Radio 3 have improved the quality of their live online stream – it’s an experiment called #PromsXHQ (‘XHQ’ for Extra High Quality). For the final week of the Proms you can listen at 320kb/s AAC: a big improvement but not, on the face of it, a big deal. I think it’s important, though.Why? 1. It’s [...]
There’s a big quarterly departmental meeting at BBC Audio & Music Interactive (which is where I work). We call it the ‘departmental’ and it’s always a pretty big deal – the magnificent Radio Theatre in Broadcasting House is the venue and it goes on all morning, spilling out into surrounding conference rooms for smaller sessions. [...]
People have been talking about being proud of the BBC lately and I clearly can’t join in, since I work there and I’m inevitably partial. But, as I still feel obliged to say, I’m new at the BBC and I went to work there in my late forties, from a life doing all sorts of [...]
The inner workings of the BBC news operation are a mystery to me (although I did get a peep into the newsroom a while ago which was very exciting) so I find myself wondering about the orgins of this item on yesterday’s Today programme. The premise is that Saturday evening primetime TV in Britain is [...]
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Posted 06 January 2009
† Steve Bowbrick
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Also tagged: commonplatform, Doctor Who, event, ITV, live, Michael Grade, news, PR, primetime, ratings, Saturday night, television, Today, X-Factor
Top debunker Andrew Orlowski put the boot into Twitter and to poor old Rory Cellan Jones in a very entertaining way in the tech Private Eye The Register the other day. Orlowski’s kind of militant scepticism is useful. Everything new and especially fancy should be tested against an Orlowski figure (if you’ve got one handy). [...]
The Russell Brand show was outstanding radio and didn’t deserve censure. I’m just going to come out and say this because I have a feeling you might not agree with me (at least not if you’re over about 35). The Russell Brand show—the one with Andrew Sachs’ answerphone—was absolutely brilliant. Offensive and childish (clever Howard [...]
I had a bit of a whinge over at Speechification earlier on about the BBC’s content archiving policy. I find it frustrating to say the least that Heather Couper’s epic history of astronomy, Cosmic Quest, which has been running on Radio 4 since May, will now be withdrawn from the public domain all together. The [...]
Competition regulators could force Project Kangaroo to open its player to all-comers and trigger a renaissance in British video creation: OpenKangaroo? The Office of Fair Trading (“acting decisively to stop hardcore or flagrant offenders”) has referred Project Kangaroo to the Competition Commissioner. Sky and Virgin kicked off the enquiry so they’ll be pleased with the [...]
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Posted 01 July 2008
† Steve Bowbrick
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Also tagged: Channel4, competition, Highfield, ITV, JV, Kangaroo, OFT, online, platform, referral, SeeSaw, Speechification, Uncategorized, video, Watchification, Worldwide
Last Wednesday’s common platform debate at Broadcasting House was a hit. We talked for nearly three hours plus time in the pub afterwards. Mike covered it (live) over at Techcrunch UK (and I know the event was recorded in some form) and other bloggers have written it up (although at least one was actually watching [...]
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Posted 30 June 2008
† Steve Bowbrick
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Also tagged: 4IP, Azeem Azhar, Cabinet Office, Channel 4, Common Platform, competition, Copyright, James Cridland, Jem Stone, Jon Gisby, Media, Ofcom, open source, regulation, technology, Tom Loosemore, Tony Ageh, Uncategorized
First of all, it’s sold out, so if you’ve not got a confirmed seat I’m afraid you’ll just have to fight your way past three rows of braided Commissionaires (mostly veterans of the Desert Rats) at Broadcasting House to get to the Council Chamber (like that brilliant scene in Extras where Stephen Merchant tries to [...]
