Skip to content

Posts tagged ‘Television program’

21
Jun
clarksonmercury2

Queen and Top Gear in weird merged moment

On the run up to a new series of Top Gear the more hardcore fans loitering on the Final Gear forums start to get a little bit strange, suffering from withdrawal and desperation.

OK we’re not THAT bad, we do know it’s only a TV show but there are also only so many times you can watch the same shows over and over and over again. Read moreRead more

31
Jul

Mobilising the fans

I can’t believe I’m about to start ANOTHER blog post with the words ‘I’m a massive Top Gear fan’ but there you go – I did it – but this one is about more than just the television series.

Although I am a massive Top Gear fan, I wouldn’t say it is the best show of the last decade – it certainly is ONE of the best shows on television, but my heart would really want to see an original comedy series or drama fit that roll – even if TG is part both of those things.

But when the question comes up ‘what is the best television show of the Noughties?’ in a poll on the Guardian website – I find myself torn.

First there is my love of good drama and original comedy: shows like The West Wing and The Wire, The Thick of It, QI, Life on Mars, Flight of the Conchords, Doctor Who, Black Books and Spooks are all on the shortlist.

LONDON - SEPTEMBER 01: Television presenters ...
Image by Getty Images via Daylife

But then there is my loyalty to the community, brand and bigger multimedia experience that is Top Gear. You see Top Gear is more than just three blokes pissing about for an hour a week 12/13 weeks a year. It’s a magazine, a series of columns and books by the main personalities and most importantly a community.

There aren’t many British shows with online communities surrounding them the size of the one Top Gear enjoys – what with the hundreds of comments every new blog post attracts on the official Top Gear website to the 40 thousand member Final Gear fan forum.

The only other show I can think of off the top of my head is Doctor Who and its related spin-offs – Torchwood and Sarah-Jane Adventures – two shows with a long history and relatively recent major re-launch.

So back to the poll – as you can see I’m torn, between my love of a good drama and my loyalties to the Top Gear community – in the end I decided to vote twice – for Top Gear and Spooks.

But not before heading over to the Final Gear forums and posting a new thread with the details of the Guardian Poll and inviting members of the forum to go and vote.

I included the word Rig in the title but really what I was doing was attempting to mobilise the mass of internet savvy Top Gear fans.

Here was my thread opening post:

The Guardian are running a poll trying to find the best TV show of the noughties and Top Gear currently has 1.5% of the vote.

The top two shows are currently The West Wing and The Wire – they’d both get a vote from me if I could as would The Thick of It, QI, Life on Mars, Flight of the Conchords, Doctor Who, Black Books and Spooks – but you get to vote for one only.

So it went to Top Gear.

And I included a link to the Guardian page with the poll. As you can see when I posted it Top Gear had a share of just 1.5% of the vote and there were even comments questioning why Top Gear deserved to be in the shortlist at all.

Within a few hours it was up to about 3% and by the time I looked the next morning it was in second place with about 10%.

After lunch it had gone up again to about 12% – taking the lead and by the time I wrote this blog post Top Gear had 22% of the vote – a nearly 12% lead over second place The Wire.

The Guardian picked up on the mobilisation moves themselves with JasonDeans posting: “Although at the moment it looks like the Top Gear fans have got organised & that could be top soon. Let’s see if any other fanbases mobilise…”

Oh and in response, later, to a post saying ‘how the freak can Top Gear be in first place’ JasonDeans came back with: “cos top gear fans have got organised.”

Now, as I mentioned before – this isn’t a case of saying ‘look Top Gear IS the best show of the last ten years’ but more of how a strong community, when mobilised can easily influence things like polls, debates and even charts.

I’m now wondering just how successfull the Facebook campaign to get people to download ‘Ding Dong the Witch is Dead‘ on the day Margaret Thatcher dies will be.

Although to be honest – it does only have 113 members and to have any impact it would need to break into the top 20 singles chart – for that you’d need to sell thousands of copies.

