Go On Dave an Alibi to Watch and Laugh Daily

There’s more to the headline above than an excess of capital letters that would have my English teacher steaming at the ears and some of the pedantic readers of bbc.co.uk/jersey knawing their teeth.

There is a reason I filled it with caps - you see it’s full of new television channel names - well one is an old television channel name - but it’s part of the same family.

The words in the headline that aren’t either a television channel name or part of one are ‘and’, ‘to’ and ‘an’.

Go On Laugh Daily (or G.O.L.D.), Alibi and Watch are all new channels (or at least re-brands of existing channels) that are being launched on 7 October by the UKTV network.

The UKTV brand will remain for the subject specific channels (at least for now). So that is Documentary, History, People, Style, Homes, Gardens and Food.

Dave is the other consistent - but that was given its new non-UKTV brand not very long ago and is already a ‘personality’ channel.

UKTV Gold, previously UKGold is set to become G.O.L.D. or Go On Laugh Daily - a channel moving from being an all round UK repeats network to a comedy network - that I’m guessing will play shows from around the world.

G.O.L.D. is on Sky 110 (laughdaily.co.uk)

Drama seems to be evolving into Alibi - a network specifically showing crime dramas - its tag line is ‘The Deadliest Place on TV’.

Alibi is on SKY 132 (theperfectalibi.co.uk)

And then there is Watch. tagline ’simply good TV’ that seems to be the place that will include Richard and Judy.

Watch is on SKY 109 (justwatch.co.uk)

On first glance I’d say this is a womens network but actually it looks like it will include everything not included on the new look UKTV as well as a load of other stuff from around the world - as well as movies. This looks like its going to be one of my new favourite channels.

And it’s brilliant that these newly branded channels are creating a new identity, that they will make it easier to see some of the best programmes made (of all time and of recent years) but, and this is a big giant great huge but - what about the new stuff?

I mean it’s great that they are putting emphasis on showing great content but they are showing great content made by other broadcasters (with the exception of a few cheap to make shows).

At the moment the only big budget dramas, comedies and daring shows are being made by the BBC, ITV and Channel 4.

BBC is fully public service - funded by the licence fee. Channel 4 doesn’t have to make a profit as its state owned and ITV has the background of being the ‘third’ channel and the second major British network.

It also has a unique place as the third channel on all platforms so can demand more advertising revenue - and has that background to draw from.

Maybe we will start to see more dramas and comedies (original ones) coming out of the likes of UKTV, Virgin, Sky et al after digital switchover - but I wouldn’t hold my breath.

Why make something new and spend huge amounts of money on a series that might not be successful when you could buy it in from the USA or Canada - when you guy buy a repeat from BBC or ITV or when you could make something relatively cheap but high impact that would get as good a ratings.

After all - in a advertising funded world where the advertising revenue is directly reflected by the number of viewers - you’ll do anything possible to get viewing numbers up for as cheaply as possible.

So if you can make a chat show that will get 2 million viewers but only cost £10k per episode and bring in £50k - you’re hardly going to spend £30k on a drama or comedy series (even a cheap one) that will get the same viewing figures and the same advertising revenue.

That is why the BBC is important - that is why incentivising ITV to keep making high impact dramas and comedies (as well as local news and childrens) is important and why some kind of public funding should be found for Channel 4.

Maybe the BBC could give the revenue from the sale of ‘formats’ to Channel 4. Not the whole of BBC Worldwide just the international format rights - so ‘Strictly Come Dancing’, ‘Weakest Link’ and even ‘Top Gear’.

I’m not saying give the SHOWS THEMSELVES to Channel 4 (especially not TopGear - that needs to stay on a commercial free network for Clarkson alone) but the revenue from international deals - oh and maybe a share of magazine and merchandising revenue on those shows as well.

Let the BBC keep the money from DVD sales of dramas, comedies and other shows - let it keep international sale rights for those shows - just give C4 the formats.

Just an idea. But also slightly off the point - public service broadcasting is essential to retain a high standard of local television commissions - to retain investment in British broadcasting and production as a whole.

If it were left to the market we would see lots of self help, chat shows and imports - with the occasional big budget drama or comedy every year - instead of the dozens of dramas and comedies we see today.

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They’re changing Gear

Actually that should be that they’re changing Top Gear - but the headline didn’t really work if I added the word Top before the Gear.

