Gordon's Republic

2007-02-26T12:13:00.000Z

Skyless

Sky is taking it all the way. Having rattled its sabre and asked for a big pile of cash it will soon strip 3.3m Virgin Media customers of Sky One and Sky News, as well as a few other channels.

It's playing hard ball, but ultimately a huge mistake by Sky. It is another example of showing itself to be a bully in the market place using strong-arm tactics to get its own way.

It has already derailed a Virgin Media takeover of ITV by snapping up a stake in its terrestrial rival (for which it could still face an Ofcom probe) and now it seems to think it can win the multichannel war by depriving Virgin Customers. That, or it really does think it should get more money.

Sky claims this morning that it has increased investment in its basic channels by 68% over the last five years to around £200m a year and, as a consequence, the most-watched pay TV programmes in cable households are on the Sky basic channels.

"We are simply seeking a fair price so that we can continue to provide the great shows and choice that Virgin Media customers value."

It hopes that by denying Virgin Media customers of services like Sky One and with it hit shows such as 'Lost', '24', 'The Simpsons' and 'Battlestar Galactica', people will switch suppliers.

It is apparently set to capitalise on this with an advertising campaign this week reminding Virgin Media customers what they are missing out on.

I've no doubt it will hit home as Sky's US imports are some of the best on television, but are they really the draw they once were?

The answer to this question is yes and no. I think yes for a small group of people who will go to lengths to watch it, but for the majority I think they will probably find themselves getting along just fine without it.

For the small group who really can't live without maybe some of them will dump Virgin and move to Sky, but for the others they can just watch it on the web where it isn’t even all that illegal anymore.

There are lots of sites now offering entire episodes of just aired US TV shows free to watch and you don't even have to download it.

The Guardian helpfully ran a nice big feature about this on Saturday. Telling people of the wonders of sites like Alluc.org, which lists the places you can go and watch these shows. You don't need Sky.

"I'm breaking up with my DVD rental service. We've had good times, we've had sad times, even a stressful week where I had to sign two forms detailing the location of the post box used to return Seinfeld, but it's over. I've found Alluc.org.

"Here, in pleasing slate tones, are the links to every television programme you could ever hope to see (Lost, Ugly Betty, Dragon's Den), many you'll go out of your way to avoid (Red Dwarf US, Coupling, Joey) and entire seasons of shows yet to air in this country - many featuring characters from Friends. Enjoy Chandler as Matt Albie in Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip - could he be more stressed about writing a sketch comedy show?"

Admittedly the quality is not great, but really it’s good enough, and besides shows are coming to DVD faster than ever. You can even buy the box set when it’s out for the glossy finish.

I've already tried some of these services because I'm impatient and really can't wait, and I know many others who have done so as well.

My main TV addiction is 'Battlestar Galactica, which I have already mentioned on this blog before (why does no one listen?), which is the best thing on TV. A mix between 'Alien', 'The West Wing' and 'Blade Runner', with quality parenting like that you can't really go wrong.

I digress, slightly, I might have several years ago thought about dumping Virgin or Telewest as it was, but not anymore.

I've got a Virgin Plus digital video recorder on the way and really for the time I spend watching TV there is plenty to see.

I stopped watching 'Lost' after it moved to Sky, but that wouldn't even be a problem. Virgin has signed 'Lost' as a download. So even for 'Lost' fans who are not all the technologically au fait with the PC they can still watch that show (why you would, I'm not sure – nothing happens).

The new Brand Republic website has now launched and in future you will be able to find this blog here.

2007-02-20T16:00:00.000Z

Grazia for men

More news that Emap might launch a Grazia for men. Is it just me or will this magazine die a horrible death?

Marketing reports that Emap has fuelled speculation that it is to launch a men's fashion weekly in the style of Grazia following a record ABC for the women's title.

All true. Grazia did really well. Its title posted a 20% period-on-period increase in circulation to 210,200 in the six months to December giving it a 23% year-on-year rise.

Okay, but a men's mag? Even the teenage weeklies Zoo and Nuts suffered a little fall. Clearly Emap is undeterred, Rob Munro-Hall, managing director of FHM, Zoo and Arena, said the venture was something it was "looking at".

Okay so Grazia is an upmarket (read inspirational title) for the thirtysomething career girl, with ten pages of news (which it clearly prides itself on) and with a fashion bent. Yes it has stars but these are stars like Madonna and Jennifer Aniston. You won't find Jade Goody here.

