Podcasts, Radio, TV, Books, Cycling, Photography and More
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How To Incentivise Your Audience to Skip Podcast Ads
If you publish a podcast, your podcast may well take advertising. And if it does take advertising, you probably want people to actually listen to the ads. Your audience listening to podcast ads increases the likelihood of products being sold, and therefore the advertiser coming back to buy more advertising. If your podcast doesn’t increase…
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Discarded Toys and Books
Yesterday I was out in a local country park, and came across this sorry sight. Aside from wondering why someone felt the need to dump all their unwanted books and toys in a ditch rather than, say, a recycling bin or even a regular dustbin, I thought this was a bit of a sorry sight.…
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BBC Mobile Apps On Hold
Today comes news that the BBC has had to delay its mobile phone applications until the BBC Trust has taken a close look at what it’s doing. That obviously includes iPhone apps, but other operating systems are available, and the BBC was developing for them too. The announcement that the BBC was developing applications came…
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Paywalls Come Tumbling Up
I know – that’s awful. Sorry. What to make of The Times’ much vaunted and soon to be realised paywall? At the moment, not a lot. There’ll be a £1 charge for a day’s access and £2 for a week. In terms of the paper itself, the value isn’t bad. The daily paper costs £1…
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Advertising The Book Show on Sky Arts
Sky Arts has recently been running a pretty large-scale advertising campaign for The Book Show presented by – as all literary shows seemingly have to be by law – Mariella Frostrup. That’s fine. Sky Arts is a decent enough channel, even if you know it really exists so that Murdoch can argue for the closure…
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Moviedrome
We really are lacking in decent regular TV programmes about cinema. I noticed that Film 2010 has just ended its latest run, and I’m not sure whether it’ll be returning for a final run before Jonathan Ross ends his tenure at the BBC. While I’m sure that someone – Mark Kermode? – will take on…
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Should The Ashes Be Listed?
On Friday, a Department of Culture, Media & Sport consultation based around their Review of Listed Events closed. This consultation was based around some preliminary suggestions on the updating of the list of sporting (and other cultural) events for which either live free-to-air TV coverage, or recorded highlights should be made available. The big issue…
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HBO – The Comeback
In some ways, HBO has never been away, but I think it’s fair to say that it’s on a bit of a roll at the moment. At the weekend, HBO started its massive new mini-series, The Pacific, coming from Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks, which acts as a sequel of sorts to Band of Brothers.…
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Party & Geoengineering
A couple of quick recommendations. You’ve only got a day left to listen to part 1 of Party, adapted by Tom Basden from his own play which has only just finished a run in the West End following its debut in last year’s Edinburgh Festival. A group of middle class – and not especially bright…
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Green Zone
Green Zone is the latest film from Paul Greengrass and his team. And by team, I don’t just mean Matt Damon. He’s clearly assembled together a very tight group of people who work with him. There’s cinematographer Barry Ackroyd who worked on United 93, composer John Powell who worked on that and all the Bourne…
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Arsenal 5 – 0 FC Porto
I don’t often talk about football on the blog, but Arsenal’s 5-0 demolition of Porto last night is worthy of recording. The photo above shows Nicklas Bendtner finishing his hattrick from the penalty spot in the 90th minute. But goal of the night must go to Samir Nasri’s superb individual goal as he beat three…
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The Eerie Silence
Given where I work, there really is no excuse for me not to go to more of the Royal Society’s public lectures. So back in January I attended an interesting sounding lecture entitled “The eerie silence: are we alone in the universe?” The room where they hold the lectures was absolutely packed, and I was…
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The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo
One of my favourite series of novels of recent years has been Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy. I’ve read all three of the novels in hardback no less, having read interesting things about The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo ahead of its English language publication in January 2008. By October last year, the final volume of…
Hadrian’s Wall
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