Super Thursday: Welsh Assembly Election Roundup

It was not such a bad night for Labour in Wales as they are still the largest party in Wales, but they will need a coalition partner to govern effectively. They did lose three seats, all to Plaid Cymru leaving them with just 26 seats.

In second came Plaid Cymru with 15 seats. Conservatives came third with 12 seats and Liberal Democrats came 4th with just 6 seats. The remaining seat was taken by an Independent who was elected 4 years ago as a Labour AM (Assembly Member)

It's interesting to note that the Conservatives gained 4 seats in the constituencies, but lost that many in the regional lists system.

The British National Party came close to winning a seat in the Welsh Assembly regional lists system, coming 5th in most lists.

Whilst the BNP news is disappointing, I will be following the development of a governing coalition in Wales. The new assembly will sit for the first time on Wednesday 9th May and Digital Satellite viewers will be able to watch proceedings on S4/C 2.

Super Thursday: Scottish Parliamentary Election Roundup.

Prior to this Election, Labour was the largest party in the Scottish Parliament with 50 seats. They were the major party in a coalition with the Liberal Democrats.

Today, the Scottish Nationalist Party is the largest party with 47 seats, compared to Labour on 46, Conservatives on 17, Liberal Democrats on 16, Green Party on 2 and 1 Independent.

In terms of the individual constituencies, Labour won the most constituencies with 37, SNP got 21, Liberal Democrats got 11 and the Conservatives got 4. It was in the regional lists vote that the SNP and Conservatives did best. The SNP won 26 of those regionally based seats, Conservatives have 13, Labour have 9, Liberal Democrats 5, Greens 2 and 1 Independent.

Turnout across Scotland was high at 51.8%, which translates to just over 2 million votes cast.

The big story of the night will unquestionably be the high number of spoilt ballots cast in this election. It was noted on the night, by myself and the BBC's Nick Robinson that this was an unusual trend, with in one constituency, spoilt ballots making up 7.2% of the votes cast.

I note that the Electoral Commission, who oversee all elections here in the UK, have said that they will begin an investigation with immediate effect. I am glad to hear that. I really don't want this to become as infamous as the "Florida Hanging Chads" incident during the 2000 US presidential election. SNP leader Alex Salmond has claimed that 100,000 votes were spoilt in this election, and we have no immediate way of verifying his figures.

However, we do know that in one constituency, Airdrie and Shotts, the winning candidates majority was less than the number of spoilt ballots. In Glasgow Shettleton, there were over 2,000 spoilt ballots. These are very unusual figures that in years of covering elections, I have never seen this level of spoilt ballots.

However, the story from here on in now will be about who will form the next Scottish government. The expectation is that it will be a combination of SNP and Lib Dems with the Green and the 1 single Independent. However, that might not be the case. The Conservatives could act as kingmakers here. Labour could still manage to become the next government,and indeed, it could be possible for Labour and SNP to team up in a kind of national unity government.

What will happen, is unclear right now, but I will be following this story with much interest over the next few weeks.

Super Thursday: Blogging returns tonight with the Roundups

That's it for the "live blogging" tonight on this UK Super Thursday election night. I'll be back later tonight with the final roundups, analysis and some of the more interesting stories from the election.

Super Thursday: English Council Elections Analysis 1

Okay, so this time, I am focusing only on the English Council Election, and anlysing the results so far, now that we have roughly about 1/3rd of the results in.

In England, it has been a good night for the Tories. Not spectacular, but good. They have lost Salisbury, Thurrock, Eastbourne and West Somerset, but gained East Cambridgeshire, Lincoln, North Somerset, North West Leicestershire, South Ribble, Dover, Oswestry, Torbay, Gravesham, Woking, Plymouth, North Warwickshire and Chester. A lot of these gains were the result of gaining no more than 2 seats, so they can't be called spectacular, but it is a solidly upward performance.

The Liberal Democrats have managed to gain Eastbourne, Rochdale and Kingston-upon-Hull, but have also lost Torbay and St Albans. A solid performance, but not much more really than holding your own.

Labour have been on the wrong end electorally in England tonight. They haven't gained a single council and have lost Lincoln, North West Leicestershire, Blackburn with Darwen, Gravesham, Oldham and Plymouth, and 4 of those councils went straight into Tory control! Not the disaster they were expecting, but not a nice result.

Super Thursday: Spoilt Ballots controversy.

It seems that there has been an unusually high number of spoilt ballots in Scotland. The BBC's Nick Robinson has been blogging on this issue on the BBC's own Election Night blog.

Super Thursday: SNP gain a major target seat

Alex Salmond, the leader of the SNP, has won the seat of Gordon, defeating the incumbent Liberal Democrat candidate with a majority of 2,062. The swing from Lib Dem to SNP was 10.7%.

During his victory speech, Alex Salmond was critical of the dual system of voting in Scotland and the huge numbers of spoilt ballots that resulted. Whether this system will be regarded as a success is anyone's guess, but the high number of spoilt ballots will be an issue in the weeks and months to come.

Super Thursday: State of Play at 0300 UK

Well, it may be Friday morning here in the UK now, but the results from Super Thursday continue to confuse and confound.

For the Conservatives, they have made improvements in the English council elections, gaining over 100 councillors and 5 councils, However, indications so far from Scotland and Wales show little or no sign of any improvement in their electoral fortunes.

Labour will be relieved to have not recieved a complete drubbing, managing an improvement on their disatrous results last year. It looks like they may hold onto government in Wales, but it will be nip and tuck in Scotland between them and SNP.

Liberal Democrats, have just about held their own, not improved, but they have made some gains, especially in the English council elections in terms of councils gained.

It really is a case of pick the bones out of it all, and it's not all over yet.

Super Thursday: Conservatives and Liberal Democrats swap councils

The mixed bag idea seems to be really solidifying now. As I reported earlier, the Conservatives in Torbay will have been breaking out the chilled champers for their gain from the Liberal Democrats, but I imagine their Eastbourne colleagues tipple tonight will be warm white wine, as the Conservatives there lost the council to... the Liberal Democrats.

What you gain on the swings, you lose on the roundabouts!

Super Thursday: Big Swings in Torbay!

To be fair, this isn't that unusual for Torbay council, it has had big swings before. But it is notable, especially for the Conservatives, that this gain for them, came from yet another massive swing in the Torbay area. In 2003, the Tories had only 7 seats, they now have 23! In 2003, the Liberal Democrats had 23 seats, they now have only 9.

This is a result that the Tories wanted, and they will be in celebratory mood in Torquay tonight.

Super Thursday: Independents gain ground

A result that will not leave the Tories smiling tonight.

The Conservatives had control of West Somerset council going into the election, but tonight they have lost control to an Independent group of councillors. The Tories lost 4 seats there, whilst the Independents gained 6.

And another result, this time from Wales, that will leave the political machines in a rather less than euphoric state, is that an Independent has won Bleanau Gwent. The seat was previously held by Labour.

Perhaps my earlier thought about being a bad night for Independent politicians was premature.

Super Thursday: Spoiled Ballots

In any election there will be a number of ballots that have been spoiled, this is to be expected, but there are reported concerns over the number of spoiled ballots, expecially in Scotland. In one consitituency, it was reported that 7% of the ballots cast there were in fact spoiled.

I seriously hope that this doesn't become our version of Florida's "Hanging Chads" in the 2000 presidential election.

Super Thursday: First Welsh Assembly result

We have the first result from the Welsh Assembly election, for Islwyn. Labouor have held onto the constituency but in a strange twist, an Independent came in second there with over 6.5 thousand votes, beating Plaid Cymru, Conservatives and Liberal Democrats.

Interesting twist!

Super Thursday: State of Play at 0200 UK

This is definitely turning into a mixed bag of results.

Labour aren't doing as badly as they feared, they have held many opposition targets, including some SNP targets in Scotland, so they should be relieved, so far.

Conservatives are improving, but perhaps not as much as they would have liked. The big swing of Plymouth City Council from a 1 seat Labour majority to a 5 seat Conservative majority is a definite highpoint for them, though.

Liberal Democrats are being attacked on both fronts and are just abouot holding their own, to maybe a slight improvement. They may have been expecting to do better.

So far, the big losers seem to be Independent politicians and the SNP, who have seen improvement in their votes, but hasn't really translated into the seats they've been looking for, yet.

Super Thursday: Not a Good Night for Independents

It doesn't look like it pays to be an Independent politician tonight.

The Independent block in Torridge lost control of their council earlier, and just now, a smiliar Independent block in the Eden district council has also lost control of the council.

It would seem the party machines were working well this election time.

Super Thursday: Lib Dems Lose St Albans

This is a key result.

The Liberal Democrats have become the first political party to actually lose control of a council. They have exactly half of the 58 seats on the St Albans district council, and the other half are shared between Conservatives, Labour and 2 others.

This is not a result the Lib Dems wanted to see.

Super Thursday: Conservatives Gain Plymouth

As BBC1 South West opened up their update, it was with the latest news from Plymouth Guildhall, breaking at that very second, that the Conservatives have gained control of Plymouth City Council.

