Meida stuff

ITV

ITV has been making news by floating its' own version of 'blue sky' thinking which amounts to creating a Terrestrial Television advertising monopoly by bringing Channels Five and Four under an enlarged ITV umbrella. The idea would be that this would provide a PSB balance to the BBC but some suspicious minds have been suggesting that the story has the sole purpose of drawing attention away from the anticipated poor ITV results which'll be out soon.
AND keep an eye out for news on Channel Five's plans to minimise losses which will be coming soon to.

BBC and outside companies

I was at a recent RTS session on BBC HD service and what I saw and heard made me want to go and get a box and a great big flat screen (of course the problem seems to be as alaways getting the sound right).
What really shocked me was how much of the BBC transmission chain is now handled by outsourcing, a typical service could involve as well as BBC resources, SIS Link (doing the OB/satellite links) and Siemens (doing engineering stuff) and Red Bee (the fancy presentation stuff) , I wouldn't be too surprised if an outside auditor looking at the way the BBC is operating would suggest taking some or all of this work in house.

What a great idea

Saw this story in the press the other day -The weirdest 'Beatles' band ever?

Someone or other said fairly recently that they couldn't play the Ukulele without smiling so it seems entirely appropriate that the entire Beatles oeuvre (or at least the ones they wrote) should be recreated featuring the Uke by performance philanthropists Roger Greenawalt and David Barratt -seems they're releasing a new one every Tuesday until the Olympics start 1n 2012 here's the site where you can listen and download the tracks. The performances (to my ears) so far are great fun and there are about 180 or so more to look forward to.

John, George and Paul were all keen on the instrument - with George actually attending a George Formby convention in Blackpool.

Be interested to learn more about these guys and the project, it seems like a good constructive thing to do in difficult times - e-mail me if you know something...

Salvador Dali - ahead of the gang

Went to the Dali gallery on London's South bank today. What an amazing guy in his 84 years he did so much, makes one feel quite humble about not putting up some shelves or whatever.

Also took from the exhibition how much homage Dali paid to his precursors (as is also the case with the similarly daunting Picasso).

Ahead of Koons, Emin etc he was a great self publicist and a genuinely complicated character certainly able to ride the zeitgeist working with Disney and Hitchcock and dealing with Freudian notions too.

I was surprised at how many different skills he had and the different mediums he was able to work with.

Check out more of his work with a google search

ITN needs a new settlement.

Now that ITV, DMGT and UBS have all indicated that they'd like to be shot of their holdings in ITN concern is growing that they could either be swallowed up by a larger group or lose their credibility as an alternative to the BBC News.

The challenge for ITN is to continue to box above its weight, in a world of media giants where CNN is part of a much larger AOL Time Warner how can a small UK based news organisation effectively compete with the mega resourced BBC News?

As an independent ITN will be forced to compete for the contract for ITV News it already tenders for Channel Four News and some years ago lost the contract for the news programmes on Channel Five to Sky News.

News as a former colleague Prof. John Jirik was always keen to stress is a part of the entertainment industry and TV news bulletins are competing with so many easier to digest media offerings, should it have special treatment?

Well there are times when we all switch to news, be it a national disaster or a royal wedding and when we do surely we should have an alternative to what in all honesty is a state broadcaster - I'd like to see a healthy UK based competitive news business to keep the "beeb "on its toes and if this has to be under the auspices of the legendary OFCOM alternative PSB so be it.