Media

Well done, Joe. Go, Clare. Naff off, AA Gill

July 31, 2010

Two stories about gay people in the media have made the front pages of the national newspapers today – and demonstrate generational differences in writers’ (and editors’ and readers’) attitudes to out gay people. The first revolved around BBC presenter Clare Balding, who via her Twitter account (@clarebalding1) has been documenting her correspondence with the […]

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Can the NY Times grab the best of both paywall worlds?

May 25, 2010

Yesterday’s post about whether people will continue to share links with their friends if content is behind a paywall was appositely timed, as it turns out: the two new websites for The Times and The Sunday Times are now live. To access any further than the front page, you must register (and, from next month, […]

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Caitlin, Gaga and paywalls

May 24, 2010

On Saturday, Times columnist Caitlin Moran (@caitlinmoran) tweeted that: I’m not being funny, but you really won’t ever read a better interview with Lady Gaga than mine And it’s true. The interview in question is, quite frankly, one of the best pieces I’ve ever read. I said as much on Twitter and, according to the […]

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Dixon: Cut too much, and you won’t sell anything

January 25, 2010

Breakingviews founder Mike Dixon, speaking to Chris Tryhorn in The Guardian (via Press Gazette): The temptation if you’ve got to cut costs by 5 per cent is just to salami slice and everyone works a bit harder and quality just deteriorates a little bit more. What you end up with when you finally decide to […]

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Style guide wars: actress vs female actor

August 24, 2009

It’s such a shame when an injudicious choice of words overshadows the points that someone seeks to make. That’s what happened when, last week, The Guardian’s Hadley Freeman wrote an article for the paper’s G2 section about why Katherine Heigl would executive produce a film like The Ugly Truth after trashing Knocked Up, in which […]

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Lessons from The Street: We had a bargain, and we forgot

August 18, 2009

Cross-posted on TV Today And so we say goodbye to The Street, Jimmy McGovern’s remarkable series of standalone, but inter-related dramas relating the extraordinary tales of neighbours on the most ordinary of streets. After three years, ITV Studios, which made the BBC-commissioned series, has made so many talented people redundant that McGovern doesn’t want to […]

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The phone that’s just a phone. Even when it’s not

August 16, 2009

Alan has good taste in phones. This Nokia [6700 Classic] not only looks great, but has superb functions, including a five-megapixel camera with auto-focus and LED flash. There’s also fast web browsing, video recording, a memory which is expandable to 8GB, five-hour talktime and three-day standby on one charge. One tester even claims it plays […]

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Brevity is the soul of wit, and the bane of the feature writer

August 16, 2009

I wonder - does nobody buy Sunday papers any more because their contents are drivel, or can those papers only afford to commission drivel because nobody buys them? Thankfully, the Independent on Sunday puts ‘editor-at-large’ Janet Street Porter’s column online, so we can read it for the cost of what it’s worth — approximately nothing. […]

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Drat! And double drat!

August 1, 2009

US TV blog TV Squad gets its knickers in a twist about the Goodwood Junior Festival of Speed: I’m oddly ambivalent about this. Cosplay is one thing. This seems dangerous. What if one of the drivers can’t see out of their outfit? …somehow missing that it’s a parade up a hillclimb track — i.e., they’ll […]

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When brevity isn’t everything: The Guardian vs Twitter

July 29, 2009

One of a number of articles in The Guardian about a Whitehall official’s template document advising on Twitter etiquette for government departments: West Bromwich East MP [Tom Watson] spoke out after a Whitehall official wrote a 20-page strategy paper for government departments on how to use the medium, which has a limit of 140 characters […]

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Pussy problems, part 2

July 9, 2009

As well as writing up the problems with Stuart Jeffries’ factually incorrect G2 article yesterday, I wrote to the letters page of the Guardian to complain. They have chosen not to publish that letter, but instead have included some discussion of the matter in their regular Corrections & Clarifications column: A G2 article called the […]

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Stuart Jeffries’ pussy problems

July 8, 2009

Stuart Jeffries’ book about television nostalgia, Mrs Slocombe’s Pussy, is a great read. And so it’s really disappointing when he gets it so, so wrong. After the sad passing of Mollie Sugden, best known for her role as Mrs. Slocombe in 1970s TV sitcom Are You Being Served?, a number of people paid tribute on […]

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Holmes v Sunday Times: WTF?