Plymouth as a political area is one of the very few areas where Labour have any political strength in the South West of England, which is mainly a Conservative/Liberal Democrat battleground. The fact that the Tories have taken control of the council, is quite damaging to Labour.

Super Thursday: The First Lost Council

Well, we have our first council that has gone to No Overall Control. The thing is, it is Torridge District Council in Devon, which was controlled by a large group of Independent councillors. In Torridge, there have been gains for the Conservatives, Liberal Democrats and even the green Party. But, there is not one Labour councillor still in Torridge.

Super Thursday: Dundee West - SNP Gain from Labour

The first seat to change hands in the Scottish Parliament has been declared and the SNP have made their first gain from Labour in Dundee West. The majority is 1,946 and the swing from Labour to SNP comes in at 6.1%

This is a big result for the SNP. Hopefully by the end of the night, we will have an idea of how things have gone for the parties in Scotland.

Super Thursday: Gains and Losses

So far, the Liberal Democrats have gained two councils, Kingston-upon-Hull and Rochdale, whilst the Conservatives have gained Chester and North Warwickshire. Currently, none of the parties have lost control of any councils, which I suppose is of some comfort for Labour.

Super Thursday: Glasgow Kelvin - Labour Hold

Labour have managed to hold onto the Glasgow Kelvin seat, which was regarded by observers as a key SNP target seat. The majority was down to just 1,207, and the swing from Labour to SNP, was lower than in Motherwell & Wishaw, at just 4.9%.

Super Thursday: State of Play at 0100 UK

Well, it is still early stages and we don't yet have any meaningful results in yet, and none at all from the Scottish Councils and Welsh Assembly. However, Scottish First Minister Jack McConnell has held onto his seat with a reduced majority, and a swing to SNP of just under 7%.

In England, we have only had 2 councils change hands, both from No Overall Control. One has gone to the Liberal Democrats, and one has gone to the Conservatives. However, Labour have gained more councillors overall, than the Lib Dems. Bit of a mixed picture so far. We'll have to see if it stays that way.

Super Thursday: The Turnout

Turnout in these elections has been reported to be high in both Scotland and Wales, but much lower in England. However, that's a trend that's not being repeated everywhere. In the Sidford ward in Sidmouth, Devon, the turnout there was reported at 100%!

Super Thursday: Conservatives Gain A Council

Yep, the Tories have actually made a gain. Okay, only from No Overall Control, and they were the largest party anyway, but this is the district council in Chester, and it has been NOC since the Tories lost control in 1986. Now, they have control back.

Super Thursday: Scottish First Minister holds seat

Some news just in, and it's good news for Labour, as the current Scottish First Minister, Jack McConnell has held onto to his seat in Motherwell & Wishaw.

But his majority was down to 5,938, and the SNP saw a swing to them from Labour of 6.9%.

Early days, but an interesting result.

Super Thursday: Headlines from the early declarations

There isn't enough data yet to establish any kind of a trend, but there are one or two interesting stories emerging.

In the Welsh Assembly elections, a polling station in the constituency of Newport East experienced such a huge turnout, that they actually ran out of ballot boxes.

In the district council of Broxbourne, the British National Party lost the only council seat they had there, to the Conservatives.

And in the council of Tunbridge Wells, Labour lost their only councillor there to the Conservatives.

Super Thursday: State of Play at 0000 UK

It's the early stages of the election night. There are 312 English Councils, 32 Scottish Councils, 129 Scottish Parliamentary seats and 60 Welsh Assembly seats up for grabs.

So far, just 3results in, but we have our first change. Liberal Democrats have taken control of Kingston-Upon-Hull. The other two were held by Labour and Conservative, so not enough info to form any kind of trend, yet.

Super Thursday: BBC Parliament

Whilst BBC1 in England and Northern Ireland will be following the broader picture, BBC1 in Scotland is hosting it's own coverage of the Scottish Parliamentary Election. For viewers outside Scotland, the coverage can be seen on BBC Parliament. BBC1 in Wales also has it's own separate coverage of the Welsh Assembly Elections.

Sky Digital viewers can also watch the coverage on Channels 971 and 972.

Super Thursday: What to watch out for.

There isn't much to look out for in these elections. But there will be one or two interesting pointers.

In the English Local Elections, what will be of most interest will be the turnout, which is traditionally very low in local elections anyway, but could be even lower this time. This will probably be an indication that possible Labour voters stayed away. Also, look to see how many councils change control, from and to Labour and Conservatives. The expectation is that we might see Labour lose councils and Conservatives pick up a few, but don't expect to see any swing directly from Labour to the Conservatives.

The thing to watch in the Scottish Parliamentary elections is to see who forms their next government. My belief is that it will go from being Labour to a combination of the Scottish Nationalists and the Liberal Democrats. But with Conservatives potentially on an upswing as well, the Scottish result is going to be the most interesting.

Sky News have started their election programme, as have BBC Wales. BBC Scotland begin theirs at 2305 UK.

UK's Super Thursday!

There's many elections happening all over the UK today.

First we have the local elections for district councils across England. Many local councils are re-electing the whole council, whilst some are electing just a third of the council.

Then we have elections to the Scottish Parliament. 129 seats in Holyrood are up for grabs. The BBC is webcasting the election programme online from 2305 GMT. BBC Radio Scotland's election programme is also being webcast from 2200 GMT.

And finally we have the elections for the Welsh Assembly in Cardiff. Again, the BBC are webcasting coverage, this time from BBC Radio Wales. Also, S4C will be webcasting coverage produced by BBC Wales Cymru on their own site.

This is going to be the biggest test of political opinion since the 2005 general election. The results are going to be worth watching.

Biased News on NPR? I don't think so!

There is a blog which purports to monitor "...rightwing, pro-government and corporate bias..." on the programming of National Public Radio News, called NPR Check. The reality is that this is a blogger that is looking for a news service to be explicitly liberal, in the same way that Fox News Channel is explicitly conservative.

Thankfully, for people like me who are fed up with biased news, from any source, liberal or conservative, NPR News is not biased, but sticks very closely to just reporting the facts. I have listened regularly to NPR's top shows, Morning Edition and All Things Considered, and I find it to be very fair, airing reporting that is based exclusively on fact rather than even the slightest agenda.

Most blogs which attack the public service broadcasters (NPR, PBS, BBC, CBC, RTE, ABC Australia etc) are run by bloggers with a conservative political bent. This one is decidedly liberal, proving that the anti-public service broadcasting community comes from all sides and colours of the political spectrum.

For crying out loud, people STOP TRYING TO FORCE EVERY NEWS ORGANISATION TO MATCH YOUR POLITICAL BENT! If you want BIASED news, there are plenty of newspapers and websites out there with enough bias to fill the Pacific Ocean!!!

Let those of us who would actually PREFER some unbiased news, some sources like the BBC, NPR, RTE etc.

Is NBC News being tabloidy or being responsible?

There has been a lot of criticism aimed at NBC News for airing the video sent to them by Cho-seeung Hui, the student who killed 31 people at Virginia Tech, before committing suicide.

Some of it came from more predictable sources, such as Accuracy In Media, whilst others have been less expected. Media Bistro's TV Newser reported some of the other sources.

Whilst I have some sympathy for the view that we shouldn't be giving publicity to these people, I also believe that we as a society need to understand what motivates these people to do what they do.

I can also understand the criticism that this kind of coverage is tabloidy and irresponsible. However, I would answer this by asking a question. What is responsible journalism?

Is it responsible to only cover stories and angles that we as a society, country or group of individuals feel safe in covering, or should we actively be covering stories and angles that do make us feel uncomfortable?

I would argue that it is essential that we do cover angles to these stories that do take us out of ouor comfort zones, and make us face up to things that we dislike. In fact, to actively avoid these angles because of this, would in my view be very irresponsible. You would have to handle these angles with tact and discretion and avoid sensationalising it. But you should cover them.

Was NBC right to air the video? Ultimately yes, but did they handle it right? Well, I'm not sure. Perhaps they could have handled it better, but they could have handled it a lot worse as well.

Editorialising The News.

I would call myself something of a news junkie. I like to tune in to various news sources to get different perspectives on the news. This is a way of really getting a purer, more factual perspective on the news.

But it is also a way of learning which news sources you can trust, and which ones try to influence your opinions. The Sun, like most if not all newspapers, tries to influence your thoughts. Take the story of the shootings at Virginia Tech University. When the student Cho Seung-hui sent his video package to NBC News in New York between the shootings, The Sun reported it this way...

"...MASSACRE madman Cho Seung-Hui sent a chilling message to TV chiefs after slaying his first two victims."

Now, let me highlight in red, the words that are not necessary to tell the story.

"...MASSACRE madman Cho Seung-Hui sent a chilling message to TV chiefs after slaying his first two victims."

Now, if you read ONLY the light coloured words, the story still makes sense, but is nowhere near as dramatic, and is not nearly as full of hyperbole. The full version reads like an old fashioned newspaper hack's writing style. Now contrast this to the BBC's reporting of the same story.

"...The student who shot dead at least 30 people at Virginia Tech sent a package to the US TV network NBC News on the day of the shootings, police said."

