Learning that Graham Norton has got his deserved Friday night slot with his chat vehicle The Graham Norton Show, reminded me of the time I spent working on the programme when it started on BBC Two in February / March 2007. It was a challenging experience. And one, predictably, I documented at the time.
August 29, 2010
These glasses prompted an argument between me and my Significant Other. I’d wanted to pick them up late afternoon before I went off to see the Regents Park production of Into the Woods. He was less keen on that proposition, saying that we all should all go together to the show in the car and… [Read more…]
August 28, 2010
A few handy tips for getting ahead with (and for offsetting any corporate nonsense about) Twitter. Use TweetDeck It will seem overwhelming to begin with but stick with it. Be sure to use it for live events – or popular stuff broadcast on TV or radio. Assign a column based on a search criteria for… [Read more…]
August 28, 2010
Nice to see Mark Thompson using the phrase “sick bastards” in the introduction to his MacTaggart lecture at this year’s Media Festival shindig up in Edinburgh. Fighting talk. Good stuff. Aside from the nice shock opening guaranteed to command attention right from the start, here are some of the highlights now that I’ve clawed my… [Read more…]
August 21, 2010
Nice work from Love Productions for the BBC in the Great British Bake-Off. Presenters Mel and Sue don’t so much dominate the competition to find the UK’s greatest baker, rather they just glue the bits together into one entire slab of gorgeousness which also happens to include the master cake-baker my mother always swore by… [Read more…]
August 21, 2010
Cream rises to the top. That’s the expression. Those with a tendency for looking on the world with a rose-tinted view look at life that way. We expect that even in the most difficult of situations or environments, those who effortlessly combine innate skill with an undeniably endearing and seemingly ego-less personality will remain true… [Read more…]
August 8, 2010
I know it’s not cool – nor advisable – to be too smug or indeed too proud about one’s own work. Experience has shown after all how months spent producing inconceivably small bits of video, audio or written content can swiftly pass into distant memory as soon as the encoding has completed or the HTML… [Read more…]
August 8, 2010
Watching the final series of Big Brother – assuming Sky don’t pick up the option next year to satisfy the millions who would almost certainly miss it – is a bit like being at the bedside of a dying relative. Editorially speaking, the series began with a breathtaking back-reference to the first series. There was… [Read more…]
August 8, 2010
Who’d be a TV (or radio, for that matter) scriptwriter? TV especially demands more efficiency. There aren’t endless hours available to the presenter to clarify exactly what was meant by something uttered in a voiceover. It’s one shot. A handful of words. TV is as unforgiving as that. Which is why I’ve been wondering about… [Read more…]
August 2, 2010
Read Stephen Armstrong’s piece ‘Is Sky’s deal with HBO another nail in the coffin for free TV drama?‘ for Media Guardian today and you might experience that same crushing sensation around your chest cavity. Just months after Director General Mark Thompson’s Putting Quality First was released into the pre-election world, Sky now appear to be… [Read more…]
August 31, 2010
0