Basically the point of the post is that there will very soon be a new look TopGear.com - not sure if the public service site will be getting a make-over but the commercial one certainly is.

It looks pretty good - from the looks of the beta we’re in for wood panelling backgrounds, glassy effects and very web 2.0ey fonts and colours.

See another picture of the homepage at the bottom of this post v

They seem to be taking the social media thing a lot more seriously as well - they’re splitting the blogs up into: Horsepower, Transmission, The Foreman, The Cupholder, Fast and Dangerous and Sunday Afternoon Club (F1 blog that looks like it may be tied to the BBC F1 coverage somehow).

Playing around with the beta for a while it looks like the blogs are Wordpress hosted - which is an interesting departure for the BBC which uses MovableType for its public service blogs.

Interesting that the BBC public service blogs are hosted on a closed commercial platform and the BBC commercial blogs seem to be hosted on an open source free platform! Hmmm

As well as the very good looking, branded blogs - which will see James May and Richard Hammond join Jeremy Clarkson and Andy Willman as TG.com contributors - there’s a new media player.

It isn’t exactly the same as the EMP (BBC Embedded Media Player) used on bbc.co.uk/topgear (for a start the volume only reaches 10) but it is flash based AND unlike the /topgear player - it actually lets you embed the video.

Or at least that’s what the press release says: “nearly 300 new videos in a bright, big player that allows you to share or take away and out them on your own site.”

Although I haven’t actually been able to find the embed code yet - just a series of links to let you put the video on your social networking platform of choice. I’ll keep looking though.

You can of course just view the source code around the video player to get the embed code.

Episode Guide

There’s also something TopGear has needed for a while - something I started building myself (but got bored/lost interest/got to busy), something available in a very plane way on Wikipedia and something the good folks over at FinalGear are doing.

The most interesting feature of the Episode Guide on the new TopGear.com is the ‘The One With…’ feature - this makes it a lot easier for the more casual fan to find out about an episode.

There isn’t really much more to say about the Episode Guide - it primarily focuses on giving you video clips of that episode (which is what it’s all about really) and has a few little snippets of episode information.

For example: “The one where… Stig outruns a speed camera” and “This is also the one with… Clarkson reviews the Citroen Berlingo (and likes it) and Das Mazda6: Richard finds out if the Mazda6 can take on the Germans”.

Actually - quiz for you - without looking at the site can you tell me which episode this applies to: “The one with… all the poo”.

So back to the blogs

Instead of having the odd article (from the magazine) by Jeremy and James as an article under news and then the odd article by them in the blogs - they’ve now created a blog specifically for pieces by the ‘presenters’.

There is an outline of what each blog will do in the TopGear.com article about the new look site - due to launch on Thursday (although I’m sure it said Wednesday a week ago).

One of the blogs will be called ‘Horsepower’ and will include contributions from Jeremy Clarkson, James May and Richard Hammond. There’s also the suggestion that they will respond to comments. Apparently “if what you write is interesting enough, they’ll respond to you.”

‘Transmission’ is all about TopGear the show and will be written by Executive Producer Andy Wilman - in much the same vain the existing TopGear Blog is written I imagine.

Then you have the blogs by the magazine team. ‘The Foreman’ is apparently going to be full of inside information and will tell you “everything the car makers would rather you didn’t know.”

‘The Cupholder’ is the oppose and will be full of “is pure trivia, videos, links and general trivia from all over the world and all over the world wide web.”

And then there is the non F1 racing stuff with ‘Fast and Dangerous’ and the F1 blog in the form of the ‘Sunday Afternoon Club’.

Speaking of the F1 Blog - apparently they “have big plans for that when the BBC takes over the F1 coverage next year.”

/topgear

Then there’s the BBC and the issue of what will happen to /topgear with the launch of the new look and fully interactive topgear.com.

On the FinalGear Forum - controlspecimen asked the question of the public service Top Gear site “So.. is bbc.co.uk/topgear defunct now?”

That’s an interesting question - the problem is that bbc.co.uk/topgear isn’t allowed to link to topgear.com for a lot of political reasons.

So there is a bit of a requirement/expectation that the BBC has at least some kind of public service site for one of its most popular shows.

I wonder whether they will just move it towards /programmes instead - a number of programmes just have their own branded /programmes site now. Seems to make more sense than building their own site.

But there might also be an expectation that /topgear is kept and includes advert free versions of all the videos on topgear.com for a UK audience.