Now, on that, there is one piece that stands out to me as being wrong and that is having the words "...police said..." at the end of the sentence, rather than at the beginning. It reads better the other way, but apart from that, there is almost nothing there in that sentence that doesn't need to be there to tell the story.

So, why do newspaper articles add all these extra words? Mainly it's to reinforce an editorial standpoint on the story. They really want you to think a certain way, they want to create a certain political atmosphere.

Another good example of this was the way the printed media created a political atmosphere, was when the sailors and marines who had been captured by Iran came home, they were allowed to sell their stories by the Ministry of Defence.

Those newspapers who didn't manage to get a story from the former captives, criticised the papers that did. Now this in itself was not unusual, this happens every time. But there was a greater backlash, because other elements of the media, including broadcasters and bloggers, got in on the act as well. The next day, the newspapers that had taken stories from the marines, got in on the same act as the others!

Yet none of them considered that Iran had started this with the videos they had put out showing the sailors and marines 'confessing their guilt'. The Ministry of Defence was always going to allow the sailors and marines to tell their story and always looked like it would, just this once, allow the stories to be sold to newspapers, in order to counter the propoganda being put out by Iran.

I seem to be the only person who thought that this was not a great idea, but had to be done. Everybody else I spoke to, took the critical line that the media portrayed.

In the past few years, a lot of the mainstream media, and a number of bloggers, have criticised Arabic 24 hour news channel Al-Jazeera, for showing the videos that some suicide bombers have sent to them. Newshounds, the anti-Fox News website, made a great point recently about how much the mainstream media in the US had criticised Al-Jazeera for doing what NBC had done on their "NBC Nightly News" programme on Wednesday 18th April 2007.

The media can be that hypocritical sometimes. As bloggers, some of us too have been hypocritical, especially those who promote a political viewpoint. I like to keep my views consistent, and when my views change, I will need to be able to communicate to you, the reader, why my views have changed. I will aim to report, as much as I editorialise, and I hope that I can make a clear link between the facts, and my editorial opinion.

OFCOM investigates UK pay TV

At the request of BT, Setanta, Virgin Media and Top Up TV, OFCOM are to investigate the world of UK based pay television.



Whilst I am all in favour of an investigation, I do have my doubts as to whether anything will happen as a result. Ofcom have yet to take any deicisions that have real impact on the industry, and in pay TV, there needs to be something that has to happen.

You see, BSkyB is THE dominant force in UK pay TV , and it is the only one with national coverage across the UK. Virgin Media has a lot of coverage in the cities, but because of the prohibitive cost of cabling rural areas, has no coverage outside of the cities. Digital Terrestrial currently only has about 70% coverage, but that will grow as the analogue signals are switched off in the various areas until 2012.

Sky have already seen off two potential opponents in the pay TV market, first by merging with British Satellite Broadcasting (BSB) in November 1990, and second with the collapse of On/ITV Digital in March 2002. It's only with the recent-ish meger of the NTL and Telewest cable operations that cable has emerged as any kind of a powerhouse in the pay television arena, and it is still limited by the fact that not every house in the UK has a cable connection.

I would like to see Sky undergo some kind of limitation, possibly have them lose control of their EPG. After all, they cannot control who broadcasts on the satellites, as Sky do not own the satellites. The Satellites themselves are owned by a company called Societie European De Satellites, based in Luxembourg.

I would also like to see Sky denied permission to create a pay TV service on DTT. They want to have Sky One, Sky News, Sky Movies and Sky Sports, available on a subscription only basis on DTT, much in the same way that when they started on Astra 1A back in February 1989, they had Sky Channel, Sky News, Sky Movies and Eurosport (at the time they were a partner in the EuroSport operation, but left it after merging with BSB.)

Sky are like Microsoft, they are too dominant in the market, and do need to be reined in. Sky have behaved in a very anti-competitive way, in forcing all the channels in their package to accept much lower subscriber rates, including the Virgin Media channels, whilst at the same time, trying to force up the rates that Virgin Media pay for the Sky channels. If this isn't classic anti-competitiveness, I don't know what is.

I would like to see Ofcom actually do something about Sky, but I don't actually believe that Ofcom will do anything. Such a lack of action, in a market that actually demands it, would be postitively criminal.

Canadian Federal Budget 2007

In the Canadian House of Commons, Minister of Finance Jim Flaherty has been delivering his Federal Budget Speech for the financial year 2007/2008.

Amongst the changes detailed, there are, unsurprisingly, a lot of measures designed at improving the environment, such as a new green levy on "gas guzzlers".

CBC News has the details on the budget speech in a special section, and links to the whole budget speech.

A Television Legend returns to the Cornish airwaves!

Yes, it is true. A legend of the television industry has returned to the broadcasting ether.

This particular legend first arrived on South West televison screens in 1961, and disappeared in 1992. He's been spending his time since then at a local Cornish tourist attraction.

That will probably be enough clues for most people who had experience of Westward and TSW between 1961 and 1992.

The answer is to be found here, at the website of Cornish radio station, Atlantic FM.

RTE broadcasting live news video from St Patrick's Day.

For years now, you have been able to listen to RTE's radio stations online, but the situation with live video webcasts has been very limited at best.

Special events is about all you've been able to watch on very infrequent occasions. Even the RTE News was a recorded video webcast and not all programmes and bulletins were available.

But from St Patrick's Day (March 17th) 2007, RTE News output, will be broadcast live online for all the world to see.

For me, this is a very positive development. The BBC have made their BBC1 News bulletins available online live for quite some time now, but News 24 is not available. The old ITN News Channel was available online from it's launch in 2000, til it became the ITV News Channel. In the US, some local stations air their newscasts live online too, such as WCBS TV in News York.

I like the fact that the late night News On Two is also being inlcuded in the live webcast schedule, as this has been the major bulletin that has been missing from the RTE News recorded webcasts.

I will probably be watching a lot of these webcasts.

Breaking News: ITV Play to close. Hooray!

Well, I have to say this is great news for people like myself who have a love of the broadcast media. The overly commercial venture known as ITV Play, is to completely closedown, and will be replaced on Freeview by ITV2+1.

Whilst I am not a big fan of the timeshift channels, I have even less inkling to see any more channels of the ITV Play ilk, so this is a positive move.

In The Pod... Fox News Radio

I admit that I rarely have much nice to say about Fox News Channel, or indeed any of it's sister operations. However, I find myself saying some very positive things about the Fox News Radio bulletin podcast, available on iTunes and also here. Unlike it's TV counterpart, the Fox News Radio bulletins are nowhere near as overtly political. These bulletins do seem to just report the news rather than the standard Fox News TV style of incorporating commetary into the news.

The bulletins are made up of 2 x 2 minute news segments, separated by 1 minute of ads, which seems quite usual for Amercian radio news. The bulletins are updated every hour, and the updates seem to be consistent. If nothing else, it is worth listening to, to hear a different perspective on the news.

I give the Fox News Radio podcast a credible 6.5 out of 10.

Fox News Channel turns into Fox Propoganda Channel!

Fox News Channel has released some new promos for the channel, and in my view, the promos cross the line into propoganda. Inside Cable News has screenshots of one promo which says "Iraq. Immigration. Katrina. America Has Problems. The Problem Is Not America." and Newshounds has screenshots of another promo which says "The Only Cable News Channel That Does Not Bring You The Usual LEFT WING BIAS."

Actually, that last one has a point, as Fox News actually brings you the usual RIGHT WING BIAS that you and I have come to expect from them and their staff of Conservative talk show hosts, such as Sean Hannity, John Kasich, John Gibson and Bill O'Reilly. They continue to claim they are fair and balanced, yet there continues to be evidence that proves otherwise. So, in some ways, Fox News Channel has long been the Fox Propoganda Channel...

Priorities on Sky News???

Now, usually, I do not criticise 24 hour news channels for their choices of stories. There are thousands of stories out there every day, and each channel has to decide how they are going to fill the airtime, and it's not an easy decision.

But I do have one big criticism to make here, and it involves the Celebrity Big Brother racism row, which I believe Channel 4 and Endemol manufactured, with the help of Jade Goody, in order to get ratings for a programme which otherwise was failing this year.

Some background first though. Every Saturday and Sunday afternoon from 2pm to 5pm, Sky News do a rolling news format of news, sport and weather every 15 minutes, in much the same way the ITN News Channel used to.

For the 4.45pm segment of News, Sport and Weather, as it is labelled on the EPG, Sky went through the main top stories of the day in the first two and a half minutes, all except for one story, which they then spent the next five minutes on. Now this was the lowest ranked of the top stories. They then spent two and half minutes on Sport before going to ads. Which one story justified half the airtime in a 10 minute segment? Jade Goody breaking down in tears to a News Of The World reporter, on video.

The other stories, Changes at the Home Office, dangerous chemicals washing ashore in Devon, British soldier killed in Iraq and the amazing video of marines attempting to rescue a dying colleague, all those only merited 2.5 minutes, whilst Jade Goody merited 5 minutes? I think not.

A hope for treating cancer, but pharmaceuticals may pull plug!

I don't normally write about developments in health and food, simply because you can never get experts to agree on anything. However, this article was passed onto me by a Canadian friend of mine, and I am astonished by the thought that pharmaceutical companies may pull the plug on this potentially ground breaking research, simply because there is no profit in it.