I don't see the men's title working...grooming, fashion, how to buff up and with a upmarket celebrity bent? That's a perfect gay man's title. I'm guessing here.

Besides, there used to be an upmarket men's title with a grooming and fashion title. It was called Arena. You want to know what happened to that? Well it sacked its editor last week after it reported a period-on-period decline of 13.9% to 34,556 copies. The year-on-year figures were a 29.9% drop of a car crash. The future of Arena looks like a Ken Loach movie. Really bleak.

No surprise. Look at the latest cover? That's right it is desperately trying to look like every other men's mag with a generous helping of female flesh on the front cover.

I know, I've banged on about this before, but it looks like I won't be doing it for much longer. Inside they have a big feature on Simon Pegg's new movie. It is the thing everyone has been talking about, but no - instead they have Eva Longoria of 'Desperate Housewives (yawn)'. All very desperate.

2007-02-20T08:34:00.000Z

Kanute Gazette

Stop the web someone wants to get off. Clearly all is going well with the new owners of the Press Gazette. They've hired King Kanute to advise on digital strategy.

One of their first ideas has been to post stuff later on the web, get this - people are reading it there and not buying a copy of the title.

Who would have thunk it? Those sneaky people with their web habits, stop that right now! It's the diary section that's the problem. Not to worry, Press Gazette's new owners Wilmington Media have come up with the idea of posting it four days later.

A message from Axegrinder

“Shocking but true: certain sections of Axegrinder's loyal following are reading this section of the web site on a Thursday and Friday to save dipping their hands in their pockets to buy a copy of Press Gazette.

To overcome this shameful practice, Axegrinder will now be posted here on Mondays. So if you want to find out who is being subjected to the most up-to-date Axegrindings, you have four choices: subscribe to the print edition, by clicking here; subscribe to the digital edition by clicking here; go and buy a copy from your newsagent; or wait until Monday, and be the last to know

It’s a valiant effort to turn back the tide. Next up, news will feature with a slight delay.

Elsewhere on the site is the Press Gazette Blog, which has one entry posted since November 24. The most recent entry posted 11 days ago has a knock at the Observer about claiming "that it was one of the first Sunday newspapers to stick a story up on the internet rather than save it for the paper on Sunday".

The Press Gazette's answer to this is "We've been banging out web breaking news as well print exclusives for years”. Yes, but you can only get around to blogging about it once every couple of weeks. Did someone say pot kettle?

Amway, back at the ranch this as we prepare to launch Brand Republic with its new, revamped and totally free to access look, with most content published in the likes of Campaign, Marketing and Media Week.

And I promise there will be blogs a plenty among many other things.

2007-02-16T09:07:00.000Z

Formula

It was a bloody day in the men's market and the writing is clearly on the wall for some.

Never before have we seen such serious plunges in the glossy men's magazine market, with falls of close to 30% for Loaded, Maxim and FHM.

Emap's FHM fell to 371,263 copies, a year-on-year fall of 25.9%. It was worse still for rivals. Loaded was down 29.9% to 162,554, making it the biggest loser and Dennis Publishing's monthly Maxim was down to 131,497 copies, a drop of 29.3%.

Even the boys weeklies suffered a little. What it seemed to suggest is that finally the bottom has literally fallen out of the market.

Clearly, it isn't all about readers suddenly tiring of the acres of flesh and the paucity of ideas that these magazines display week in and week out, but that has to be part of it.

The internet has played a part in the downfall of these magazines, but I don’t think that it should be overstated.

There is a desperate need for an injection of new ideas into the men's market and I am not talking about the launch of e-magazines such as the Dennis-owned Monkey, which slips even further downmarket than its printed rivals and whose survival is dependent on the amount of flesh it features. The trouble with Monkey is that its readers are those who do not have access to their parent's credit cards.

Maybe this is part of the reason why Dennis is to sell off Maxim. Perhaps, having looked at the title it has no ideas whatsoever to do with it.

It will be interesting to see who buys it. Whoever snaps it up will not get it cheap and the task ahead is not small. The title needs to be relaunched and shunted in a new direction, otherwise it will close.

The same is true for Loaded, but with a title so dedicated to... well being loaded, it is difficult to change course.

These magazines are like big ships, changing direction takes a long time and it is not necessarily something they can do easily.

FHM clearly has a little more time, but for a magazine that once sold around 700,000 it is a shadow of its former self. The editor Ross Brown has already lost his job and where that title goes is a huge worry for Emap, which has already closed the title down in the US.