Related articles by Zemanta
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
19
Jul

What to do with books you’ve read?

What do you do with books after you’ve read them? Collect them on a shelf? Sell them to the highest bidder? Give them to a carity shop? Keep them in a box for future use? Or just hope they’ll go away?

We have a big bookshelf in our living room where we keep a selection of our favourite, or unread books – most of these books belong to my wife and re-afirm the ‘housewife’ stereotype. The bookshelf has five shelves, the first three are my wifes, the fourth is my babies and the bottom one belongs to me.

The top shelf is books about children and healthcare, things you apparently ‘need’ to know to bring up children. These sort of books used to fill up three shelves until we had our second child, then it was two shelves.

Now we have our third it is just half of the top shelf with the other half filled with bits and bobs we need to keep out of the children’s reach.

kailenbooks

Kailen poinnting to his books

In case you were wondering – the two older children have their books on a bookshelf in their bedrooms – we keep the toddlers (mainly touch and feel) books in the living room because he likes to help himself to them throughout the day.

The next two shelves are all cookery books and my wife tries to argue that these are there for both of us to use. But as my cookery involves throwing everything in and hoping for the best (including my pizza dough technique) I’d say they’re hers.

Anyway back the point, or at least the debate I was trying to have with myself in blog form – my shelf.

As well as those three shelves of books my wife also has about eight large banana boxes of books somewhere in the back of the garage come storeroom – she takes the ‘store for later’ option with the odd ‘give it to a charity shop’ when I push her.

I have all my books on that one shelf at the bottom of the living room bookshelf. That isn’t because I don’t have very many books – over time I’ve had as many boxes of books as my wife – but I get rid of them when I’m finished with them.

But my most recent book clear out has left me in a little bit of a dilema over what to do with the books.

Normally I read a book and then dispose of it – sometimes that involved giving it to a charity shop, sometimes I give to family or friends and occasionally, when it is a more unusual (or at least less well known) book I’ll leave it in a hotel room, on a park bench or even on the bus for other people to discover.

I put the question in the title out on Twitter and asked my tweeterers what they do with books when they’ve finished. Two responses at the time of writing this said:

squawkbox@upyourego Pass them onto friends/family… Once they have read them, then they can deal with disposal!

spicysaurus@upyourego Do you have Half Price Books there? That’s where my unwanted books go. I do keep and reread many of them, though.

However, the books I’ve just got round to sorting through are ones I’ve been hoping to ‘collect’ and so didn’t want to get rid – but I came to the conclusion that I need the bookshelf space for what is an increasing number of books and less time to read.

My bookshelf

My bookshelf

I’m talking about my Doctor Who books.

I’m a geek and one of the ways you can identify my geekyness is my obsession with ‘completing’ collections. I have every vanilla Doctor Who DVD, every episode of Yes, Minister and dozens of other TV series – including Red Dwarf, Bottom, The Young Ones and Fawlty Towers.

And I’ve tried to apply the same obsession to the Doctor Who and Torchwood books – at one point or another I have owned them all. But they are a lot bigger than the DVDs and aren’t as re-usable – you really wouldn’t want to read it more than once in a couple of years.

So I’ve read it and passed it on in one of the ways I mentioned above. But now I’ve got two children reading and one obsessed with books. Both the older children love Doctor Who (although they’re not quiet up to reading the DW books yet) and my eldest loves the Sarah Jane Adventures books.

In a couple of years, possibly even less at the rate she seems to get through books, my eldest will be up to and interested in reading the Doctor Who books and a couple of years after that my middle child will be looking towards them as well.

So I’m now left with a) a slightly guilty feeling at getting rid of all those Doctor Who books over the last few years and b) wondering what to do with the ones I’ve got now that I’ve read – or at least heard in Audiobook form.

And that’s another thing – yes I might have listened to it in audiobook form but what have I missed by not reading it and capturing the imagery for myself? Will I want to read it myself in addition to the audiobook or will the magic have gone by the time I get around to it?