Surely, to deny potentially life saving research to continue, because of there being no profit in it, would be criminal, would it not?

One from a bored story writer???

Okay, I admit, the Weekly World News is not your most trusted source of news. It is however quite often a good source for stories to go the Ridiculous News File. However, this one is refused entry to that file, on account of the fact that it goes beyond ridiculous, to somehwere around the "You Cannot Be Serious!" file.

According to the story, a parent disappeared during a game of peekaboo with her 10 month old son. Now, the location for this story is Worson, Delaware. That is kind of appropriate, because this is the WORSt ONe that I have ever seen from any of these Amercian tabloids. I am utterly convinced that some bored writer at the offices of Weekly World News made this one up. Then again, they always say the truth is stranger than fiction...

Graphically Unbalanced??? Looks like it.

Fox News Channel constantly advertise themselves as "Fair and Balanced", but the reality of these chyrons, or lower thirds, is quite different. Newshounds has the screenshots.

We Report, You Decide!

The battle heats up in US Cable News

I have been following the ratings battle between the major US cable news channels, and I have to say, I have never seen a night so competitive as Sunday 26th November 2006. The numbers as reported by Inside Cable News and TV Newser are incredible.

In what is usually refered to as the "money" demo, Adults 25-54 years old, in PrimeTime, MSNBC beat Fox News Channel tied for the number 1 spot by just 3,000 viewers (163,000 to 160,000) and CNN was just 28,000 viewers behind.

Looking inside to the individual hours, the picture is even more interesting in the 'money' demo. MSNBC won the 5pm hour with 164,000 viewers, compared to FNC's 137,000 and CNN's 132,000. The next hour was won by CNN with 208,000 viewers, compared to MSNBC's 111,000 and FNC's paltry 86,000.

Fox News took the 7pm hour, but the biggest surprise is that MSNBC won both at 8pm and 9pm. MSNBC had 186,000 and 192,000 with Fox getting 157,000 and 140,000, and CNN getting 73,000 and 162,000 viewers in each respective hour. This means that Planet Mancow ended up in 3rd place!

Fox then took the 10pm hour but the 11pm hour went again to MSNBC, and by quite a margin. 226,000 viewers watched MSNBC in that hour, compared to 137,000 watching Fox News and 92,000 watching CNN.

Even in total viewers, the ratings battle was closer than normal. FNC took the 5pm hour there by just 25,000 viewers (581,000 to 556,000). CNN took the 6pm hour by 115,000 viewers over Fox News (581,000 to 466,000). Fox took the 7pm hour emphatically (570,000 to CNN's 408,000) and held onto that through the 8pm hour (720,000 to MSNBC's 578,000).

However, they were beaten into third place by CNN (531,000) and MSNBC (499,000) in the 9pm hour. Fox restored their lead for the 10pm hour (491,000 to CNN's 409,000), but MSNBC took the 11pm hour (416,000 to FNC 336,000).

Even the prime-time total was closer than normal, with Fox winning by just under 50,000 viewers from MSNBC who were just 5,000 viewers ahead of CNN.

The Monday numbers are back to relative normality, although in the money demo, MSNBC was second to Fox News in primetime, with Headline News thrid and CNN relegated to 4th place. MSNBC came second in the 8pm, 9pm and 11pm hours with Headline News taking second in the 10pm hour. The total day money demo numbers were close too for the minor placings, with less than 25,000 viewers separating CNN, MSNBC and Headline News.

There's little doubt in my mind that the ratings in this particular race are going to be very interesting to watch and read. Fox News Channel, CNN and MSNBC are definitely going to be duking it out over the following weeks and months for dominance, and I will definitely be following developments in this story.

Time to have some fun.

It's not all about politics and media here, we do like to have some fun, and WNBC New York have a couple of fun things on their My Weekend section.

Two particular slideshows caught my attention. One was the most annoying songs of all time, and the other was the most annoying celebrities. View both and see what you think.

Media Research Centre shoots itself in foot!

The Media Research Center says on its mission statement, "The mission of the Media Research Center is to bring balance to the news media." Then in describing their history, the say... "On October 1, 1987, a group of young determined conservatives set out to not only prove — through sound scientific research — that liberal bias in the media does exist and undermines traditional American values, but also to neutralize its impact on the American political scene. What they launched that fall is the now acclaimed — Media Research Center (MRC)."

What they really want is a media with a conservative bias, like that of Fox News Channel. The trouble is, they don't seem to know how to present that. On their front page today (Sunday 26th November 2006) is a story with the headline, "Rather: FNC Biased, Gets White House Talking Points". However, what they have written below it, comes across as a slip up on their part, and really rather funny.

'Dan Rather, who doesn't recognize any liberal bias in himself or the mainstream media, was quick to see it on Fox News Channel, telling HBO's Bill Maher: "Fox News operates in at least a somewhat different way than every other news organization that I know” and “we know that they get talking points from the White House."'

Dan Rather, seeing Liberal bias on the Fox News Channel??? I don't think so...

Al-Jazeera English (formerly International) launches.

So, we finally have it, the launch of the English language version of Al-Jazeera. The website has been updated with a new look as well.

My early judgements, based upon what I have seen? Well, I can't say too much yet, as it is only the first day. But my first impression after watching the news, was that, whilst I felt informed and updated about certain stories, it didn't leave me feeling briefed.

Fox News leaves me the same way. I tend to feel like ormed about the current Republican/Conservative talking points, rather than briefed on the news.

On a related note, the anti-Fox News website Newshounds highlights the fact that AJE is available in the UK on Sky Digital, which is part of News Corp which also owns the Fox News Channel. The report alledges hypocrisy by News Corp, supplying the channel to the UK and Ireland on Sky Digital, whilst at the same time using Fox News to villify it and brand it a terrorist network.

Whilst the allegation might not be without some degree of merit, the truth of the matter is rather more complicated.

In the UK, Sky Digital is not allowed to refuse anyone carriage on their platform should they be asked to carry a channel, as long as the relevant fees are paid. So whatever Rupert may feel about Al-Jazeera, there is nothing that he can do to prevent it being broadcast in the UK.

Whilst the majority of Americans polled do not want the channel, there is nothing that says that couldn't change. I wonder when we will see the first cable operator decide to carry the channel in the US.

Viewpoint on video

Okay, here goes. The first video edition of Viewpoint is up and, if my HTML skills are up to it, should be embeded down below. If it isn't, then the link to the video will be.


http://video.yahoo.com/video/play?vid=4c08c4452371e6af9b1482c02b8f4ef2.1121416

AIM thinks "Conservative" Fox News is turning "Liberal", but Newsbusters doesn't!

I sometimes wonder just how grounded in reality some of these political writers are, for about a second, then I remember I know the answer.

The Editor of the AIM Report, Cliff Kincaid, put out an article this week claiming that... "...the conservative Fox News Channel gave liberal Democrat Harold Ford another big boost on Wednesday night in his critical Tennessee Senate race."

Gee, Cliff. Thank you for confirming what many of us already knew, that Fox News Channel has a Conservative/Republican bias and is neither "fair" nor "balanced". But then, Cliff shocks us by telling us... "Just days before the election, however, Fox News seems to be doing all that it can do to push him over the finish line ahead of (Republican) Bob Corker. Fair and balanced? Not in this contest."

Is Cliff actually suggesting that the Fox News Channel is losing its Conservative bias and gaining a Liberal one?

The funny thing is, Cliff is the only columnist I've seen talking about this. Newsbusters, the blog of the conservative Media Research Center, hasn't mentioned anything about Fox News turning liberal and neither has the anti-Fox News site, Newshounds, which still accuses Fox News of trying to scaremonger voters into voting Republican in the upcoming mid-term elections.

I guess then that the jury still thinks that Fox News is conservative.

Viewpoint Extra: AL-Jazeera International - Do Conservatives want to see it?

Couple of things to add to my previous post about Conservatives and AJI.

First, the exceedingly right wing Accuracy In Media has two columns about the channel. Matthew Hickman's "Briefing" column uses all the traditional Republican/Conservative talking points about the channel, and Cliff Kincaid's Media Monitor column draws comparisons between the wars in Vietnam and Iraq and accuses Al-Jazeera of being a propoganda network.

On the other side of the coin, ForeignPolicy.com provides a more insightful analysis into the channel. Interestingly, it says that AJI is biased, but no more so than Fox News than CNN.

All news services have at least a small degree of bias, mainly in the choice of stories to cover and the angles those stories cover. However, Fox News Channel seems to have a greater degree of bias than most. They seem to have a complete editorial stance on everything. I have noticed in recent weeks that some so-called scandals featuring Democrats, which were low-priority stories really, got almost wall-to-wall coverage on FNC, whilst similar low-level so-called scandals concerning Republicans, were ignored. Now does that sound "Fair" and "Balanced" to you?

I personally am looking forward to the launch of AJI. Unlike the Republicans/Conservatives, I will not judge the channel, until I see its content.

Al-Jazeera International: Do Conservatives want to see it?

