17 May 2004
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…
15 May 2004
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…
13 May 2004
Now isn’t that always a brilliant headline to see?
13 May 2004
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…
13 May 2004
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…
13 May 2004
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…
13 May 2004
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…
12 May 2004
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…
11 May 2004
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…
10 May 2004
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…
10 May 2004
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…
10 May 2004
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…
7 May 2004
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,…
5 May 2004
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;…
5 May 2004
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…
5 May 2004
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…
1 May 2004
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…
29 April 2004
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…
26 April 2004
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…
26 April 2004
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…
24 April 2004
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…
22 April 2004
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…
20 April 2004
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…
20 April 2004
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…
16 April 2004
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…
14 April 2004
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,…
14 April 2004
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…
13 April 2004
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…
13 April 2004
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…