If you look to the left, you’ll notice this is the one hundred and first column I’ve written for Creativepool. I must admit I let my century pass by unnoticed, which is rather typical of my lack of attention. But it does allow me the opportunity to pinch an idea from the BBC and consign ten aspects of TV advertising to a virtual dustbin with a yank of a handle and a sickening thud. Should you wish to disagree, I’d heartily encourage you to use the comments facility at the foot of this piece, rather than hunting me down like a frightened hound. Now, if it’s all the same to you, I’ll begin …
Posts Tagged ‘BBC’
Give the BBC (and me) a break
Monday, December 12th, 2011
It’s pretty trendy and in vogue to have a pop at the BBC. We’re all licence fee payers so yes, we absolutely have the right to complain when they’re not following editorial guidelines or Ofcom standards. Or, worse still, when their overpaid TV hosts cause offence for the sake of “comedy”. Indeed, I have complained to the BBC myself on one occasion in the past. But the number of people who got hot under the collar about Emily Maitlis’s documentary about Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg was, in my opinion, utterly ridiculous.
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The ad that ran on the BBC
Friday, October 7th, 2011
It had a running time of four minutes. It featured 29 world famous musicians who were paid just beer money. It took a year to make. And it featured a song that up until then had managed to avoid the charts for 22 years.
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Performing at the BBC Proms
Tuesday, July 26th, 2011
The BBC Proms season is now well under way. There have already been some real gems (not least the opening night) and many of the 74 concerts sold out weeks ago, but you can still turn up and pay your £5 for standing room in the arena or gallery if you’re willing to queue. But rather than make this blog a classical review or a preview of my favourites still to come, I’m going to tell you what it’s like to actually perform at the most famous classical music festival in the world. Because on Sunday night, I was singing my heart out with the London Philharmonic Choir, and others, performing Verdi’s Requiem.
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Centre of the Universe?
Thursday, June 16th, 2011
So the BBC is flogging Television Centre in Shepherd’s Bush and the great and the good of the media are sobbing hot tears while spinning fond tales of this wonderful, vintage institution.
Bless.
However, truth be told, TV Centre is a rather ugly old pile with insufficient parking and the feel of a late 1960s hospital with budget problems. Most of the people who worked there had little good to say about the place and the nation’s favourite uncle, Terry Wogan, often called it ‘the deserted doughnut’. Now history is frantically being rewritten and the structure is presented as an emblem of an imaginary, golden era of broadcasting, long since abandoned to the garish vulgarity of reality shows and Sky 3.
Pay up or go down.
Thursday, May 19th, 2011
The people at Sky TV have hit on a brilliant idea to boost their revenues to unimaginable heights and their audience figures to new frontiers. The scheme works like this:
* It is now against the law to own a telly and NOT subscribe to Sky.
* If you have a TV without subscribing to Sky, you can be fined.
* If you don’t pay that fine you may well be jailed.
* Sky will have a database of all TV owners and will check a cross section of the people on that database to ensure they have subscribed to Sky.
* Stating that you don’t watch Sky and therefore don’t wish to subscribe is not an option, as all television owners must pay to subscribe.
Fresh air. Can we save the great radio ad?
Thursday, May 12th, 2011
One of my first jobs in the creative business was one of the most enjoyable: writing and producing radio ads. At the time, almost all advertising platforms relied on the combined skills of an art director and a copywriter, but radio was the sole preserve of the writer. It was our moment in the sun. It also gave me the opportunity to work with some fairly famous folk like Christopher Lee (Dracula) and John Hannah (now the voice of the Co-Op).
Move closer. The rise of hyper-local media.
Thursday, April 28th, 2011
Planet media tends to throw up buzzwords like a heavy drinker with acute salmonella. ‘Social networking’, ‘disruption marketing’, ‘viral video’ – and now here comes another: ‘hyper local’. You’re likely to hear this phrase an awful lot, because if predictions are anything to go by, it describes the brave new frontier for broadcasting, the web and even print.
Rather like a balloon, the world’s various media outlets have inflated and expanded over the last twenty years or so. Sky ushered in global satellite TV in the 90s, the internet engulfed our lives in the early 21st century and social websites linked us all to likeminded folk across the world in recent years. As the balloon stretched, regional television became more amorphous and considerably less relevant, ITV soaked up the provincial broadcasting companies (Granada, Central, HTV etc.) and, just this year, Global Media Group has swallowed the independent local radio network whole, rebranding every station Capital (Capital? That’s only London surely?) and duplicating its output across the nation.
Ticking the right [equal opportunities] box
Monday, March 14th, 2011
Getting your ideal job (or any job, come to that) can be a real uphill struggle in the current economic climate. But is it any harder if you have a disability? Equal opportunities statements might well be printed in black and white at the bottom of application forms, but realistically, do they actually count for anything? When rejecting a perfectly well-qualified applicant, it’s very easy to trot out the phrase ‘there was someone with more directly relevant experience than you’. Nobody will be any the wiser as to whether that is the real reason or not; it’s impossible to prove. So in our evermore touchy-feely society, is having a disability in the current job market any less of a stigma now than it once was?
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Land of the free. Has charging for things become taboo?
Thursday, April 19th, 2012Of course, once the giant grocer (and plenty others) realised the shocking damage slave labour would inflict on their brand, they retreated quicker than a worm from a hungry blackbird. But I can’t help thinking the whole escapade was symptomatic of a much larger trend. The closer I look, the more I notice the concept of paying for stuff being treated with contempt.
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