I’ve decided to hang on to the books for now and just put them in the garage in a box – if my wife can get away with it then so can I. Although if I could convince her to give me another shelf – they would look pretty cool on display.

Related articles by Zemanta
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
10
Jun

Please reply in English next time

Earlier this year I must have e-mailed the Department for Culture, Media and Sport – or at least filled out a form, petition or wrote something somewhere.

What I sent was obviously something to do with children’s television and the state of it in the UK – or at least the lack of homegrown children’s tv outside of the BBC.

Below is the response I just received – although it doesn’t really give me any clue to what I may, or may not have asked them in the original e-mail/form/petition…

See if you can make any sense of it – but from now on – please reply in English! Or if you can’t manage full on plain English – how about something that’s at least understandable to non-political normal human beings.

Thank you for your e-mail of May 2009 regarding the level of output for Children’s television programmes.

In our interim report, published on 29 January, we identified children’s content for all ages, but especially for the over 10s, as one of the priorities to be addressed by the new framework for public service content that is being designed. This would include content both transmitted on television and on new media platforms.

This approach was supported by the evidence set out in Ofcom’s statement on public service broadcasting, “Putting Viewers First”, published on 21 January, which reaffirmed their view, first set out in 2007 in their report into the children’s TV sector, that there was a market failure, especially for older teenagers and young adults, which would need to be addressed.

We recognise that this is a key area of concern for both parliamentarians and stakeholder and we will be outlining our proposed approach to this problem in the final Digital Britain report, which is due to be published shortly.

I hope this information helps

Related articles by Zemanta
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
18
May

Licence fee and the internet

Appologies in advance for this extremely long blog post.

Before I get on with this blog post I feel I need to say that anything written here is my own personal opinion, that I’m not even convinced I agree with any of it and that I am a 100% fully committed supporter of the licence fee and the way it is currently used.

So all that said lets take a look at the TV licence – the £142.50 almost every home in Britain has to pay for the right to have a television – and more specifically how it can be applied in an online, on demand world.

licence_body

Recently Erik Huggers, BBC Future Media and Technology boss expressed a ‘personal opinion’ that it might be time to look at how the licence fee can be extended to the include those watching only on a computer.

BBC Television Centre
Image by flem007_uk via Flickr

He said: “My view is that if you are using the iPlayer you have to be a television licence fee payer. I don’t believe in a free ride. If you are consuming BBC services then you have to be a licence holder.”

Obviously at this point I should probably mention that the current ‘official BBC position’ is that a television licence is only needed if you are watching live, as broadcast programming – not on demand.

TV licensing currently state that you need a licence to: “Use any TV equipment such as TV set, digital box, video or DVD recorder, computer or mobile phone to watch or record TV programmes as they are being shown on television.”

You can police the television, digital box, video/DVD recorder side of that fairly easily – you just make sure that when someone buys any of those devices they have a TV licence – or at the very least you take their name and address so it can be checked against the TV licensing database.

It is possible that someone buying one of these devices has no intention of using it to watch television – they could be getting it to watch DVDs, copy DVDs, burn their homemade movies or play games.

More often than not, statistically people buy a television to watch TV, a DVD recorder to record TV and a digital box – well to watch digital TV.

But the opposite of that probably applies to computers and mobile phones. I expect it to be the opposite with those devices where the majority are using them for anything BUT watching TV.

BBC iPlayer 2.
Image via Wikipedia

OK so millions do use the iPlayer on a regular basis – but far fewer watch television live through the iPlayer and even the millions watching on demand is a considerable amount lower than those watching television generally.

At the moment making sure those watching live TV via a mobile or computer sort of relies on them being honest: “Yes guv, I’ve got a licence and wouldn’t dream of watching TV on my computer without one.”

Or equally, or even more often: “Nah I don’t use it, can’t use it and couldn’t work out how to use it even if I wanted to.”