This all brings us back to Emap's talked of men's version of the all conquering Grazia: an intelligent men's magazine. It sounds almost like an oxymoron (OK, I know there is GQ, but there are only so many Piers Morgan articles you can read) and maybe it is.

Look at Emap's ailing rival Arena. That has in its past been described as an upmarket men's title. And you know what happened to that, don't you? That's right, it is also down 29.9% year on year to just 34,556 copies. The editor got the chop yesterday and the title itself can not be long for this world.

Grazia for men? Good luck with that one. That rumour started doing the rounds last year and has popped again over the last week. Amusingly it has been dubbed "Project Dizzy". Dizzy trying to work out how they can make it work without Emap losing its shirt.

2007-02-15T09:06:00.000Z

Halifax, Mars, Enjoy England

Will someone please stop those singing Halifax ads? I would appeal directly to the singing agency, aka Delaney Lund Knox Warren & Partners, but that would only fall on deaf ears.

The latest Halifax extravaganza, with its singing employees ads, might have added a bit of soul but it doesn’t have one.

I know it isn't just me, lots of other people feel the same. It’s pure Bernard Matthews, all turkey.

It isn't even the first time they've done it. There have been numerous casualties in this campaign. Do you remember when DLKW took Glen Campbell song, 'Rhinestone Cowboy' and gave it to Barry from Halifax in Belfast? I do

This time, it is Natalie Webster from a Sheffield branch, but the familiar face of Howard is there also.

Singing about your current account ("think about your current account") is just wrong and this is wrong writ large with 300 extras with 70 trained dancers.

I'm just waiting for someone to tell me that the great unwashed (as opposed to the great unshaved who like to shoot ads in South Africa, where this one was shot) love this ad and it drives customer acquisition like nothing you've ever seen.

Even if that's the case I don’t care, I think they should stop and spare us all. I think the next challenge for DLKW is to make a silent ad. Either that or transfer to the West End.

Talking of music in ads as we were... well sort of, I wanted to mention the Mars Bar spot that's been running. It has a guy eating a bar, walking down a street to New Order's Blue Monday.

It is a completely random, completely spurious use of the song and a waste. Why New Order allowed it in the first place is beyond me. If it was an interesting ad, you could understand that, but it is bland and dull.

Still on music, I'm doing a round up, and wanted to mention the “Enjoy England” campaign created by Farm Communications. I know its been running for a while, but I thought it was a great example of the right song for the right ad.

The song in question is The Jam's ‘English Rose’, a great tune and it works really well, hand in hand with the ad’s brief to inspire consumers to discover surprising holidays in England's urban, rural and coastal destinations. I'm off.

2007-02-14T09:02:00.000Z

Torture image

The US military is irked. They say that special agent Jack Bauer of '24' fame and his interrogation methods are giving it a bad name. They want Jack (played by Kiefer Sutherland) to cut out the rough stuff.

Apparently slapping around the bad guys is not how the US military wants to be seen. Jack, of course, has shot, suffocated, electrocuted and drugged suspects. He tells them things such as "You are going to tell me what I want to know - it's just a matter of how much you want it to hurt."

Of course, you have to say these things to get the job done and save the city of Los Angeles (I guess he's still trying to save LA, I haven’t watched it since season 2).

The US top brass are taking it seriously enough to send a Brigadier General, Patrick Finnegan, to meet with producers at the Fox-produced show to put across their message that the methods shown in '24' are having an impact on troops in the field and on America's reputation abroad.

Clearly, the US is not so worried about its secret CIA detention centres in Eastern Europe, used for unlucky terrorists or for those who made it to Abu Ghraib or the Caribbean luxury of Gitmo. It is reported that more than 700 investigations have been carried out by the US Army involving prisoner abuse and 25 detainees have died in American custody.

According to the New Yorker magazine, Brigadier General Patrick Finnegan, who teaches at elite US military Academy West Point course on the laws of war, said of the producers: "I'd like them to stop. They should do a show where torture backfires... The kids see it and say, 'If torture is wrong, what about 24'?

"The disturbing thing is that although torture may cause Jack Bauer some angst, it is always the patriotic thing to do."

Also involved in the campaign to force a change is campaigning body Human Rights First, which has launched a campaign against torture real and TV torture.

