Dangers of Live Broadcasting
Yesterday was the busiest day of the year for the Royal Mail which was expecting to deal with 130 million Christmas cards and parcels as well as the usual slurry of business mail, household bills and junk mail.
Naturally, the BBC covered this staple seasonal news item by sending a reporter to broadcast live from the Mount Pleasant sorting office in London for the breakfast show in Five Live.
In Mourning
If I had anything in my wardrobe that was black, totally black, I would be wearing it tonight to mark my respects for the passing of the all-time great tv shows.
Tonight saw the very last episode of Spooks on BBC1. After ten years of ‘MI5, Not 9 to 5′ our national security and Sunday night sofas are no longer safe.
The Bits In Between
They say that the problem with TiVo and other digital tv recorders is that it may sound the death knell for advertising if viewers simply skip through the ad breaks, but they ads are often more entertaining than the programmes.
Take the one for the Audi A6 Avant for example. That’s a still from the ad on the left and if you click on it, it will take you to the video on their website.
Overrated Abbey
No surprise that Downton Abbey knocked spots of Spooks in the great Sunday night tv ratings battle — the media had been full of nothing else but the former for a fortnight, especially the Daily Mail.
The Abbey took over their Weekend magazine for the last two weeks to the exclusion of pretty much everything else.
Marriage Guidance Domestic Appliance
Oh the joys of lawn mowing. There mus be some, but I just can’t think of one off hand. Possibly standing back at the end to admire a perfectly striped pattern like the one on the left.
But any satisfaction is short-lived because you know that within a few days the stripes will have faded, the lawn will start to look ragged around the edges and you’ll have to go through the whole process again before a week is out.
X is for X Marks the Spot
X Marks the Spot was a panel game on Radio 4 that ran from 1998 to 2006. The idea was for celebrity know-alls to take part in a treasure hunt which you might think an odd format for radio.
The celebrities were given a series of cryptic clues to identify four places in Great Britain which would form a giant X and the treasure was notionally buried at a fifth place where the lines crossed.
Who Gives You Extra?
One of my little joys in life is listening to the Archers. Very Radio 4, I know, but I’ve been tuning in for years, recording the omnibus edition to listen to in the car, first on cassette, then on CD and now as a podcast. Some things change change, but the Archers doesn’t. Or does it?
I’ve only recently noticed that there is now an Ambridge Extra, two 15 minute episodes a week that cover storylines that are only hinted at in the main programme.
Ken Dodd’s Love Child
I watched much of the annual Red Nose Day programmes on BBC on Friday.
I used to find them both moving and hopeful that things could be made better for the poor of the world if we all just put our hands in our pockets, but the problems seem to be the same 25 years on.
Typical
The opening bars of the Eastenders theme tune used to have a quite startling effect of our kids when they were younger. They would both yell “Rubbish!” and there would be a mad dash for the remote to switch over to another channel, anything that wasn’t Eastenders.
The Bigger Picture ™
I was watching the Arsenal and Man City game on the telly last night. It was a pretty dull affair and I was idling my time thinking about the difference between watch a match live at the ground or on the box when it suddenly occurred to me how tv coverage could be improved.
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