But technically anybody could use it, they could decide not to own a TV and watch all their television live over the internet through their fat broadband line and 30” computer screen.

Which means they can be using all the BBC services that the rest of us are paying for – I think those watching only on a computer who don’t have a licence – should have a licence if they want to use the iPlayer.

But the question is – how do you do that without upsetting people that have no intention of owning a TV or watching TV on their computer?

It isn’t a problem at the moment as most people watching on the computer probably have a television and in turn a licence as well.

But what about in the future when 50mb broadband is common place, when large computer screens are common place – or even laptops in the bedroom?

How do we get around that problem?

Well I can see a few solutions and one jumped out at me when I opened the post on Saturday to find my new TV licence.

The letter included not one but two big blue boxes with my TV licence number in it. There are even instructions on the back for entering your licence number on the TV licensing website to find out or update your details.

BBC Television Centre autostitch
Image by ➨ Redvers via Flickr

So if people are getting comfortable entering the number to update details on the TV licencing site – why not enter it on to the BBC website to use iPlayer?

OK so the number could potentially be shared between people – students using their parents number while at university – but you could get around that problem by tying the number to a MAC address or IP range/ISP.

Or you just ignore that problem, accept it as a fact of life and move on.

I don’t think entering your TV licence number when registering for access to the iPlayer is such a big deal – however, having recently spent a morning teaching people who can’t use a mouse to get online – I have a different perspective over what is easy.

That extra step might put people off the wonder of the iPlayer, off a valuable and useful BBC service that comes as part of the licence fee they’re paying – it’s those people, and the honest ones this will cause problems for – not the tech savvy ones who will find ways around it.

No, in my opinion we should probably continue to rely on honesty – with a twist.
Build a codec/include into the iPlayer stream player (live only) that you have to install/accept – make it as seamless and painless as possible – click YES to watch live TV sort of seamless.

That way instead of requiring a licence fee if you own a computer – you only require the fee if you have this codec installed on your computer.

Like I said at the start though – just a few random thoughts for preserving the licence fee – that I think is so vital to the massive British creative industry – imagine the quality of TV we’d all suffer if it wasn’t for this collective good that we contribute to together – much like the NHS, schools, libraries and to a certain extent – the armed forces.

I don’t think this will be a problem for at least a decade, by which time we will be entering another charter renewal anyway – and who knows what that might throw up.

Related articles by Zemanta
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
19
Apr

Time to get out the plasticine

Every Saturday I have to come up with ‘something new’ to do with my son. He’s five, a little on the hyperactive side and gets bored easily.

My wife takes our daughter (8) and baby (15 months) into town to go shopping and visit the library – but Jaden needs a bit more attention than that.

Normally we’ll watch a little TV, go on the computer, read, play games, make puzzles, draw pictures, go for a walk and when the weather is nice we’ll spend a couple of hours in the park.

But thanks to James May I’ve now got something else to do with him today. Watch this…

I’m a BIG fan of James May’s top toys series – in fact one of my favourite televisual moment was when he brought a model train at an auction in front of ‘enthusiasts’ and threw the box away – priceless.

Now as part of his mission to celebrate Britains best loved toys. He is going to build a full sized garden out of plasticine for the RHS Chelsea Flower Show.

This means he will have to make thousands of plasticine flowers – not an easy task. The making isn’t that difficult, in fact its a lot of fun – but the area he’s calling for help is the inspiration.

He wants people to e-mail him with their suggestions or to post a video response on YouTube with instructions for making your flower design – that is what I’ll be doing with my son this afternoon.

Now to dig out the plasticine.

Related articles by Zemanta
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
14
Apr

Red Dwarf Review

OK so after half a dozen or so blog posts on the rebirth of the boys from the Dwarf, of photos, information and some would say obsession – it’s finally been and gone.

reddwarf_mYou may not have bothered wondering why I didn’t post a review straight away, after all I haven’t exactly posted much of anything recently.

