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BSkyB Press Release Ever since Freeview launched there have been rumours that Sky would laugh a competing service but with the BBC and Ofcom recently talking about a freesat service…

Soap bubble is near bursting It’s interesting that David Liddiment (of all people) should write a piece of this very nature since he was Coronation Street’s producer at the time…

Digital Spy: UTV “significantly outperformed ITV peers” Whilst ITV plc has been preoccupied trying to erase all of its former regional identities to create a sea of blandness in order…

I haven’t been able to find any actual press release or web story yet on it, but BBC Radio Five Live are reporting that Tessa Jowell, Secretary of State for…

Watching Paint Dry Well, UKTV Style seem to have some up with the perfect antidote for Big Brother crazyness (which starts tonight) – Watching Paint Dry. Yep. Someone paints a…

Broadcaster gets apology from BBC as history repeats itself Here’s a news item which is quite amusing to read since it is obvious that only a junior researcher would make…

Investors tell ITV to ditch Allen for Dyke You can almost feel sorry for Charles Allen at this point; his ITV plc has spent a lot of time and effort…

Channel 4 boss lands BBC top job Well, is this a good or bad thing? Channel 4 seems to be a lot more entertainment oriented than it used to be,…

Thompson named BBC director general Choosing Greg Dyke’s long term replacement was never going to be easy, especially under the circumstances of the selection process and the requirements imposed by…

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…

Media Guardian: Top Up TV signs up 20,000 viewers Top Up TV may well have signed up 20,000 viewers in its first month. The more interesting question will be… how…

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…

Sky boss hits back at Channel 4 If it wasn’t obvious before it should be by now; I’m talking about the fact that Sky seems to exist in a parallel…

The production was fine, the live voting via satellite was flawless, and apart from a live link to outside the venue and up until the last few minutes after the…

Now isn’t that always a brilliant headline to see?

Keating set to take BBC2 job Well, it has looked likely all along, but Roly Keating is set to take the BBC2 job when Jane Root leaves for Discovery. I’m…

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…

The Scotsman: Towns to Trial Digital TV Switchover Finally it looks like someone has got off their backside in government and is thinking properly about analogue switch off. The DCMS…

Eurovision Song Contest So last night was the first ever Eurovision Song Contest Semi-final where 22 countries for the first time, competed for 10 places in the main Grand Prix…

BBC’s £15m advertising under attack The last few months have been a particularly tough time for the BBC, so any fresh criticism of what the BBC does is likely to…

Digital Spy: ‘Enders win was due to ‘superior website’ First the writer has to admit something. He doesn’t watch either Corrie nor EastEnders. Although he did once watch Corrie and…

Tonight, Sky News launched a new twice-nightly news bulletin for Ireland, called Sky News Ireland. For 30 minutes at 7pm and 10pm each weeknight, the Murdoch empire takes its first…

MediaGuardian: ITV buys GMTV stake from SMG It’s an era where one company own the entire of ITV in England and Wales (and a small part of Scotland). 24 hours…

YouGov’s Channel of the Year Online Survey Here’s an interesting survey which has been created for the MediaGuardian Edinburgh International Television Festival in conjunction with BBC Broadcast. There are four…

BBC Online, no wait, BBCi, sorry, bbc.co.uk Good old BBC. Just a couple of years after the all encompassing BBCi branding was introduced to cover Interactive TV and the Website,…

BBC slashes documentary jobs Perhaps too easy to overlook is this story that could potentially have deep and very serious repercussions for the quality of factual programming in the UK;…

BBC News: NTL losses cut by new subscribers Media Guardian: Customer drive boosts NTL hopes Well what do you know? Persuading people to pay for your service apparantly can make…

Black Tuesday for ITV as ratings crash Whilst a ‘ratings crash’ can happen to any channel at any time, it was rather amusing to notice that ITV1’s share of the…

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…

The BBC are very, very lazy. On News 24 today they are covering a news story involving a crackdown on youth drinking. As is the norm with the news, they…

Avid readers of this occasional column will notice that it has been a while since we last looked in on the old Victorian mansion where Madame Arcati and our fellow…

Thompson issues public service challenge Whilst it is good that ITV should be forced to account for the reason(s) why it should throw away the remainder of its ‘public service…

Digital Spy: TBS to relaunch on June 4 No. Don’t worry. It’s not this TBS. Nope. The Transdiffusion System is not planning a revamp on June 4 at all. Especially…

Metro: 60 Seconds Interview with Peter Simon Seems strange to imagine, but yes we live in a world where former kids TV presenter Peter Simon can get 1 million viewers…

Telephone Numbers for drama purposes (TV, Radio etc) A lot of water has passed under the bridge since VINcent XXXX was the dramatist’s number of choice. OfGums, showing more imagination…

40 years of quality broadcasting The launch night that never was Well, it’s the 40th Birthday of BBC2 today, and what better way for BBCi to advertise it with a…

Almost inevitably, in the wake on Michael Grade’s statement about broadcasting not using the net well enough as a distribution medium, the BBC has announced that it will be broadcasting…

Jermey to head ITV regional news Buried in an article about ITV plc appointing its first ever executive in charge of all ITV1 regional news bulletins in England and Wales,…

BBCi takes an interesting line… …not backed up by their own figures. Success stories: Arsenal vs Newcastle United, Sky Sports, Sunday – 1.6 million viewers Friends, E4, Thursday – 1m…

Using Attitude Based Segmentation to Better Understand Viewers’ Usability Issues with Digital and Interactive TV (pdf) From a snappily titled paper presented at a 2004 European Conference on Interactive Television…

MediaGuardian: Viewers desert BBC channels Another day, another “BBC is down the pan” story, but this time the news is both good and bad. Good in that considering the 300-plus…

Interview with producer/director Jo Haywood Would someone – anyone – like to explain the meaning of the following quote from Jo Haywood? …but ITV have also lost a lot of…

From the Intertel section, comes word that the company which owns CityTV, CHUM Limited, is acquiring Craig Media Inc. for $265 million Canadian. The deal, subject to regulatory approval from…

The Scotsman – of all things – on the BBC Essex free radio celebration. This is a busy year for broadcasting historians – the 40th anniversaries of Radio Caroline, Rediffusion…

ITV3 lined up for September debut In the swirling mists of the past there Granada and BSkyB and they had a gangcalled GSkyB. And it did have TV channels called…