July 5, 2009

Something really bizarre seems to have happened to a column penned by comedian Jon Holmes, BBC 6Music DJ and regular contributor to Radio 4’s The Now Show. As can be seen in the Twitter post above, Holmes has provided a link to the original document on his website, and the version that has been published […]

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The Torchwood experience

July 3, 2009

It’s been a busy week over at TV Today, where we’ve been running a series of features around Torchwood: Children of Earth, which begins a five-episode run on Monday and continues throughout the week. The stripped scheduling is a tactic BBC1 has been using in increasing amounts, to create a buzz, or “event television”. And […]

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It’s nice to be noticed

June 6, 2009

A pleasant surprise to see this status on Twitter this morning from the BBC Radio 4 blog: I’ve been doing weekly radio previews for a while now as part of the Turn off the TV section of our TV blog. Infuriatingly, this week’s has been, I think, one of the weakest: not helped by a […]

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Just Fancy That! Peter Wilby on quality newspaper prices

September 10, 2007

In today’s Media Guardian, Peter Wilby writes on newspaper pricing: Last week, the Times went up from 65p to 70p. So that, you might say, is the end of the price war that Rupert Murdoch… launched 14 years ago in the “quality” sector when he cut the price of the paper by a third. All […]

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Top of the class

September 6, 2007

This article originally appeared in the September 6, 2007 issue of The Stage Rob Gilby, managing director of Disney Channel UK, reveals how the company is responding to the enthusiastic High School Musical audience in Britain Our marketing of the films has been driven by the sense of ownership the kids have. They’re demanding it […]

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Lessons learned

September 1, 2007

Over the past week, I’ve been representing The Stage at two press conferences that Matt, our broadcasting correspondent, would normally have gone to had he not been moving house this week. The two events (the launch of the Eurovision Dance Contest on Tuesday at City Hall, and of High School Musical 2 on Friday at […]

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Jeff Jarvis: Do nothing, you’re doomed – but there’s still time

August 19, 2007

Jeff Jarvis always puts up compelling arguments in the ‘old’-versus-‘new’ media debate. Friday’s piece looks at a report that says that local newspapers are most threatened by the internet. Replace ‘local’ with ‘specialist’ and the argument (and counter-argument) remains the same — and Jarvis’ points about how to succeed in the future still apply.

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Essential reading for online journalism

August 16, 2007

As usual, Martin Stabe is the guy to go to for all things related to new media journalism. His post of August 1, Essential reading for online journalism, contains links that say all the sort of things that we should keep in our heads at all times. Sometimes, though, when you have your head down […]

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A new chapter

April 5, 2007

This interview originally appeared in the April 5, 2007 issue of The Stage Executive producer of Doctor Who Julie Gardner tells Scott Matthewman about the changes being made to the show, in front of and behind the camera, including a welcome move to larger production studios Julie Gardner spends a lot of time on Doctor […]

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I am podcast. Hear me “um”

February 22, 2007

I was lucky enough to bag Lesley Garrett as my first full-length interview for my first professional podcast, which is now available via The Stage. Primarily taking about her new album, When I Fall In Love, Lesley talks about her experiences on reality TV — as a judge, a contestant, and the show which chose […]

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A less bleak future: high definition television (HDTV)

November 17, 2005

This article first appeared in the November 17, 2005 issue of The Stage — Next year sees the 80th anniversary of John Logie Baird’s first demonstration of his television equipment and the 70th of the BBC’s first transmissions with Marconi’s 405-line system. While we have progressed significantly from both, 2006 will see the first large-scale […]

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Jonathan Maitland woz ere

November 16, 2005

Yesterday, a blog entry of mine that’s almost exactly a year old received a comment, from somebody claiming to be ITV presenter Jonathan Maitland. I’ve every reason to believe that the post is by the real Maitland and not some unhinged moron who’s crazy enough to emulate one of Tonight with Trevor McDonald’s least agreeable […]

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The Tonight with Trevor McDonald Film Festival

November 10, 2004

Last night, Jason and I (plus Jason’s friend Helen) went to an invitation screening of extracts from four films funded in part or in total by money from the National Lottery (either via the Film Council or the Arts Council for England). The screening is to become part of a future edition of ITV1’s current […]

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