But the reason for the delay isn’t because of my generally inability to be arsed to write, no it is more specifically because I didn’t really know WHAT to write.

Lets break it down with a couple of words on each of the three parts and then I’ll explain myself in more detail.

Episode one

Felt like we had accidentally joined them on a bit of an ‘off day’. On one of the days the television show wouldn’t have filmed if it was a reality programme.

Although towards the end it started to improve with the caveat that the characters sort of felt like a parody of themselves.

Part two

Weird is the word and the word is weird. This didn’t really feel like a Red Dwarf episode as it was a bit over meta for me.

Part three

This is where it all came together, the twist and turn and big reveal felt like a ‘proper’ Red Dwarf ending.

So what’s with the delay?

OK so that all sounds fairly painless, a reasonable four paragraph review of 75 minutes of television – interesting start, poor middle and good ending.

But its more than that. You see I wasn’t convinced the start and middle where as bad as I thought they were and that they needed a second watch.

So on Monday I put a bit of effort in, I recorded the three episodes from Sky+ to my DVD burner, ripped them all on to my computer, opened them in a video editor, cut the adverts, credits and start up (for the end of ep 1, all of ep 2 and start of ep 3) out and burnt it back to a DVD.

I then sat down with my ≈75 minute feature legnth episode of Red Dwarf, a drink, a snack, lights off and a silent house (everyone was in bed).

It was wonderful, as a whole, a single entity without interuption or gap it felt like a proper episode of Red Dwarf.

The start came across better on the second airing as I picked up subtle jokes I missed the first time, it wasn’t as I originally reviewed it on Sunday ‘a bit crap’.

The middle made sense as I knew what was coming and in fact I noticed the jokes as I wasn’t as baffled by the pointlessness of it all.

And finally the end was more improved than I originally thought. The twist worked wondefully and left things open for a series.

And for it to get millions of viewers over the three parts on a tiny channel like Dave is seriously impressive.

If the BBC brought the second airing rights to the three parts and ran them all together as a feature legnth episode on BBC TWO it may even beat the previous BBC TWO highest viewing figures record – held by Red Dwarf of 9 million.

More on the ratings can be found in the Media Guardian.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
7
Apr

Genius? Old person repellent

Genius (Radio series)
Image via Wikipedia

My iPlayer pick for today comes in the form of Genius – now I know this has been around for a while now, firstly in the form of three radio series on BBC Radio 4 and a television series, currently on BBC Two.

Before I go any further I should explain that the headline isn’t a three word review of the show itself, instead its the idea I submitted – but was obviously thrown in the rejection bin.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/e/e2/Genius.jpg/75px-Genius.jpgAnyway back to Genius – I’ve picked the third episode in the television series, not because its the best but because its the most recent.

Dave’s special guest is celebrated film and stage actor Jonathan Pryce.

Oh and here is a bit of info on my ‘Genius’ idea – otherwise known as bench blocker.

Every lunchtime, regardless of the fact that they have all day to go into town – hundreds of retired people pick between the hours of 12 and 2 to take their lunch – on the benches in town.

They fill every single bench up – leaving just enough room to entice the unsuspecting youth into their void of nonsense and loneliness.

That young person then spends the enterity of their one hour lunchbreak from the tedium of an office and twitter listening to the tedious stories of war, cats and the daily mail – all while sat next to some smelling slightly of wee.

The alternative to this situation is to spend your entire lunch hour wandering the streets while eating a sandwich – and fending off birds or to sit at that same pointless, tedious desk you’re trying to escape.

Well with the old person repellent that will no longer be necessary.

The idea is to create a device that you hide under every bench and at exactly 12 and up until 2 it operates – all old people will avoid this device at all costs as, like a vampire with sunlight – this device makes old people whither.

I’m thinking something that plays a combination of punk music and Chris Moyles.

Related articles by Zemanta
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
18
Sep

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.

TV

One

Two

Three

Four

Related articles by Zemanta
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
« Older Entries