There have been many rumours around the net about the launch of Al-Jazeera International. So many and for so long, that this has become one of the most anticipated launches this year, on a par with the new channels from Channel 5 that launched recently, five US and five life, and the soon to launch international news channel France 24. But apparently not everyone is welcoming the new channel with open arms.

The conservative talk show hosts on US radio have been very negative towards Al-Jazeera, primarily because it has broadcast video messages from terrorist groups like Al-Qaeda. When CNN recently broadcast footage they obtained from a terrorist organisation in Iraq, the conservative side of politics went into massive uproar. The conservatives don't like anybody broadcasting what they call "...enemy propoganda..." and yet, if you are to truly understand any story, you have to be able to see it from both sides and all angles.

Recently, a column about Al-Jazeera International appeared in the Philadephia Enquirer, written by Gail Shister. In this column, Gail is very negative about AJI's launch, prsenting a lot of negative viewpoints about the channel. One very telling viewpoint, came from Matthew Felling of the Centre for Media and Public Affairs. On it's website, it declares itself to be.. "...a nonpartisan research and educational organization which conducts scientific studies of the news and entertainment media."

However, the truth offered by Mr Felling's comments to Gail Shister are very telling. In the column, Matthew Felling says that AJI's launch "...has about as much chance of happening as Rosie O'Donnell getting a show on Fox News... Even if AJI manages to happen everywhere around the world except the States, it won't make it. America was going to be the crown jewel of their entire enterprise. You either raise all the sails on the mast or wait until the wind is right."

Well, perhaps the CMPA should conduct better research, perhaps with a more open mind. I can watch the test transmissions on AJI on my satellite system here in the UK and I can say with some assurance that I believe this launch is going to happen. The video tests are definitely coming towards a conclusion, the Electronic Programme Guide data, which is a key indicator of readiness, is there, and for the first time, there has been an official press release naming an exact launch date. No media organisation ever announces an exact date publicly until they know they are ready, and all previous launch dates were either actually intended target dates, not confirmed launch dates, or they were nothing more than internet speculation.

Note to CMPA: Do better research before making comments, and try not to tow the conservative line. You are supposed to be non-partisan!

LIndsay Lohan - Halloween Vamp!

Before I do the report, let me put this report into a personal context. First of all, I am not a fan of the culture of celebrating celebrity, or as I sometimes refer to it, the religion of celebrity. Some people almost seem to worship some of these people as gods and goddesses. Quite frankly, celebrities are not gods, they're just ordinary human beings, like the rest of us. I find it shameful that tabloids and celebrity magazines such as OK! and Hello both build up these people to be like gods and goddesses and then to demolish these same people and dismiss them like so much garbage.

When I read about celebrities, I have no interest in their indiscretions and less interest in their private lives. The only things I am interested in is their work, and their public lives, NOT their private lives. It is not our place to intrude in anybody's private life.

The second piece of context in this, is that I absolutely abhor Halloween, and especially the culture of "Trick Or Treat" and the commercialism that is a part of this. So, between these two major negatives, the very fact that this one even gets onto the blog at all, is actually quite an achievement in itself.

So, to the story. Now Lindsay Lohan has been doing a lot to get attention for what she's been wearing, or in some cases, not wearing, but this time, she gets my attention for what she wears to a Hallowwen party in Hollywood, and oh boy! does she get out attention.

Slightly goth looking, the black basque was teamed up with sexy black underpants, stockings and high heels. Her make up is very vampish. She used black nail varnish and blood red lipstick to good effect. She also had armsleeves but one was black and the other white, both very different from each other.

Have a look at the pictures of her outfit. It is worth a look.

Ratings Review: BARB Week Ending 15th October 2006

It has taken a day or so of analysis of the publicly available BARB data, but there are one or two interesting conclusions out of this week's data.

It doesn't happen very often with multi-channel programmes, and it is more memorable because of it, but one programme on one of the multi channels did reach the 2 million mark. It was Sky Sports 1's coverage of England's international football game, which scored a massive 2.03 million viewers. This helped the channel to gain a 2.0% share / 15.3% weekly reach.

In the wake of the recent Sunday Times story about NASN possibly being sold to ESPN, I thought it might be a good idea to check out the ratings data. Unfortunately, there is no publicly available ratings data for NASN, or indeed any of the Setanta channels. However, I am able to look at ratings for the channels owned by Disney, ESPN's parent company.

ABC1 dropped to 0.3% share / 5.6% weekly reach.

Disney Channel achieved 0.4% share / 5.5% weekly reach, whilst its +1 got 0.2% share / 4.5% weekly reach.

Disney Cinemagic got only 0.1% share / 2.2% weekly reach, whilst the +1 got 0.1% share / 2.1% weekly reach.

And finally, ESPN Classic, barely registers in terms of share and only 0.9% in terms of weekly reach.

ESPN have beenn trying to get into the European market for years, part owning EuroSport for a time, but have never truly broken through. A deal for ESPN to buy NASN may well be on the cards. We'll wait and see.

ITV2 once again wins the ratings battle this week with 2.1% share, and ITV4 is improving ratings wise, now up to 0.6% share with a 13.3% weekly reach.

Sky One's recent steal of Lost from Channel 4 may well be the boost it needs ratings wise, as they still languish at 1.6% share / 22.3% weekly reach. This is despite a good 1.189 million viewers tuning in for the Sunday premiere of an episode of The Simpsons. In fact, there are no top 10 entries in the Sky One chart for any other programme, which kinda highlights how poor their shcedule really is. Unsurprisingly, Sky Three gets more viewers than Sky Two, but there is little really between them. Sky Two is 0.5% share / 12.6% weekly reach, whilst Sky Three is 0.6% share / 16.4% weekly reach.

Other programmes of note scoring well, include the More 4 premiere of the controversial documentary-style drama, Death Of A President, which gained 293,000 viewers on Monday 9th October. Two repeat showings on Friday and Saturday BOTH scored over 130,000 viewers, putting the three showings at numbers 1, 6 and 7 in the More 4 Top 10. Indeed, the Channel 4 multi-channels did well this week, with all of E4's top 10 shows gaining over 300,000 viewers, which demonstrates an incredible degree of consitency, and Film 4's showing of Forrest Gump got 638,000 viewers, which boosted the channel's ratings this week to 0/8% share / 14.4% weekly reach. Film 4 has definitely benefited tremendously ratings wise from moving away from a subscription model.

With most +1 channels, they significantly less viewers than the original. However, this does not apply to the Travel Channel. In terms of Weekly reach, the original gets 126,000 viewers whilst the +1 manages 207,000. Not exactly something to celebrate though!

That performance though does keep them out of this week's bottom 5, by about 3000 viewers. Not exactly a lot, but worth a glass of something strong, none the less.

In reverse order, then, at number 5 is All In Sport, the repackaged Poker Channel, with a paltry 123,000 viewers. Number 4 is Eat Cinema, with 107,000. That's more than double any of the bottom 3 channels. At number 3 is Sky Travel Shop with just 49,000 viewers,only marginally better than Number 2's Redemption TV with just 45,000. But the worst performing channel this week, is MUTV with just 42,000 viewers weekly reach.

AIMing wide of the mark, with old news

Cliff Kincaid should really be a little more on the ball than this if he wants his "Accuracy In Media" organisation to be treated seriously, and do a little more research.

In his latest Media Monitor column, dated October 24th 2006, Cliff highlights a headline on Al-Jazeera's english language website "Death Becomes Bush" which is a headline for a story about the Film 4 / Newmarket Films production "Death Of A President" which recieved an international premiere at the 2006 Toronto International Film Feastival in September and won the Fipresci Prize. It was also aired recently on both More 4 and Channel 4 in the UK.

The Media Monitor column is full of the usual Republican talking points about Al-Jazeera, referring to the fact that it airs a lot of terrorist produced video and stating that it's another reason why Al-Jazeera International should be kept out of the USA.

Now, the problem here is that the story Cliff Kincaid is referring to, is 12 days old. The date stamp on the Al-Jazeera story is October 12th 2006. It has taken Cliff 12 days to write this article and put it on his website. The timestamp on the RSS feed indicates it was added at 6am UK time. I picked up the RSS feeds at about 10.30 am UK time, and sat down to write this response. I advise you to look at the time stamp on this article. It has taken me far less time to put together this response, including the research of the various articles and items, that I have linked in this story.

I would also advise Cliff Kincaid to go and watch the film, when it is released to cinemas in the US on October 27th. He might discover, as I did when I watched it on More 4, that the real story in the film, is not the assassination of President Bush, despite the title, but how a country copes with an event like this, and how it can get it wrong, even when the evidence points to something completely different.

The film is controversial, of that there can be no doubt. It is also very provocative. But, if you go into it with an open mind, not a closed one, you'll discover a film that challenges and provokes thought. But then, I have yet to discover an open-minded conservative.

Bias In The Media - Don't conservatives get it?

I have noticed something in my observations of the various blogs and commentators on the internet, and that is that there is no single "enemy" organisation for conservatives. Bill O'Reilly, Michelle Malkin, Natalie Solent and others regularly target almost all other mainstream media outlets. The BBC, The CBC, The ABC in Australia, US network newscasts, Al-Jazeera and Air America Radio are among the favourites, as are The New York Times and The Washington Post, but nearly every news organisation cops it from conservatives, except one.

