five

The campaign to restore trust in TV is a phoney crusade – less to do with concern for the audience than about protecting brands and reputation.
When my dad was in the Military Police, he would caution errant squaddies with the words: “anything you say will be taken down, screwed around with, and used to convict you.” […]

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Stands up and then stands down from newsreading at five ce soir. She is probably the most talented broadcaster I’ve ever come across, a bloody good writer and a damned fine human being to boot. So that’s my colours nailed to the mast.

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Here are Ofcom’s discussion points from its Future of News paper (available in full here).
Television news cannot be taken for granted on any commercial channel after digital switch-over, because revenues generated from advertising around news programmes do not appear to cover costs of production…
…there are good reasons for existing commercial PSB channels to continue delivering […]

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In case you hadn’t come across it, there’s a very good report [pdf] out from media consultancy Human Capital on the value of news for UK commercial Public Service Broadcasters (that’s ITV, Channel 4, and five), who all have to run news as part of the price of accessing the vanishing airwaves.
In an act of noblesse […]

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ITV has just spun out a new deal with its news supplier, ITN. In case you don’t understand the oddness of British TV news - ITV doesn’t have its own news division, it contracts the news out - and has done for fifty years - to a company it 40% owns.
According to the headline it’s £250m […]

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There are two types of commitments in life. Verbal commitments and financial commitments. When governments make verbal commitments what do we judge them by? The money they’re allocating to realise their dreams. When you’re negotiating what do you rely on? Promises or prices?
Here’s a verbal commitment:
Channel Five will offer viewers dedicated slots on its news programmes […]

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