hissy fit of the highest order. Mediablog is detracting from…

You know, it’s an odd world. You write an article the dares criticise the lovely and fragrant Ms Tessa Jowell, stupid cow in chief of the broadcasting world, and you…

BBC “too commercial”, say radio rivals [Guardian] The world of commercial operation is fascinating. They exist because of the belief that competition is a good thing; that competing services mean…

Digital terrestrial for Ireland [IOL] The Republic of Ireland becomes the latest European country to announce a digital terrestrial platform, with the responsible minister calling for tenders for the technical…

Broadcasters Voice Their Ideas on Future BBC [The Scotsman] What has politics come to? Edward Heath once called television a plant that was continually being plucked out of the ground…

ITV wins reduced licence fees [RTE] Twelve years after the Conservatives privatised ITV, and switched from selecting contractors by programme plans to selecting contractors by how rich they were, a…

ITV50 website on “The Story of ITV” Well, who won? From tonight’s “Story of ITV”, you get the only possible answer: Granada. You see, there were several companies, back in…

Whiteley set to miss Countdown [BBC News] Few people under the age of 60 actually like Richard Whiteley as a presenter. Too easily mocked, too easily getting on your nerves….

Unions suspend planned BBC strike [BBC News] Did the BBC blink first?

The Scotsman on the BBC strike Britain in the 21st century is a very different place to the Britain I grew up in. This probably sounds obvious, but the differences…

BBC Wales tributes The majority of our readers here at Transdiffusion are English. We have readers throughout the world, and some of our most active editors and contributors are from…

This morning is the right time to remember an important event in BBC history. 21 years ago today, the famous Television Centre disaster happened. As everyone knows, during the recording…

BBC News – Local TV takes off in Austria For reasons which have always escaped me, the “holy grail” of television has always been to get as local as possible….

Pete Clifton on cuts at BBC News One of the things that eight years of Labour government has brought us (besides war, lies and broken promises) is a long break…

BBC News: ITV staff to strike over pay deal When ITV converted from being a broadcaster to being a FTSE100 ‘profit centre’ company last year, the management were delighted. After…

Logofreetv.org is a worthwhile cause: few if any of us like those on-screen logos that destroy the picture and burn a pattern into our TV screens. It’s a shame, therefore,…

BBC News report on Jowell’s opinions on burglar payment The Rt Hon Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport has become quite famous for knowing little about any of…

BBC News report See you around, Tommy.

From today’s Grauniad… Channel Five was reprimanded by the Advertising Standards Authority watchdog yesterday for sending out a promotional mailshot that purported to be the case notes of a serial…

The Radio Times gets a new look. It’s hard to say that the last design of the Radio Times masthead was a failure. Certainly it wasn’t as recognisable on the…

We later discovered that the ITC had found something in their investigation which BSkyB didn’t want made public Of course, if Greg himself never found out what (unless he’s holding…

Inge Meysel dies at 94 [English] Ah, but for the transitory and temporary nature of television. Inge Meysel was so ubiquitous and so much the face of post-war West German…

Ballot for action on BBC pay Pity the poor BBC. Damned if they do, damned if they don’t – by everyone. Things are made worse when they start to argue…

TV Licensing website To the young, hip things, there’s nothing more ludicrous than paying a licence in order to watch television. Thatcher’s children (for it is she) have been brainwashed…

AzerTAj, an example to us all Ok, so the parallels aren’t really there: the BBC is a state-owned broadcaster but (thank you thank you thank you) remarkably independently minded. AzerTAj…

Japan’s Daily Yomiuri on the BBC’s Pronunciation Unit At last count, I had some 1,127 reasons for the continuation of the BBC (and 2 for ITV, but that’s a different…

Voting fault hits Eurovision heat Deutsche Telekom, owner of the UK’s T-Mobile brand, appears, according to the BBC, to have dropped the ball when it came to tabulating the results…

Typical MediaGrauniad non-story This story digested in case you’re short of time: An advertiser today complained that the BBC wasn’t playing fair. They exist and therefore interrupt the stream of…