- Blog
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Buy my old records!
I thought it was easy to sell vintage records on eBay. Evidently no one wants a 1985 Run DMC 12″, a White Vinyl Dollar single or a 1982 Grandmaster Flash 12″. What’s going on?
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iPlayer’s economics
iPlayer‘s a huge success. Ashley Highfield says so. The first ‘iPlayer hits’ are emerging (Dr Who, Top Gear). iPlayer audiences are typically 10% of the broadcast numbers, sometimes 500,000 in one day. Within a year we’ll see the first streaming blockbuster – a show whose iPlayer audience exceeds its TV audience. The corporation used to…
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A new way to watch the telly
The experiment that produced Speechification – which is a sort of diagonal slice through the output of Radio 4 and various other speech radio stations delivered as a podcast – has brought forth Watchification! At Watchification, Russell, Roo and myself, plus a small army of contributors (including my wife, who is, like, a real TV…
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The organic backlash starts here
Delia’s on the money. Let’s dump the backward, unproductive organic bullshit and get back to growth and progress. On daytime TV and down on the farm, the food and agriculture wars are getting interesting again. The extremes are being tested. Rapacious techno-capitalist agrobusiness has been shown to be predatory and short-sighted. Likewise, dreamy organic pastoralism…
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Symmetry violated
Saw this book yesterday. Struck me straight away that the positioning of those three characters is odd. The spacing, I mean. I’m going to make a small bet that the first version of the cover spaced Bin-Laden, Bush and Blair evenly across the top of the pocket but that everyone at the meeting objected to…
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Thinking about the public domain
So what I want to do is put up a blog celebrating the public domain. Not public domain in the narrow, literal sense – stuff that’s not protected by copyright – but in a broader sense. ‘Public domain’ may actually be the wrong phrase here, since people will probably just think: “Ah, free stuff!”. There…
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Tories reassuringly stupid and short-sighted
I just wanted to share this piece of elemental stupidity with you. I live in the outer suburbs of London, in a green belt stronghold of the Tories called Radlett. The cutting comes from one of their leaflets. I suppose I could provide some kind of commentary or I could just leave you to treasure…
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Get me my agent!
I was talking about this the other day with Alison Hall. Alison’s a top flight head hunter-type who’s got a consultancy called Seven Arts. She disagrees. She reckons agents are sleazy and that clients wouldn’t use them. The thing is, I have my talents (honestly) and they are various. I’ve also got decades of life…
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Odds that Conway was the only one: close to zero
Here’s a quick one. Let’s have a sweepstake. In the next couple of weeks, as the tips and leaks start to flow in, how many MPs will be busted for paying their relatives to do nothing? Nearest to the actual number wins… er… a slightly cleaner legislature. Seriously, Conway got the boot (a much tougher…
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Explaining the inexplicable
Tories, pop media and now Labour rebels want us to vote on a European Treaty that’s barely readable, largely incomprehensible and hardly consequential. Why? UK Legislators have got the referendum bug again. Nothing wrong with that: asking your electorate to decide on really big questions has a long and noble history. This referendum, though, if…