It’s amazing what you can cut together with rushes of interviews…
(The BBC documentary that was actually made partly from these rushes is The Virtual Revolution, presented by the divine Dr. Aleks Krotoski, Saturdays at 8.30pm on BBC Two)
Incidentally, it’s nice to know that I have finally achieved my ambition to have my name listed on a BBC network programme’s credits. Even if it’s only my netname, and it’s only listed on the website…
In a show that is in no way an attempt to recreate elements of Mythbusters, a presenter of the BBC’s Bang Goes The Theory climbed one of the BBC office buildings today using the power of nothing but suction:
As I speak, there is the glorious sound of a gospel choir working their way through a bunch of classic hymns and not-so-classic modern pop tunes.
This would be great, if it was not Friday at 4pm, they were on the ground floor of the building I work in and only the bottom two floors (those belonging to BBC Worldwide) are enjoying the party, complete with mince pies, wine, DJ and glitterball. In the meantime, the wage slaves up above have to – in theory – keep working.
It wouldn’t be so bad if I hadn’t arrived back at the BBC just when the Christmas party limit was slashed, so my “departmental” Christmas party last week was at a bar, and consisted of some free drink – and far too late – some very unChristmassy canapes. Although I’m lucky I got to go to one at all, I suppose…
Then again, my first BBC Worldwide Christmas party was quite an eye-opener. I’d only been working for a week, and got shepherded to the party at Heaven, which included girls dancing in cages, and ice sculptures where you could drink vodka from an ice woman’s breast. This was 1997, mind you…
Oct 8
After flicking through the various US TV channels, I was surprised to stumble across an edition of BBC World News on a free-to-air analogue terrestrial TV station. This would be the equivalent of being able to watch an American news programme on Channel Five, so I was somewhat amazed to find this. Then watched in horror as the rest of the programme unfurled.
In the UK, we’re told that BBC World News provides an unbiased global perspective of the news. But the main items on BBC World News last night were:
- UK stock market falling
- US presidential debate, with the ubiquitous Matt Frei
- a couple of small pieces about anti-government riots in Peru and Thailand
- The “And finally”… piece about a Chinese art exhibition in Chelsea
In other words, it was almost like watching a standard BBC News broadcast, with slightly less emphasis on UK events. I can’t help thinking that if you live in Cleveland, Calcutta or Canberra, these bits of news will be fantastically irrelevant. Especially learning about an art exhibition in Chelsea, for goodness’ sake. Even when being global, the BBC’s still very London-parochial.
By any stretch of the imagination, Stephen Fry is one of the very few people who totally understands and gets the digital revolution ™, and also has the eyes and ears of most of the population. More importantly, people like him and he is inherently likeable.
So it’s interesting that in a recent speech on the future of the BBC, he apparently declared that:
- the BBC should not be ghettoized
- he regularly breaks the digital lock on the BBC’s iPlayer
- the very existence of the iPlayer is making a lot of enemies for the BBC
It would be very interesting to find out whether he thinks the iPlayer lock should be beefed up (thus perpetuating the digital arms race), or whether he (as a rights provider of some considerable length) would be prepared to let his content loose online. Or whether it should be shut down entirely.
The first and last time I bumped into Ashley Highfield (former head new media honcho at the BBC), it was early on a Wednesday morning and I was a wee bit hungover.
So when I meandered over to my designated table for a day of brainstorming, I was a little astonished to find Ashley Highfield sitting there, prodding around with some digital device or whatever. I said Hello, and mentioned that I indirectly worked for him at BBC Wales as a content producer. He grunted, said Hello, and then made his excuses and left.
Fast-forward about half a decade, and I’m back at the BBC, in the heart of the Media Village. I don’t work indirectly for Highfield at all any more, but he must have seen me lurking around the corridors of power, because less than two weeks later, his resignation has been announced…
If you’d like other fascinating stories about how I indirectly caused Kurt Cobain’s suicide and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis’s death, please ask. 
(This is a very tongue-in-cheek post, brought to you in a desperate attempt to see if opportunistic blogging will raise viewing figures. Just, y’know, to see…)
In the current broo-hah surrounding the BBC and “faked” competitions and votes, apparently Richard Marston (the former Blue Peter editor) was sacked because he was advised that the poll to name the Blue Peter cat had been rigged by outside voting, and therefore decided to choose the top result before the online rigging started.
If this is true, then this is frankly amazing. Online votes of all levels have been deliberately rigged by outside parties since the dawn of the Internet, from naming a cat to voting in a UK political election. Surely if you had evidence that a vote had been rigged, you’d take steps to counteract that rigging, and deal with the result – or make it clear that the vote will only influence the decision, not decide it outright.
If this is what happened with Mr. Marston and he’s been sacked as a result of taking a proactive effort to restore balance, that’s positively wrong.
But it’s oh-so-British, isn’t it? To flog yourself silly and beg for forgiveness from a public who either don’t care or are just laughing in the street.
For those of us who thought the BBC’s mammoth self-marketing campaigns were one of the symptions of modern marketing excess, a trawl on the Internet has turned up this John Cleese-presented advertisment on What Has the BBC Ever Given Us?. And it being the BBC, Spitting Image have the right of rebuttal…
Hark back to a golden age when the licence fee was only £55, alternative comedy was cool enough to be mentioned on mainstream television (albeit from the toilet) – and more importantly, pubs weren’t decked out in steel chrome.
For all us TV archivists, can you tell me what year this was from? Bob Geldof witters on about Live Aid, so it’s certainly post 1985…
Jul 13
On a day when the BBC is rightfully whipping itself over pretending the Queen was throwing a tantrum at the prospect of sitting for a photographer, perhaps it’s a good day to remind ourselves of the numerous gaffes Prince Phillip has made in the name of promoting the British abroad, and at home.
I particularly like the one just after the 1988 Lockerbie plane crash, when 250+ died in a plane inferno, and Prince Phillip sympathised, saying: “People usually say that after a fire it’s water damage that’s the worst. We’re still trying to dry out Windsor Castle.”
Getting back to the BBC debacle, surely you’d expect the head of BBC One at least to read his speech before reading it out to a bunch of assembled media journalists. Surely the phrase “Annie Leibovitz gets it slightly wrong and the Queen walks out in a huff” should ring at least a couple of alarm bells – you are, after all, working for the BBC, not Channel Five or Babestation. Or does no-one read what they say before they say it any more?
Sep 26
So I was at the cinema with Miss R seeing You, Me and Dupree – and as part of the trailer/advert mix was a cinematic advert for the new series of Robin Hood *1 from the BBC. And I sat there thinking what a great advert it was – just a shame about the butt-ugly BBC ONE logo prominent on the bottom-left of this huge screen.
So the news that the BBC ONE logo and idents are getting redesigned is quite a welcome one from my perspective. Plus, (going into typography geek mode) the new font certainly looks much friendlier and less authoritative than the previous one, which smacked of “THIS IS THE BBC. YOU WILL BOW TO US”.
Mind you, I’m not sure about the ident itself. Like the Channel 4 idents, they’re very clever visually – but it doesn’t actually remind you that you’re watching a TV channel. It feels more like a cool and glitzy advert for a washing machine. Then again, I never liked the BBC One dancing idents either, and much preferred the balloon ones. They were fantabulous.
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