Charles Allen, Chairman of Granada, tells the Royal Television Society that the BBC should be required to hand over 10% of its licence fee revenue to fund public service output on the commercial networks. This is presumably Allen’s opening shot in the charter renewal debate. Not a bad idea – certainly a very direct way of increasing the diversity of public service programming – but I can’t see it lasting more than about ten minutes once the BBC’s super-efficient charter renewal mincer is running at full speed. From Ray Snoddy in The Times.
Month: February 2003
Proles vs Toffs
I’ve spent a fascinating day in Oxford at the Politics of Code conference, featuring the estimable Larry Lessig, Esther Dyson et al – and a lot of old friends. It’s late so I’ll post properly tomorrow. In the meantime, I think I’ll find an excuse to pop back to Oxford tomorrow to watch the students fighting.
My favourite search terms
People arriving at my web site via a search engine are searching for the strangest things. According to my logs the number one search term is “The Gruffalo” which makes sense. Also pretty high up the list are “diy coffee table” (and, of course, “coffee table diy“), “chat rooms for boring gits“, “bamber gascoigne birthday” and “good cowhand photos“. My favourite, though, is “quotes on being ignored“. I’m number 1 result at Google for “bamber gascoigne birthday” and “diy coffee table”. With results like those it seems obvious that what I should really be doing here is not rambling on like this but selling Bamber Gascoigne-themed birthday gifts and DIY coffee tables.
BBC Charter big guns
The Guardian confirms that the BBC has responded quickly and seriously to Tessa Jowell’s announcement that Charter renewal won’t be a cake walk. They’ve rolled out two top executives to lead the defense of the licence fee.
Barry Cox on the future of the BBC
Barry Cox’s second Oxford University lecture on the future of television, reprinted in The Guardian. This week: The reformation of the BBC. The first one is here.
Bridge fanatic
Another beautiful day in Soho. To Blacks in Dean Street for lunch with John Wilmott. John founded – with his brother Eamonn – Internet Publishing which became Online Magic and, after the business’ acquisition by ad giant Omnicom, Agency.com. John is a thoughtful bridge fanatic. He’s working on a new project.
Got little kids?
Throwing out the self-promotional boom a bit further today – to take in my wife Juliet’s latest column at Tigerchild. Juliet’s been writing her funny and frank weekly accounts of life in the parenting trenches (Planet Parent) for about a year now but I reckon her latest is one of the funniest. You can usually catch the latest instalment on Monday. The Sunday Times reckons Tigerchild is one of the top ten UK web sites, by the way (although the Sunday Times web site is so awful that I can’t find a shred of evidence for this assertion!).
The manned space programme and human vanity
Those who doubt that we should continue sending people into space have a point – but only in the short term. As soon as you stretch the time scale out beyond, say, fifty years it becomes clear: freezing the manned space programme now would be an enormous vanity, a betrayal of future generations on a grand scale – and each missed year of progress would amplify the damage, making it harder and harder for our descendants to restart.
We (I mean human beings, of course, not Britons or Americans or Russians) must continue with the manned space programme. Refusing to do so would be a bit like the chimps getting together and deciding not to bother with the tools (“Listen. Don’t get me wrong. I love tool-making as much as the next monkey but be honest. What can you do with a sharp stone that you can’t do with an opposable thumb?”).
At long time scales (hundreds of years) even the hideous cost of the programme shrinks to the kind of small change only a term-limited politician can worry about and at really long time scales (thousands of years and more), of course, it’s going to be a matter of survival. As Duncan Steel from the University of Salford says “the dinosaurs did not have a space program. That’s why they died.”
Bowbrick at large
My latest column for Guardian Online is up. It’s headlined Secret of their success and it’s about weblogs and the uniquely conversational tone of really good bloggers.
Perkins is among us
If you’ve never heard of The Red Herring it might be a bit late for you to catch up. For most of the nineties and throughout the tech boom, the Herring was the absolute dead centre of the entrepreneurial universe, typifying a distinctively Californian attitude to business – one-third boundless optimism, one-third intellect and one-third nitrous oxide, I think. The magazine survives but has suffered along with the whole sector and may never regain its preeminence. I mention the Herring because its founder and publisher (and now publisher of Always On) is among us. He read my sarcastic welcome for Always On and has commented the entry.