6 days ago
I made this at work the other day. It’s not a great infrographic I know, but I’m still pretty proud of it.
1 week ago
Mark Thompson bitches out to The Daily Mail readers
“We need to look the future, we need to think about how people will be using the BBC in 2013, 2014.”
Oh right so that’s why you’re closing two digital radio stations and halfing the outpout of the BBC website? Because websites and digital radio — they’re not the future? Nah, Mark’s betting that newspapers and analogue radio are about to make a real comeback.
Bollocks.
Mark Thompson has capitulated in the most spectacular fashion today, personally confirming that he hoped to close 6 Music and the Asian Network.
The money saved will go to creating higher quality programming, apparently. So, clever Mark’s solution for producing better content, is to cut one of the few BBC organs that actually makes good content?
Oddly, I’m behind cutting the BBC’s teenage services, Switch and Blast — that have done sweet FA to help a single teenager outside greater London.
Mark Thompson must have nuts the size of apple pips. He’s so comnsumately bitched out to commercial and political pressure that it makes all Greg Dykes’ good work look like it was in vain.
Ever since the Brand, Ross fiasco the BBC has been sliding gradually into that Daily Mail-esque manner of selective reporting and sensationalism.
Here are a list of places your cuts might be better spent:
1.THE FORMULA ONE RIGHTS — who fucking gives a shit.
2. The massive management salaries.
3. The massive management teams.
4. BBC 3.
5. Radio 1.
6. BBC Persia
7. BBC News 24 — no one needs that much news.
8. Cutting any show that involes antiques.
Patti Smith's autobiography is Radio 4's book of the week. She's reading it too. Awesome.
1 week ago
1 week ago
Martin Johnson on England today
“I think maybe we tried to play too much.”
Pardon? This coming from the coach of a team who didn’t put two passes together in a phase once. Are you fucking kidding? Breakdown, rook, two passes, contact, breakdown, rook, two passes, contact. And you wonder why Ireland found it easy to defend.
For a team with a terrifyingly fast backline it seems bizarre to me that England don’t have the confidence to go out wide ever.
A quick fix for “Broken Britian”: Radio 4 to be played on all public buses, trains and tubes 24/7. If Jenny Murray can’t convince society to shape-up then I don’t believe anyone can.
1 week ago
It's raining and...
I’m on a train, as I tend to be when I post, and the man opposite me has one of those faces whose default expression is grinning. Initially I found it unnerving — now I just like him.
Call me crrraaazy. But axing 6 Music and cutting back on the BBC website seem like two of the last things the Beeb should be doing. Clearly cut-backs need to be made, (what with the recession and shit-stains like Dan Hannan not paying his TV License) but there is no way whole services need to go.
Though frankly I think the BBC Asian network was a misconcieved idea from the outset; if the BBC isn’t producing content that appeals to the British Asian community within its mainstream broadcasts then surely it’s doing something wrong. Or British Asians are being intentionally resistive — though I doubt this is the case. The problem is the BBC Asian network is a good operation, producing excellent shows — as opposed to axing it why don’t te beeb consider selling it?
The BBC website, for all its many faults, is still an excellent resource — and one of the few places on the web one can find, at least vaguely objective news. And 6 Music is, in my opinion, what Radio 1 should sound like. If they really wanted to save money they should axe Radio 1 and rebadge 6 Music as Radio 1.
Have you listened to Radio 1 recently? For an organisation that has the words British and Broadcasting in its name — it doesn’t half peddle a lot of autotuned American crap. And it’s not like they need to. The BBC are one of the few people who don’t need to pander to the American market.
The only good news to come out of this review, aimed squarely at the ‘what the fuck are we going to do if the cunting Murdoch noshing Tories get in?’ scenario, is that every news piece is going to contain a hyperlink to funnel more traffic to commercial rivals. Though I’m willing to bet their partners list will be more heavily guarded than a nun’s chuff. Still, it’s a minor concession in the right direction.
How about the beeb consider cuts in their off-shore operations? BBC Persia for example? Or how about slicing those proposterous managment sallaries.
But no, as per with the beeb the management will be maintained in glorious isolation while the talent and the output suffer the pains of cut-backs.
2 weeks ago
The Shipping Forecast
…is a four-times-daily BBC radio broadcast of weather reports and forecasts for the seas around the coasts of the British Isles. It is produced by the UK Meteorological Office (part of the Ministry of Defence) and broadcast by BBC Radio 4 on behalf of the Maritime and Coastguard Agency (part of the Department for Transport). The forecasts sent over theNavtex system use a similar format, and the same sea areas.
Because of its unique and distinctive sound, the broadcasts have an appeal beyond those solely interested in nautical weather.
I’ll connect you to my fucking foot in a minute. Fucking London. Fucking O2.
