Blog

Scorned for doing things well.

26 November 2003

There’s an interesting article that slipped out last week in the Guardian. The gist of it is a comment piece about how BBCi is being attacked for doing too good…

Granada Industrial Dispute in ITV’s future?

25 November 2003

Media Guardian reports that staff at Granada Media belonging to the NUJ, Bectu and Amicus will vote on strike action in a pay dispute after Granada imposed a 2% pay…

Meridian Massacre

20 November 2003

ITV production from outside London? For how much longer? In a major development announced today, network sports and factual production are moving from Southampton to… wait for it… London! As…

ITV Quits the North and SMG gets a bit upset.

19 November 2003

When you think about it, it was inevitable but that hasn’t stopped the Guardian telling the world about Granada’s secret plan leave its Manchester HQ. The rather dismal grey office…

Sunny Belgium

18 November 2003

VRT website A trip tomorrow to Belgium causes me, somewhat sadly, to have a poke around for what I could watch on TV whilst I’m there. Of course, British television…

iSportsTV arrives on Sky Digital

17 November 2003

There seems to be no let up in the number of channels that are ready to launch, and the number of companies launching new channels onto the market. The latest…

Changes on the quiet.

16 November 2003

Sometimes, when a change takes place, it does so with enormous fanfare, other times, it barely gets noticed. This is one of those changes that happened at some point recently,…

Liquid Reflections.

16 November 2003

I must confess that haven’t actually seen Liquid News for quite a while due to a lack of digital TV (and flast year, a lack of TV), but it’s a…

Paying the piper, or How I learned to stop worrying about the BBC and start begruding Sky’s megaprofits

15 November 2003

Latest Sky financial results press release Is anyone here concerned about BSkyB’s profits being too high? If you consider that the majority of their profit appears – according to their…

Sky’s (infamous) AGM

15 November 2003

Sky Corporate’s press release on the recent AGM. “It is a great honour to be able to stand before you today as Sky’s chief executive, and I am deeply grateful…

New Channels Coming Soon…

14 November 2003

From Transdiffusion’s Bitstream department, comes news of new channels coming soon to a television near you. VH-2. Years after the original VH-1 launched, the team at MTV Networks have finally…

BBC Three liquidizes Liquid News

14 November 2003

It has been speculated on since the death of Christopher Price in 2002, but now we know for sure. BBC Three is bringing the axe down on Liquid News. The…

Legally Binding.

14 November 2003

As an interesting aside to the potential arrival of price-drop.tv, Section 7.4 of the license of Multiplex 2 (a thrilling read, available in pdf form at the ITC website) states…

Shop your way to the TV set.

13 November 2003

The latest in the never ending list of developments on digital terrestrial television (or Freeview if you must) is the arrival of a placeholder for one price-drop.tv, sister station to…

Grape scissors and a tea set used by the Queen.

12 November 2003

One of the more interesting media stories to surface has been the announcement that the ITC was selling its family jewels – and what interesting examples have been under the…

Analogue Dies – In Berlin.

5 November 2003

Analogue television in Berlin was turned off on 1 August 2003 (better late than never with this news) – in contrast to the rather slow death for Analogue, Berliners were…

Bend it, shake it, any way you want it.

4 November 2003

According to the press release from BBC Broadcast (120k Word document), UK G2’s new idents will have the theme ‘bending the rules’. One ident will be… "It is Sunday morning…

Sky subscriptions to rise

31 October 2003

With Freeview on the up, one wonders how many people will be wondering whether yet another inflation busting rise in subscription fees at Sky, is really worth it. The 5%…

Freeview: One Year On and Doing Well

31 October 2003

There was lots of doom and gloom mutterings about the ITV Digital fiasco – analogue switch off just not going to happen; DTT is a dead technology; five channels are…

LogofreeTV self-destructs?

28 October 2003

Strange testpage A search on Google for Transdiffusion brings up a new look for LogofreeTV. This site, which started out with the admirable aim of campaigning against the various screen…

UK G2

28 October 2003

New contempary comedy and drama station from UKTV tells the Media Guardian. Sounds just like PlayUK but with drama instead of music to me…

Free to view sport antics.