According to HRF, post 9/11 torture on TV is on the rise. No surprise, really, that the number of shows dealing with it has risen, from the likes of 'Spooks', the David Mamet produced 'The Unit' on Bravo, 'The E-Ring', 'Sleeper Cell' and the critically acclaimed remake of 'Battlestar Galactica', which has had torture and suicide bombers, with The Guardian saying it is the "only award-winning drama that dares tackle the war on terror".

David Danzig of HRF, said: "I think there is no question [it is having an effect]. We have spoken to soldiers with experience in Iraq who say, for young soldiers, there is a direct relationship between what they are doing in their jobs and what they see on TV... It's the same abroad. The image of the US and its military [being involved in torture] is being affirmed."

This week, the New Yorker features a story about Joel Surnow, the show's creator and a self-described "right-wing nut". Not only was Surnow visited by Finnegan, but by three top military and FBI interrogators.

Gary Solis, a retired law professor at West Point, told the New Yorker that his students would frequently refer to Jack Bauer in discussions of what permissible in the questioning of terrorist suspects.

"Jack Bauer is a criminal. In real life, he would be prosecuted." Yet Solis said the motto of many of his students was identical to Jack Bauer's: "Whatever it takes."

The Los Angeles Times reports that, after the meeting with Finnegan and the interrogators, '24' executive producer Howard Gordon has been filmed "for a Humans Rights First video" about torture that is expected to be used next autumn at West Point. Surnow, however, would not participate in the film. What right-wing nut would?

2007-02-13T09:08:00.000Z

Paper chase

A fresh war of words has broken out between Associated and News International.

In a statement issued this morning, Associated, which publishes the Evening Standard and London Lite, dismissed claims by rival thelondonpaper as misleading.

It is calling thelondonpaper irresponsible for increasing its print run because of the rubbish that it is creating. It might have a point, but they've both recently been hit by rubbish claims (insert some joke in here about the content).

The two freesheets could face a clampdown after complaints from Westminster City Council about the rubbish generated by the two titles' distribution network in the capital. Apparently, Westminster City Council says an extra three tonnes of waste has been produced daily since. Three tons? I hope that's all for the recycle bin.

"Thelondonpaper has been totally irresponsible in increasing its print run by 100,000 when it is clear that many of the existing free papers are being dumped on the streets, and London boroughs are calling for both newspaper groups to resolve the litter problem caused.

"Increasing distribution is meaningless, unless there is an increase in demand. The most likely outcome of this latest increase in free papers is an increase in litter."

OK, fair enough, but then we really get down to it, Associated claims that recent research it carried out, through Other Lines Of Enquiry, showed that its London Lite is the favoured free afternoon paper, with some 58% of thelondonpaper's readers preferring London Lite.

"London Lite continues to satisfy genuine demand, and executives at the paper are working closely with local councils to maximise recycling and resolve the litter problems."

Associated is clearly rattled and maybe with good reason. In the ABCs last week, News International's thelondonpaper continued to lead in the afternoon circulation war, distributing 436,436 compared with Associated's 400,977 copies of London Lite handed out on the streets of the capital.

That's not all. What this is really about is The London Evening Standard. While the ABCs showed it had bounced back in January (only from December, which is less than a real newspaper month), up 5.1% to sales of 276,562, it remains down year on year by 14.1%.

We that it is really about this as Associated tells us so with the rest of its statement that slates thelondonpaper.

"Furthermore, it is absurd for thelondonpaper to compare itself with the Evening Standard, just as it would be if it tried to compare itself to any of the other quality paid for newspapers. It is like comparing a junk snack with a gourmet meal! [Their exclamation marks, I should add.]

"The Evening Standard sets the agenda for London. It is read by opinion formers, people of influence and ideas. It reaches more AB adults then any other daily paper in London -- just the people advertisers want to reach."

If that wasn't enough, Associated has launched an ad campaign this week for the Standard that hits at thelondonpaper even move. It has someone exiting a Tube and dropping it through the gap.

Irked much? I guess so.

UPDATE: Did I say rattled? News International has just put this statement out in response.

"The Standard are clearly rattled. It's a desperate act to cast aspersions on free newspapers, when Associated own both Metro and Lite. Does this suggest a long-term future for Lite? Londoners are deserting the Standard in droves, with 28% less buying the paper in January than in the previous year*. The ABC shows that twice as many people are now picking up thelondonpaper as buying the Standard."

*(Source: ABC Jan 2007 Vs. Jan 2006 net circ excl. bulks).

