Podcasts, Radio, TV, Books, Cycling, Photography and More
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HBO Max and Paramount+: What It Might Mean For Sports
Today the deal was done, and Paramount took over Warner Bros. Discovery in a massive deal that has much of Hollywood quaking. There were some last minute wrinkles with a deal being struck a couple of weeks ago with a group of US Attorneys General, with the general view being that they folded and didn’t…
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Edison Podcast Metrics UK – Top 25 Q2 2023
Updated with more information on the recall methodology and to note that BBC data is based on BBC Sounds listening. Having trailed it at The Podcast Show in London, Edison Research today published the first full findings of their Podcast Metrics survey for the UK. The survey was conducted by interviewing 2,273 weekly podcast listeners…
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Channel 4 and DOGs
Taskmaster returned to Channel 4 this week, with an all-new line-up of contestants. Having got drenched in rain on my way home, I was ready for some stupid challenges performed by comedians. But when I turned on, I was treated to the above image. In the TV world a “Digital On-Screen Graphic”, or DOG, is…
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Popularity Contest – Streaming vs Linear in 2023
The most recent episode of the new(ish) podcast Search Engine with PJ Vogt asked the simple question, “Why is it so hard to figure out how many people watched Stranger Things?” The question was posed by actor Maya Hawke who appears on the Netflix show. And it opened up an in-depth discussion about audience measure…
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Spotify Grifts
I confess that I’m fascinated by a series of grifts that have been reported on recently with respect to Spotify royalties. Let’s go through some of them, and explore whether they hold up. The 30-Second Get-Rich-Quick Track This comes from a JP Morgan finance analyst who claimed in an FT piece that someone could create…
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ESPN, Charter, The Cable Bundle and the Future
I have been fascinated by the recently resolved standoff in the US TV industry between the second biggest cable provider in the country, Charter Communications, and one of the biggest TV providers, Disney. Over the US Open tennis final at the weekend, and the start of the opening weekend of the new NFL season, millions…
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Doppelganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World by Naomi Klein
Naomi Klein is the author of such bestselling titles as No Logo, The Shock Doctrine and This Changes Everything. She’s a social activist, who has worked on Bernie Sanders campaigns and writes about globalisation. Naomi Wolf is the author of books such as The Beauty Myth, Fire With Fire and The End of America. She…
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Douglas Adams and Nigel Kneale
Over the weekend I managed to get along to two separate, and largely unconnected events – except that both were based around writers who found prominence in science fiction. And one is much funnier than the other. 42: The Wildly Improbable Ideas of Douglas Adams Unbound has just published this new book beautifully edited by…
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Tour of Britain 2023 – Photos
I’m trying some new photo formats. This isn’t quite working yet. I may return to it to fix things…
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Tour of Britain 2023 – Stage 6
The 2023 Tour of Britain passed close to me today, so of course I headed out to catch the riders coming through. Running an event like the Tour of Britain isn’t easy in the current economic climate, and so the organisers basically are limited in where they go based on the councils that will pay…
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Keychron K2
Like many people, I’ve been fascinated with the emergence/re-emergence of mechanical keyboards over the last few years. YouTube is full of videos of them, and there are endless comparisons of what different switches sound like. There’s also a whole industry of people building their own keyboards. The trouble is that it all seems so complicated.…
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Spitfire and Hurricane
On Sunday I went for a stupidly long bike ride and towards the end of my ride, just to the southeast of Bedford, while I was stopped, gulping down another gel to power me to the ride’s end, I heard old engine noises in the air. Over to the east I could see planes flying…
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Getting Your Podcast Promo Code Right
A short PSA about podcast promo codes. There’s a certain advertiser on podcasts right now who has a podcast promo code in the copy, which is absolutely fine. But they specify in the copy that the promo code listeners should use for the discount must be, “All lower case.” Really!? Is there really any kind…
Hadrian’s Wall
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