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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These Boots Are Made For Walking
Look – we all know the fashion business is nonsense. But if there’s one recent trend that’s really annoyed me, for no good reason, it’s the sudden desire for Ugg boots. These Australian made pieces of footwear are, in themselves, perfectly fine (the fact that “Ugg” has been adopted as a trade name, when in…
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Tricks of the Mind
I tend to avoid cash-in books to accompany popular TV series; you won’t catch me buying the complete Little Britain Scripts or whatever (OK, so Little Britain is well past its sell-by date). But I’ve always been intrigued by Derren Brown. It’s true that his last special – The System – I found to be…
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Flat Earth News
Nick Davies has written a fascinating book that details exactly how we get our news – and he’s not a happy man. I like to think that I know a little about what goes on in the media and how truths are distorted and the way that newspapers and news broadcasts are put together. In…
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Bagless Mail
So the Daily Mail has suddenly become devoted to going bagless – that is, seeing the end of the free plastic bag. Earlier this week it launched a massive campaign, and by a complete fluke, and in no way pre-planned, the next day Marks & Spencer announced that it’d no longer be supplying free plastic…
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Ed Reardon on New Grub Street
Thanks to Chris for noting that Open Book on Radio 4 recently covered nineteenth century novelist George Gissing and his novel New Grub Street. The main character is one Edwin Reardon, and there’s also a Jasper Milvain. Familiar names to fans of Ed Reardon’s Week like myself. Listen to the extract here: powered by ODEO…
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Earth Tremor
Utterly bizarre. I was just sitting here in my flat at 12.55am, when the sofa started shaking. I live on a top floor flat, and the light hanging above me was moving while the rather precarious stack of CDs against one wall started to move. It all went on for about ten seconds. Turning on…
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Taxi To The Dark Side
The winner of this year’s Oscar for Documentary Feature was Taxi To The Dark Side. This film was shown on BBC2 as part of the Storyville strand. Having just won an Oscar, the BBC are obviously rushing to repeat the film for those of us (including me) who missed it. So when and where is…
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Is 6 Music Too Male?
Well, the short answer is that I don’t know. But that seems to be what Lesley Douglas has been suggesting recently following a backlash against George Lamb. Now I’ve not heard him, so I’ve no idea how good or bad his show is, or what kind of audience it might be attracting. Douglas is quoted…
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I Have Magnetic Legs
Well that can be the only explanation. Unless the system is just flaky of course. Let me explain. I live in London, where the public transport system is divided into circular zones. The further out of the centre you live, the more you pay for your all zone ticket – or travelcard. A couple of…
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Oh the irony
(Yes, I really am on the subscription lists of both these organisations).
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Privatising Radio 1 and Radio 2
In today’s FT, the former chairman of Endemol UK, Peter Bazalgette argues for the BBC selling off Radio 1 and Radio 2. As part of an argument to solve the BBC’s problem of facing losing a “top-slice” of the licence fee, Bazalgette has noted that the BBC still has a 55% share of radio. His…
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Digital Radio – What Now?
(First off, it’s worth me reiterating that these are my personal views and don’t necessarily reflect those of my employer) The following is a revision of a comment I made to a blog posting by The Guardian’s Matt Wells last week. I think it largely addresses the issues of where radio – and commercial radio…
Hadrian’s Wall
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