2007-02-12T09:12:00.001Z

Primeval'ish

ITV1 scored pretty well on the first outing of 'Primeval' on Saturday with 7m viewers, but it's got its work cut out and little to time to make an impact.

The big-spend ad campaign, created by M&C Saatchi, paid off by pulling the viewers in, but there are lots of problems for the ITV show, which it hopes will take on the all conquering revival of 'Doctor Who'.

It is so clearly a copy in some cases, but like a lot of knock-offs, it doesn't quite match the original. There is a Doctor (Douglas Henshall), an assistant and even a Captain Jack-type guy (James Murray) who is all good looks, but not quite the charm.

The effects for 'Primeval', created by the 'Walking with Dinosaurs' creators, were patchy and better in suspense, when we saw small glimpses, than full on. And, oh, you can apparently kill one of these giants by ramming it with a 4x4 and a single clip of an SMG. Another reason to ban those things (Chelsea tractors, that is).

The biggest problems were some of the acting. Henshall wasn't bad as the lead, but the rest were lacking. Worst offender by a country marathon and more still was Ben Miller as an oily home office type (babbling about the CAP?! True Parma ham). He was absolutely awful and it really pulled the whole thing down. Pray that a dinosaur takes him out with a single bite.

The main problem was. It was a little too much drama by numbers. The cute little flying dinosaur for the kids: check. Sexy Home Office babe (Claudia Brown) for the blokes: check. Rugged scientist type for the women (Henshall): check, plus some other male totty in the shape of Murray.

Clearly there are budget considerations at ITV, they have only committed to six episodes and when they went back through the fracture in time they sent Henshall and one special forces type guy. Clearly, if it hadn't been for Afghanistan, Iraq and other assorted hellholes they could have spared a couple more men.

Sadly, other than 'Doctor Who' it is just further confirmation that when it comes to sci-fi, we're lacking. Or maybe just lacking practice... it can only get better.

It received mixed reviews with some slating it, but both the Observer and the Guardian seemed to like it. Nancy Banks-Smith admitted to being "tickled pink by Primeval". Clearly it was doing something right.

2007-02-09T08:44:00.000Z

FHM crash

Emap is expected to part company with the editor of FHM -- oh and just a week before its ABCs.

Emap will apparently tell staff today that editor Ross Brown is to leave the company. Brown took over in August 2004, succeeding David Davies as editor. Davies was promoted to the acting managing director of Emap Elan after three years at the FHM helm.

Last summer, Brown oversaw a relaunch with a new look, which promised a "more mature approach to its subject matter". The idea was to narrow its target audience to the single male in his late 20s.

The result? Press buyers believe FHM will in next week's ABC report circulation down by as much as 20%, others think it could be higher. So much for the "mature" reader. In the last set of ABCs in August, FHM lost 24.9% of its circulation year on year to 420,688. If it loses as much as 20% that would be swingeing loss, taking it down to close to 320,000.

FHM is not the only one. IPC's Loaded and Dennis Publishing's Maxim are also expected to be hard hit.

To be fair, FHM has nowhere left to run. The weekly magazines Nuts and Zoo continue to eat into the magazine's target audience and withering away that once 700,000 plus circulation.

It is only, of course, the weeklies that are hitting FHM, the internet is hitting the title hard as well as men seek digital alternatives such as Dennis' digital men's weekly magazine, Monkey.

Emap isn't expected to announce an immediate replacement, suggesting it might once again try to revamp FHM and stem its losses.

The report about trouble at FHM came in the same week that Emap predicted revenues to be toward the bottom end of market expectations, as it reported that radio and consumer media business have suffered on the back of weak market conditions, sending its shares down almost 8% in early trading.

2007-02-08T09:03:00.000Z

Billionaire newspaper owners

Are billionaires the future of newspapers? It’s the question that Vanity Fair is exploring and Warren Buffet as well.

In the March issue of Vanity Fair, Michael Wolff explores the sudden interest from billionaires in snapping up US newspapers.

Former GE chief Jack Welch is reported to be interested in buying the Boston Globe; supermarket king and Clinton buddy Ron Burkle ($2.5bn) and real-estate giant Eli Broad ($5.8bn), bidding for the Tribune Company; and David Geffen is said to be considering a bid to buy the Los Angeles Times.

He's the kind of owner a journalist wouldn't mind. He put Nirvana on the map and recently told The Wall Street Journal: "I'm not interested in buying things simply to make money. I'm interested in doing something that's going to be valuable for the community, where I can make a difference... I would devote my resources to building a first-class national newspaper."