26 October 2003

A brief history of CBM. Crown Castle fail to sell space to Turner. Boomerang, TCM and CNN running on a time shift basis won’t be appearing on DTT. Crown Castle…

Pay TV on Freeview? Yeah right.

26 October 2003

One of the many ideas for a replacement for ITV Digital was to do an element of pay-TV with mostly free-to-air programming. Ex-BSkyB bosses David Chance and Ian West were…

Don’t bother

24 October 2003

Oddly parochial story from ‘The Scotsman’ All of you people left without access to ITV, Channel 4 and five on Sky will be very pleased to discover that you can…

Quiet blast from the past

22 October 2003

As someone kindly pointed out the other day, that old Channel 4 out-of-hours stalwart, “The Art of Landscape” is back, but this time on FriendlyTV (Channel 268 on Sky). It’s…

The End of Michael Green.

21 October 2003

BBC NEWS report It was inevitable. When huge numbers of your shareholders try to get rid of you, there isn’t much hope of you clinging in there. And so it…

No reward for failure?

20 October 2003

It seems past failure won’t necessarily bring about the reward of a plum job in the new world of ITV. The OnDigital saga is just one reason why many of…

Bye bye London News Network.

17 October 2003

And so it begins. London News Network is to be the first casualty of the Carlton/Granada combination, with the role of producing London’s news programme being taken over by ITN…

Sky Plus Box Equals?

15 October 2003

MediaGuardian article BSkyB are about to embark on a huge sales push of their Sky Plus box – a set top box which includes a hard drive recording system, which…

ITV plc’s new board

10 October 2003

Grauniad speculation Oh good, the same bunch that have made ITV such a success in the last decade will continue in power for the next phase of ITV. Plus a…

Freeview plans

10 October 2003

Reuters speculates… A Disney channel, but not branded under the Disney name. Sky Travel to go General Entertainment, but not until there are 2 million ‘subscribers’ to the Freeview service….

No news is bad news

10 October 2003

Eastern Daily Press news story Of course, you have to expect the regional newspapers, struggling for so long, to welcome – or at least fail to notice the shortcomings –…

The true cost

8 October 2003

Croner news release “Some day a sympathetic writer will have to analyse the effect of mergers – and there are hundreds of them – and the impact they have upon…

Regional? Regional?

8 October 2003

So, the decline and fall of ITV is complete. What does a 20-year-old Australian care about the Granada-Carlton merger? Well, you’ll have to wait for a future article! Unlike most…

Thanks for the memories

8 October 2003

Name dropping signals end of an era for Granada So, farewell then Granada TV Manchester 3. You were staid And old fashioned But you had dignity. Keith’s mum says She’d…

Newsround-up: ITV ‘merger’

7 October 2003

BBC Business News Video Clip: Rory Cellan-Jones on BBC News BBC Business News Q&A BBC Entertainment sees things from a programme perspective BBC voxpops filler on Carlton-Granada merger The Guardian…

ITV Loses its Place

7 October 2003

It is hard to imagine that the Granada/Carlton merger, mooted for so long, could do anything other than steepen ITV1’s slide into mediocrity. In the best (or worst) Thatcherite tradition…

Money Talks.

7 October 2003

The estimated savings from the combination of Carlton and Granada’s broadcasting businesses are around £50m a year… One of the first things to go? Well according to a report on…

Yes

7 October 2003

The ITC have approved the “merger” of Granada and Carlton. Most likely outcome: both companies continue to exist as seperate entities, but the broadcast licences of both will be merged…

Sky move away from football.

7 October 2003

The year was 1999 and BSkyB tried to buy Manchester United Football club. In many ways it seemed the perfect deal – a large broadcaster with a huge reliance on…

Big Brother’s Bigger Brother

7 October 2003

Russ J Graham on those who have been kicked out of ITV

Sky News Ireland

5 October 2003

Press release Sky News are to launch a 9pm news programme targetted at the Republic of Ireland, to go out on the pre-existing version of Sky News with RoI adverts,…

Bong! (Again)

3 October 2003

One interesting thing from the ITC press release marking the end of news at when is this delightful little paragraph: "The change will also mean that most of the regional…

From the forge

2 October 2003

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