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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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,…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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%…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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….
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 –…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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,…
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…