Fox News Channel is about the only major news provider than conservatives do not attack for reasons of bias. Why? Because Fox News is as biased as they are.

They accuse everybody else of being biased, and yet cannot see their own bias. Perhaps they should challenge their own opinions every once in a while, like I do on a daily basis. Maybe they'd realise that it's just slightly possible that the majority may be right and they may be wrong.

Mixed Feelings

The touch of skin
the closeness of being
the heat of passion
the pleasure of joining.

The feeling of loneliness
the abscence of love
the coldness of life
the pain of rejection.

The seductiveness of sex
the beauty of womanhood
the power of lust
the need for love.

First, Fair, Fox? A fair and balanced commentary

The world of 24 hour news channels is as varied and diverse as the news itself. Some, like CNN and Sky News, have been around so long that they have become familiar and accepted by us all, even those who don’t watch 24 hour news. Some, like BBC News 24, have developed to become well-respected services, whilst others, like the ITV News Channel, didn’t survive long enough to grow into the potential they were showing.

But none have ever created as much controversy, in both political and media circles, as the Fox News Channel.

Back in the mid 1990s, several commentators on the right wing of the political spectrum in the United States saw the media as generally too favourable to the liberal agenda, with not enough pressure being applied to the then-US President, Bill Clinton. That was all to change over the next few years – but nobody knew that then.

In 1996, with Clinton fighting for a second term in office, NBC closed a channel called America’s Talking. It was basically television’s version of the many talk radio stations that are available throughout the United States. It had been spun off from CNBC, the Consumer News and Business Channel, launching on July 4th 1994, and was based at CNBC’s then headquarters at Fletcher Avenue in Fort Lee, New Jersey.

The trouble was, it was a spectacular flop. It had never gained much of an audience, and little cable carriage. The only show to survive the channel was Politics with Chris Matthews which moved to CNBC and was retitled Hardball with Chris Matthews. The show then later moved to MSNBC.

America’s Talking was closed to make way for an additional news channel from Microsoft and NBC, called MSNBC. But in many ways, America’s Talking only moved networks, from NBC to Fox. In 1996, Roger Ailes, who at the time was head of both America’s Talking and CNBC, was approached by Rupert Murdoch to launch a new news channel. Murdoch, who also part-owned British Sky Broadcasting, had been behind the launch of Sky News on February 5th 1989, and wanted to launch another news channel, this time in the US.

However, unlike Sky News, the conservative Murdoch wanted this news channel to counter some of the “liberal bias” that he perceived in the US media. Ailes agreed to head up the channel and managed to persuade some of his colleagues from CNBC and America’s Talking to join him at the new venture, notably, Steve Doocy from America’s Talking AM, and Neil Cavuto from CNBC’s Power Lunch and Market Wrap. Both are still with Fox News Channel today.

Another commentator who has pretty much been there from the beginning is Bill O’Reilly. He had been a local news reporter for some years, before becoming a correspondent for CBS News. He was based in Buenos Aires and covered both the Falklands War and the El Salvador war. In 1986, he jumped across to ABC as a correspondent for the main news programme, ABC World News Tonight.

In 1989, he joined Fox’s syndicated current affairs programme, Inside Edition as Senior Correspondent and reserve anchor for Sir David Frost. However, David left the show and Bill O’Reilly became the Senior Anchor. In 1995, O’Reilly was replaced by Deborah Norville, who had anchored NBC News at Sunrise, and was famously remembered as “the other woman” in the Today set alongside hosts Bryant Gumbel and Jane Pauley. When Pauley left Today, Norville was promoted to co-host with Bryant Gumbel, but disastrous ratings followed and she left the show, initially only on maternity leave to have a child, but since temporary co-host Katie Couric had helped boost ratings, NBC announced that Norville would not return. Deborah Norville still holds the fort at Inside Edition today.

In 1996, Bill O’Reilly joined Fox News Channel as host of The O’Reilly Report, which later became The O’Reilly Factor. O’Reilly has faced much the same claims about his own political standing as Fox News has about the channel’s perceived political bias. He has often been referred to as a Conservative pundit, despite constant denials.

The programme advertises itself as a “No-Spin Zone”. His style is often confrontational, and always direct. He described himself is his book, The O’Reilly Factor, as being “conservative on some issues, liberal on others and sane on most.” Exact percentages, though, have yet to be determined.

The Fox News Channel itself has been on the wrong end of many accusations about its own bias. The infamous documentary, Outfoxed, directed by Robert Greenwald, made a lot of claims regarding Fox News and its perceived right-wing bias. The film had been researched by a team of volunteers sitting down and watching Fox News Channel non-stop for a period of several months. That research project has gained a life of its own outside the film and continues online under the name News Hounds, with the slogan, “We watch FOX so you don’t have to.”

However, the film has received substantial criticism itself. Claims, for example, of editing clips so that comments were taken out of their real context, and former employees who in fact never worked for Fox News, continue to hang over the production.

Personal ‘Talking Points’

Having been a fairly consistent viewer of the channel over the past six months or so, I have to say that, personally, I find some things about the channel quite disagreeable. So, in true Fox News style, here are my own ‘Talking Points’ about the channel.

For a start, I do not like the channel’s reliance on dramatic music and sound effects, ominous sounding stings and flashy graphics. It says to me that the channel places more emphasis on the presentation of the story than on the content. To my mind, that is like putting the cart before the horse.

I also find the channel’s continual assertions about supposedly being “Fair and Balanced” come across too strongly, as though they want that impression to be uppermost in people’s minds when talking about the channel. It reminds me of the quote from Hamlet, “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”

I also dislike the way some anchors and presenters interrupt some of their guests when the guest is giving a different stance to the anchor/presenter. Now, there’s nothing wrong with the presenter or anchor taking the opposite viewpoint or taking a challenging viewpoint in an interview situation – it’s their job after all, and they want to get the best from the interviewee. However, by talking over their victim, it gives the impression that the viewpoint they are taking is in fact their own strongly held belief, and rather than trying to get the best from the interviewee, they are in fact trying to talk them down and make them look bad.

I find the ‘Fox News Alert’ use to be inconsistent. Sometimes, you hear those sweeping sounds, and that ominous chord, and it gets followed by a very important piece of breaking news. On other occasions, such as one time during an edition of Your World with Neil Cavuto, the sting was played, and then they proceeded to announce that the UN was still in deadlock on the third day of discussions about Iran. That’s hardly breaking news. In fact, when it comes to the UN, it practically seems to be business as usual: I don’t see what the justification was for playing the Alert.

I personally dislike the way News and Opinion get mixed in the schedule. The channel comes across much more like a News/Talk radio station than a 24 hour television news channel. Their breakfast programme, Fox and Friends has discussion between the hosts at the top of the hour about the top stories as they see them, rather than just reporting the facts. Also, some of the hosts seem to regard themselves as the stars of their shows, instead of being just a facilitator. I find this especially to be the case with Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity. I have never liked the style of news programmes where the anchor’s name is part of the title. For instance, why does it have to be NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams? Why not just “NBC Nightly News”? I do not see these people as the stars of their particular shows: I see them as people with big egos who need to be taken down a peg or two.

Whilst Fox News might be one of the higher-rated news channels in the US, it has far fewer viewers over here in the UK. Official BARB ratings show that whilst BBC News 24 reaches 5.7 million viewers a week and Fox News’s sister channel, Sky News, reaches 4.2 million viewers over the same period, Fox News limps in with around 200,000. While it might be to the taste of many Americans, and some other viewers around the world, it seems that Brits are not so embracing of it.

Those are my ‘talking points’. And one more thing: while you’ve been reading this article, you have been in a ‘No-Spin Zone’.

(Also published on Transdiffusion.)

Granada Industrial Dispute in ITV's Future?

Media Guardian reports that staff at Granada Media belonging to the NUJ, Bectu and Amicus will vote on strike action in a pay dispute after Granada imposed a 2% pay rise.

If the strike went ahead, it would affect output across all seven of Granada Media's ITV franchises.

This is a large blow for ITV and Granada, coming just a couple of months before the merger between Carlton and Granada takes place.

This highlights the danger of allowing ITV to be consolidated into one company. ITV's strength lay in the fact it was not one comapny but many companies. Such a strength should be particularly obvious now. Under the old-style ITV, you had 15 major production centres, and 15 companies that could have by now been working separately to create a myriad of channels in the multi-channel arena, alongside network ITV's efforts.

Instead we've had 3 companies trying to enter multi-channel arena, Carlton via cable channels and OnDigital, Granada via GSkyB and Scottish TV via Sky Scottish. Of all of these, mainly lacklustre efforts, only GSkyB remains with Plus and Men & Motors, alongside ITV2 and the ITV News Channel. GSkyB may not survive much longer as there are plans to transfer the material that Plus uses into an ITV Gold channel, and Men & Motors is hardly able to run by itself as a "primary" channel without Plus to pull in some prestiege advertisers for the prestiege programming.