More still

There’s also all the usual games, car news, car stuff and a car chooser.

Actually the car chooser is pretty cool - in stage one you tick a few boxes for what you want in a car, stage two you move a slider to show how much you want to spend.

And in stage three you refine your choices.

It then orders the cars and you can add as many as you like (I think) to your ‘car bar’ that you can then use to compare your shortlist and read a mass of technical details, see photos and read the TopGear review.

It’s all very impressive and I can’t wait until its finished and live. It’s going to be great to have another place to regularly read the writings of Misters May, Clarkson and Hammond.

Oh and it looks like TopGear will be back on TV around 2 November - I’ll try and do a piece soon on what’s going to be in the upcoming series.

Speaking of which - there will also be a schedule that shows when TopGear is on TV - although most of the time it will just be repeating the word Dave over and over and over again.

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What I need from a TV site

I want you to take a minute and think about something for me. It’s a simple question ‘what do you want from a TV channel website?’.

I’m not including children’s channels or news channel’s in this question - but specifically the general entertainment channels like BBC One, ITV 2, E4 and FOX.

I’m also not talking about the websites for a television SHOW - I’m talking specifically about the network portals.

I know there is an argument that suggests the concept of a ‘network’ is a bit of a waste of time online - as much as linear programming is - but you also need to look at the fact that multiple millions of people actually watch these networks and associate shows with them.

So that out of the way - what you’d want from a television network portal.

Here are a few of the things I’d have on my list: A list of shows on the network, the ability to watch the network live, the ability to watch the shows listed in my own time and a schedule of what’s on.

That is pretty much exactly what the team behind BBC /tv and all the separate TV network sites have achieved with their new re-launch.

All the new TV network pages are designed to a standard template (yes including BBC THREE) and have /programmes at their heart.

Every one has the ability to find out what’s on, it tells you what’s on right now and gives you quick links to watch what you’ve missed on the iPlayer.

BBC THREE and BBC FOUR both go one step further and give you the ability to watch the channel right there - live and according to the BBC Internet blog post - this is coming to BBC One and BBC Two soon.

The pages are exactly what you want from a TV network homepage - they don’t contain to much information, they let you watch the shows they have on the network and are easy to find your way around.

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iPlayer: High or Low

I have Sky+ and I love it but I only have it in one room. Unfortunately my wife also loves Sky+ and as she is at home during the day - is able to fill it up with bloody soaps!

So I turn to the web every evening for my televisual entertainment (watching as it goes out just isn’t practical with children).

Most of that watching is done through the BBC iPlayer and for the last month or so it has been using the High Quality option on the BBC iPlayer.

In fact at one point I was watching through the high quality option on iPlayer in full screen on a 52″ plasma television and it looked pretty good.

However, although it seems to be slightly better at first glance and is fairly obviously better in full screen - I wasn’t COMPLETELY convinced there was that much difference.

So I decided to get photoshop out, slap a bit of javascript on the page (thanks to Dreamweaver for saving me the hassle of actually typing any code) and do a rollover contrast.

So here you go:

And just in case JavaScript isn’t your bag baby - here is a gif animation I created that does much the same thing as above (except you have to wait for the better quality version to come around).

As you can see from Frankie Boyle there REALLY is a distinct difference in quality. On first glance that is just one giant plus side.

But you need to remember a) higher quality means it is using more bandwidth so if you are capped you will reach your cap quicker.

And b) if you have a crappy connection then it might judder, shake and stop more often. But other than that site back and enjoy Frankie Boyle in high quality goodness.

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Watch it on mass

There is nothing better than getting a new TV series DVD and sitting down with a bucket of junk food, a big bottle of coke and settling in for a night long tv marathon.

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Top Gear 100

If you’ve read my blog anything near occasionally you may well have noticed a fascination I have with Top Gear, ok obsession (my wife insisted I put that). Well in November Top Gear (the new format) will reach 100.

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Thinking about a future BBC

I don’t think there are many people who actually believe the BBC will continue to be primarily funded by the licence fee forever - there are many reasons why this won’t happen and I can’t be arsed to go into them now.

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Beeb goes inline

A feature of blogs since the very beginning, and for that matter a feature of pretty much every website since the beginning is inline links.

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Me in Spooks

Well not exactly Spooks but the new spin-off series set in the future and on BBC Three, Spooks Code 9. We’ll actually not that either - a really funky internet app that puts you in your own short movie.
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