Thoughts from a Bafta nominated Podcaster, Blogger, Writer and Commentator
The BBC and ITV have announced BritBox, yet another streaming service trying to sign up as many people as possible for a monthly fee, is going to be coming to the UK. Which sounds lovely, but what will it mean to the licence fee and public service broadcasting a few years down the line?
Continue readingThe rise of Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, and the online streaming services looks to be driving a growth in BitTorrent usage and media piracy. When consumers are given easy and almost friction free access to the media (even if it’s a £10/month fee) they’re going to stay there, rather than explore
Continue readingIf there’s one thing many people agree on, it’s that podcasts are not an easy way of earning income (although is there truthfully any easy way online?). John Corcoran’s look at some of your options is a good place both for new ‘casters and old hands. One of them stood out for me: Jared
Continue readingWhat happens when you try to power up and look at the contents of your seventeen year old iPod? James Bareham fights Firewire cables, antiquity, and Thunderbolt dongles to find out. And the results? not just a bit of digital archaeology but a look back into the mind of his
Continue readingLast Friday saw one of the moments where numbers conspired to mean something. Over on ESC Insight, I posted the five hundredth episode of my Eurovision Song Contest podcast. There was nothing particularly special about the contents, it was a regular episode of ‘ESC Insight News’, covering the last two
Continue readingMost people have a good idea how good or bad the summer blockbuster movie season was, and I think most people could agree that the quality was not as high as earlier years. For every ‘Baby Driver‘ there was a ‘Baywatch‘ or ‘King Arthur‘. The big game of Hollywood has
Continue readingIt’s accepted that Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’ sold over one hundred million copies. But do the numbers add up? A fascinating look at sampling, rounding up, sales tracking, and hype from Bill Wyman at The New Yorker. Did Jackson sell a billion records, or even seven hundred and fifty million? Sure, “Thriller”
Continue readingWhen the snap General Election was called in May, I wrote at the time that my first thought was about the result. Or at least how to cover the result. It was this. “I need to get behind a microphone to do the results show from 10pm on June 8th.”
Continue readingTuesday’s announcement of a General Election in the UK for June 8th caught me a little by surprise and set off a riot of emotions. I tend not to talk about politics too much online, so many of the thoughts I had yesterday are mine, or for friends and family. But
Continue readingAfter the first year of hosting my daily chat show at the Edinburgh Fringe (which is still running thirteen years later), Brian Luff gave me one of the best pieces of advice I have had in my broadcast career. It went something like this: “I listened to the Fringe podcasts,
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