Add to this, that this industrial dispute could take out, temporarily, half the ITV network in one go, and the ever present possibility that this new ITV plc company could fail, and by doing so take out not only most of the ITV network, but about a third of all new production in this country, and we are talking serious consequences that very few people seemed to have noticed. It could mean the end of the UK as a major television producer, with the US becoming more dominant than ever before.

BBC Three liquidises Liquid News

It has been speculated on since the death of Christopher Price in 2002, but now we know for sure. BBC Three is bringing the axe down on Liquid News.

The entertainment news programme, which grew out of BBC News 24's Zero 30 slot, became a digital phenomenon, mainly due to the attitude the presenter, Christopher Price, brought to the show. These days, hosted by Patrick 'Paddy' O'Connell and Claudia Winkleman, the show has been desperately trying to recapture its former glories, and sadly failing.

On Thursday 13 Nov, BBC Three controller Stuart Murphy pulled the plug on the programme, praising the programme's achievements, but stating that BBC Three was an evolving channel and sometimes, tough decisions had to made.

Whilst it was clear that Liquid News was perhaps having a rough time, I am yet to be convinced that Liquid News was out of time, or indeed had run out of steam. Replacing it in the schedules will be no easy task. This move may also serve another purpose, allowing BBC News 24 to create an entertainment bulletin to fit their channel, and bringing all the information programming under one roof, so to speak. Liquid News will finish in April 2004, it is clear that if any replacement is to be created, it must be done soon.

ITV in crisis

ITV has been facing up to some major problems recently, and arguably, it has not been coping very well with them. In what has been a tough time for the commercial broadcaster, the ITV companies have faced major problems with ITV Digital, falling revenues from advertising, falling audience figures with BBC1 and Multi-channel TV benefiting the most and a greater than average number of new programme failures, including some very high profile ones such as Shafted. The question is, what happened to ITV to allow it to fall so far?

There are a number of potential reasons why ITV’s fall has been so bad. One potential reason can be traced all the way back to the creation of Independent Television back in 1954. Originally, the Independent Television Authority was supposed to have created 2 commercial networks, each with additional licenced programme providers. But it ended up being only one commercial network, and no additional programme providers, which made things difficult for Associated Rediffusion and ATV London in the initial months of Independent Television. These days, such an arrangement with additional programme providers licenced for ITV would undoubtedly have seen more of the old franchisees become production companies, and also some good companies that never quite made it to being franchise holders, providing programming. It would also make for a more competitive ITV in terms of programming.

Another potential reason why ITV is in possible crisis goes back to the 1990 Broadcasting Act. In the act, it allowed the ITV companies to merge with each other, and potentially be bought by other companies too. Why was this a bad thing? Well, ironically for the same reason that lack of additional licenced programme providers was a bad thing. Instead of having a competitive ITV with 15 companies and the threat of losing their franchise if they didn’t perform up to scratch, you now have just 5 companies, who know their licences are pretty safe, and therefore less competitive, less challenging and less satisfying in terms of programming.

Another potential reason lies in what has been recently a major situation in broadcasting terms, and that is the situation between ITV and Sky. In 1998, ITV decided not to launch on Sky Digital, despite the fact that BBC1, BBC2, Channel 4 and Channel 5 were all launching on both Sky Digital and On Digital. On Digital, nowadays know as ITV Digital, is owned by Carlton and Granada, the two biggest ITV companies. Granada have some history with Sky as Granada was involved in the British Satellite Broadcasting venture of 1990, which ended with BSB merging with Sky. Carlton had channels of its own that it didn’t want on Sky, and had previously restricted them to just Cable. Carlton and Granada felt that On Digital needed an advantage over Sky Digital, and they felt that ITV would give them that advantage. So ITV refused to launch on Sky Digital, and also refused to launch ITV2 on Sky Digital. This move was to prove costly in financial terms with many millions of pounds of advertising revenue missed because of this one move. ITV1 and ITV2 were to launch in 2001 on Sky Digital, but the damage had been done. The move had cost them advertising revenue, and it had cost them viewers too, and the longer they stayed off Sky Digital, the more it was going to cost them in terms of viewers and advertising revenue. So, they finally put up and launched on Sky Digital.

Another potential reason lies in the fact that On/ITV Digital always looked to compete with Sky Digital. Alongside the fact that ITV had been having something of a tiff with Sky for many years, going back to the lack of agreement between Sky News and ITN, over ITN acting as programme producer for Sky News, in 1988, and continuing through Sky’s failed attempts to replace ITN as ITV’s news provider, when you put all that together, you see ITV trying to compete with Sky, one by not providing ITV and ITV2 on Sky Digital, also by trying to use ITV’s advantage as a terrestrial broadcaster to persuade people to go to On Digital, owned of course by two of the biggest ITV companies. Put that very complicated mix together, and what do you have? You have a channel provider on Digital Terrestrial, trying to compete with a channel provider on Digital Satellite, where really they shouldn’t be competing at all. On Digital was the only licenced digital pay-TV provider for Digital Terrestrial, and Sky Digital was the only digital satellite pay-TV provider. In theory, they shouldn’t have been competing with each other as they were two different markets. However, in practice, people were comparing the Sky/On situation to the Sky/BSB situation of 1990, long before either side were actually transmitting digital programmes, and this wasn’t helped by On Digital themselves, whose advertising was at least initially quite blatantly stating their competitive agenda.

Whichever reason it was, and whichever way you look at it, it comes down to competition. Sky had had no real competition in the Multi-channel arena after their merger with BSB, and ITV in itself was less competitive because the number of ITV companies had dropped from 15 to 5, and because the franchises were no longer being seen as under threat every whit and while, so there was no pressure on ITV to perform. Now ITV is in this situation. To this writer, it looks like a crisis, a crisis of ITV’s own making. They wanted the ability to merge stations, to eventually become 1 giant national ITV. They wanted the franchises to be easier to renew, therefore creating less pressure, and supposedly more time for increased investment. They wanted the greener, less regulated grass on the other side of the fence. Now they’re there, they are finding it’s leaving a foul taste in their mouths, but instead of backtracking, ITV seek to blame the BBC and Sky for their own problems. There’s an old saying. It says, “You reap what you sow”.

So, how can ITV get themselves out of this predicament? Well, the only way they can do it is to go back to being more regulated, and back to being a commercially funded, not commercially driven, public service broadcaster. They must waste less money on unnecessarily extravagant set designs, cut down the amount that is just given away to shareholders, and start re-investing in the people who really count, the viewers.

GWR In Trouble

Back in the late 19th Century, ask anybody in the South West what GWR stood for, and they'd say either, God's Wonderful Railway, or Great Western Railway. Now in the 21st Century, ask that same question, and you'd probably get a reply along the lines Gormless, Worthless Radio or words to that effect.

Here in the 21st Century, GWR is known as a radio conglomerate and not a particularly popular one among the listeners. Their listenership is down, and the advertising market is down too, meaning that their profits slumped 70% in the last financial year. These are troubled times for a company which started off from a merger between Wiltshire Radio and Radio West back in 1985. So just what has GWR done so wrong in the past year?

Well, it could be that they created a bad strategy within the past couple of years, when they bought up a whole raft of stations, when the ownership rules were last relaxed. The company had a new station, only on Digital Satellite, called The Mix. The Mix was and is basically what GWR wanted their local FM stations to be, albeit with a few changes to reflect the smaller, more localised audiences the local stations had. So, where the local stations had local info, The Mix usually had promos. Then on top of that, The Mix was networked for at least 11 hours a day from 7pm to 6am, consisting basically of a listeners top 30, late night love, and an overnight programme.

However, the worst was yet to come. Over on AM, there was a completion of a process that had been going on for years. Those AM services that had not been assimilated under the Classic Gold brand were then brought under that brand, among them, Plymouth Sound AM, who had been running a successful local service on AM separately from FM for 9 years. In the 6 months following that re-branding, Plymouth's AM service dropped from a regular audience of well over 60,000, to a regular audience of barely over 20,000. Similar patterns were happening right across commercial local radio with every service losing listeners, but the GWR owned services seemed to be worst hit out of them all.

This meant that advertising revenue fell away, quite sharply in some areas, as advertisers looked for bigger audiences elsewhere. The Radio Authority also intervened saying there should be a minimum local requirement of 16 hours on FM. This meant that suddenly 3 extra hours of local programming had to be found in the stations' schedules. Most took an early breakfast slot of 3am to 6am, but some did go for the 7pm to 10pm evening slot. However, they were only local versions of the Top 30 listeners' chart.

GWR was expecting advertising revenue to pick up in 2001, but two things prevented that from happening. One was the Foot and Mouth outbreak, which did not help business confidence generally and caused a lot of problems for many local economies across the country from Devon to Scotland. The second incident was September 11th, and although this didn't have as great an impact as Foot and Mouth, it did help to keep a downer on business confidence. It is now expected that the advertising market won't pick up until the second half of 2002, and although commercial radio has seen a pick up in the number of listeners again, GWR is seemingly lagging behind the rest of the sector.

It is this writer's opinion that GWR needs to rethink its network-orientated strategy. Stations that are truly local by name and by nature are doing well again, in some cases, even better than they were before. It would therefore seem to indicate that locally produced programming is far better at getting listeners for any potential advertiser, than a semi or mostly networked schedule.

Regional Rollercoaster

Out of all the channels that currently exist, only 3 channels provide a terrestrial regional service to the English regions, BBC-1, BBC-2 and ITV. Every other service available is national, pan-European or even international in focus.

So why are there so few regional services? The short answer is money. To provide a basic regional service, for instance to the West, South, East, Midlands, North, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland, you have to find eight new locations for studios. To run the entire service from your broadcast headquarters, at least eight new transmission suites need to be built and suddenly we're talking hundreds of millions of pounds. Currently only Sky could even consider something like that.

The BBC offer a 14-region terrestrial service, covering the South West, West, South, South East, East, East Midlands, West Midlands, North West, North, North East and Cumbria, Channel Islands, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales, and are in the process of carving a 15th region out of the South East for London. A comprehensive service like this is the most expensive route to take, with the pick of the regional bunch, ITV, having 27 regional divisions operated by 15 licensees in 14 regions. A 27-region service requires 27 transmission suites, at a time where ITV tries to consolidate into a single company.

Even without consolidation, regional output has already suffered. The BBC used to produce some great regional feature programming, including "Floyd on Food" and "Secret Nature", both from the Southwest. The BBC picked up these shows nationally as well as many other programmes from the regions. The three main regional production centres for the network, Bristol, Birmingham and Manchester, specialise in certain types of productions. The only things the individual regions produce are local news, weekly topical news documentaries and a regional parliamentary programme. All are news based with no feature-based material at all - no fun stuff.

You might have expected ITV to pick up the slack here but the picture is similarly bleak. For instance, Westward and TSW had been great providers of regional programming, some of it being shown on the network. Successor company Westcountry, however, have produced only news and factual programming, with a tiny amount of entertainment-related material produced by local independents. Even after Carlton rebranded Westcountry, things did not really improved. Although the "Carlton Production" slide is seen a lot, the great majority of these productions are from London and the Midlands.

So regional programming has already suffered on television, and it looks like it will continue to suffer under a single ITV company coupled with light-touch regulation. Because being regional eats up money and profits, expect to see even less in the future.

The first word in jingles - PAMS

2001 marked the 50th anniversary of a company which in its own way, revolutionised radio worldwide.

Until 1951 any jingles that were heard on a radio station in the United States of America had been produced locally. An example of this was KLIF, a station that went live in 1947. The station had its own staff singers, which might seem strange now, but it was fairly common practice back then.

The station's music director, Bill Meeks collaborated with the singers to produce the station's first on-air jingle package. In 1951 Bill Meeks left KLIF and founded a company called PAMS, which promoted itself as a commercial music production house and advertising agency whose initials originally stood for Production, Advertising, Marketing and Sales, the four areas that Bill felt clients needed help in. In later years, the S was changed to mean Service.

The company was based in Dallas, Texas. But this was not by accident, rather, it was by the design of a gentleman called Bill Harris, who was the local director of the American Foundation of Musicians. He pushed for musicians to be paid transcription rates rather than the much higher national advertising rates. Had this not happened in 1951, its quite possible that PAMS might have been based in New York or Los Angeles and as such it might have meant that radio stations today would be traveling to those locations rather than Dallas for their jingles.

Soon after, PAMS sold the very first syndicated package of jingles to KDNT in Denton, Texas. This was to become known as the Series 1 package. The package was basically a collection of pre-recorded backing tracks, an economical and flexible way of producing station ID's. However the package had no consistent logo melody. The package was produced specifically for the station, therefore it was not a custom package, but a syndicated package.

In 1955, PAMS started to face some serious competition in the sector with the formation of Commercial Recording Corp., and three former PAMS employees got together in 1958 to form Futuresonic, but despite the competition from these and many other companies including Music Makers, Jingle Mill and Pepper Sound, PAMS became known as the world's most creative and dominant supplier of radio jingles.
In all, PAMS created 49 numbered packages with numerous variants, many named packages for clients across the world. Among the stations that used PAMS jingles were

• BBC Radio 1 and Radio 2
• WABC in New York
• WMGM
• WYNR
• WFUN
• WXYZ
• KFWB
• KGW
• WGAR
• WWDC
• WLS
• KLIF
• KNX
• and many others including pirate station Radio London.

Some of the more well known backing tracks include Series 15, originally produced for WABC in New York, but never actually used by the station and Series 18, the package that introduce the electronic voice of “Sonovox” to the world of radio jingles. PAMS also produced a series of jingles based on the hits of The Beatles at a time when Beatlemania was sweeping across all 50 states of the US.

In the late 1970's, PAMS ceased trading because of financial problems, but the company never went into bankruptcy, nor was it dissolved. For over 10 years the future of the company and the jingles themselves were left hanging on legal threads.

Then in 1990 another former PAMS employee, Jonathan Wolfert, who had left PAMS in 1971 to form his own company, JAM Creative Productions, bought the shares of the company.

You might think that the story ends here, but you'd be wrong. Because in the years since the company became inactive, several other companies, including the Creative Productions Marketing Group (CPMG), had started offering re-sings of the PAMS packages. It meant extensive legal research had to be carried out to determine who held the valid copyright to the PAMS material. It was eventually determined that the original PAMS corporation, that had been bought by Jonathan Wolfert, still owned the jingles. PAMS had to resort to legal proceedings to resolve all the conflicting claims.

A settlement was reached in February 1997 and since then, JAM have sold re-sings of the classic jingles out of Dallas, Texas, whilst a company called KenR offer re-sings out of Toledo, Ohio.

Brand X

ITV has become ITV1, SkySports.comTV has reverted to being known as Sky Sports News - two recent examples of just how important the correct brand is to television stations and networks. But branding isn't just the station name, it's also everything that identifies the station as being what it is. So, just why is the brand so important?

One reason is to help viewers build a familiarity with the station. Westward's brand was a very strong one in the South West of England, and indeed still is, despite the fact that it disappeared from our TV screens at the end of 1981. Why is it so strong?

One reason is that although Westward changed their idents a few times, they never changed their symbol - it was always the Golden Hind - and the continual use of this symbol for 20 years meant that people built a familiarity with it. Every time that ship appeared on the screen, you knew you were watching Westward.

Another thing that helped build familiarity was the regular team of station hosts, otherwise known as Continuity Announcers. When Roger Shaw told you that now on Westward was The Avengers, again, you knew you were watching Westward, because his face and voice became associated with Westward, and many years later, TSW as well. Familiar faces, familiar voices and a familiar symbol, amongst other things, helped to create a very strong brand for Westward, one which survives almost 20 years of disuse.

By way of an aside, in the United States, consumers regularly rate General Electric second out of 10 manufacturers for Blenders. The company stopped manufacturing white goods of this type more than 20 years ago. A powerful and quality brand is self-perpetuating.

Another reason why brand is so important is that it helps identify the sort of programming you can expect. Cartoon Network shows nothing but cartoons, Discovery Channel is all about documentaries, Disney Channel is children's and family entertainment, brands like that are familiar and give a good idea what the station is about.

But what about a brand like Boomerang? Now what kind of channel is that? It sounds like something to do with Australia or thrown weapons. In fact, Boomerang shows classic cartoons, such as Tom and Jerry, Droopy and Barney Bear. But again, if you'd never heard of the channel before, would you know that it showed classic cartoons? Possibly not, which is why it was initially introduced to the viewing public as a strand of programming on Cartoon Network, before it was launched as a separate channel.

Getting brands associated with whatever the channel wants you to associate it with, has always been a problem. Before 1956, would anyone have associated the word Granada with the North or North West of England? Possibly not, but it is now, and has been for quite some time, associated with the north. On the other hand, could you associate Rediffusion with any particular part of the country? Possibly not, because in the station name, there is no geographical indication of where the channel broadcasts or in this case, broadcasted, to. That's why from about 1964, you saw the words Rediffusion London on screen, in order to build that kind of association.

EuroNews or EuroSport have a similar kind of association, but this time you know they broadcast right across Europe, because of the Euro in their name. Other station names, such as Thames, Southern, Grampian and Ulster, are geographic names, in order to gain the respect of the local audiences. Names like that have a distinct advantage over names without any such geographic reference, such as Rediffusion, ABC, ATV or Carlton.

Also names that are based on the programming that's on the channel, such as Sky Sports 1, UK Gold, Travel Channel and BBC Knowledge have an advantage over channels where the name of the channel has no immediate reference to the programming, such as Q, Hallmark, Trouble and Bravo.

So, if you want your brand to stand out from the crowd, especially in today's very crowded multi-channel market, you need every advantage you can get. Just having your logo permanently on screen all the time won't cut it any more. Not distinctive enough, everybody's doing it. You need to make your station symbol, ident or logo very distinctive, something that will grab your viewers attention.

You need to have your announcers present it distinctively, you have to promo your station and programmes consistently and judiciously, so that you're viewer doesn't think they've seen everything the programme or channel might have to offer.

But most importantly, the brand has to become familiar in people's minds fairly quickly, and the brand has to be respected, otherwise your potential audience might not turn to your channel and that will prove disastrous.