There are others out there too. Billionaire investor Warren Buffett is building a stake in The New York Times. And Buffett likes his newspapers. He is already on the board of The Washington Post and he owns the daily newspaper in Buffalo, New York, the Buffalo News. Clearly The New York Times is the jewel in the US newspaper crown.

With free newspapers and the web withering away paid-for sales as a new generation refuses to buy and wants to read it online for free, many industry analysts have long posited that there no long term future for newspapers in print.

Maybe within 20 years, in the space of a generation, newspapers could be an endangered species and perhaps little more than the play things of billionaires.

This could have its upside. If these titles are put into trusts their future could be assured in some form, but Wolff is worried particularly when he looks at the pro-business credentials of Welch whose arrival would be feared by those Boston Globe liberals.

"Actually, it is not impossible to imagine, in this age of so many billionaires, that competing billionaires would want competing papers. That you can't be an effective or prideful billionaire without your own paper. New York City has the most robust newspaper market in the nation because billionaire Mortimer Zuckerman's break-even-ish Daily News competes against billionaire Rupert Murdoch's certainly-money-losing New York Post.

"Even the more fundamental worry of journalists, that billionaires are cheapskates (no doubt they are), might be, in this circumstance, unfounded. The cheapskates in Philadelphia aside (and their problem seems to be they just weren't rich enough to buy a paper), Murdoch has spent his way at the New York Post into being Murdoch, which is worth much more than the millions he's losing on the Post every year (Murdoch, doubling-down, reportedly might be a buyer of the Tribune Company's Newsday, on Long Island).

"Of course, the internet is a bitch. On the other hand, the internet is an inefficient way for a big man to throw his weight around. A newspaper really is the much more effective bully pulpit.

"What's more, given a host of new papers --The Daily Geffen, The Welch Globe, The Greenberg Times, The Broad Journal, The Burkle Shopper -- freed from the deadening template of the people who theoretically know how to run newspapers, maybe the people who know nothing at all about newspapers will stumble onto something that makes them shout and sing (Eli Broad recently offered that it might be a good idea if the L.A. Times had more pictures of donors at charity events....well … maybe)."

Read the rest of the article in Vanity Fair.

2007-02-07T11:18:00.000Z

Super Bowl selection

There were some very good spots in this year's Super Bowl XLI, but I think the Garmin ad for its sat nav product is one of the best.

Looking like a 1960s Japanese monster movie, and with the theme of "Grab your Garmin, take on the world" Fallon Minniapolis have created something pretty cool looking. Compare this satellite navigation spot to others you've seen. It's half a world away.

Anyway here is the Garmin spot mixed in with a few others from Sunday's game.

Snickers

Kevin Federline Raps for Nationwide Commercial

Fedex

Bud Light

2007-02-07T11:03:00.001Z

You are what you GM eat

Food labelling has had a bad time of it and now the government is making it worse with plans for GM labelling that do not go far enough.

Organic farmers are rightly up in arms at government plans to label food that contains genetically modified content if it registers over a 0.9% GM element.

Green groups say this threshold should be nearer 0.1%, which seems sensible. People have a right to know what they are eating and if it is possible to tell that food has been messed with in anyway then it should be labelled so.

The government says the guidelines, based on European Commission ones, are "adequate" and "appropriate".

Appropriate? You can hear the civil servant speaking. Clearly it isn't appropriate if the labels are designed to warn of cross-contamination of food and doesn't do its job. Customers want to make a choice and these rules don't allow it.

The Soil Association and Friends of the Earth say 0.9% is too high, saying GM contamination is measurable for an amount as low as 0.1%.

Keith Abel, of organic food delivery firm Abel & Cole, said: "All of our customers are against GM full stop. Customers buy from a company like ours based on an element of trust. If up to 0.9% of the content can be GM, that trust would be undermined."

New TV rules that ban “unhealthy foods” such as cheese, Marmite, honey and tomato ketchup being advertised to children have been condemned as “absurd”.

Foods like Marnite, cheese and peanut butter are now all caught up in the junk food kids’ TV ad ban.

Since when has Marmite and peanut butter been junk food? Things are getting out of hand. I personally couldn't live without Marmite on toast for breakfast. Its full of vitamins. OK, it has salt, but no one is suggesting you eat it by the jar load.

Weirdly, while these foods face as ban the guidelines will still allow non-nutritious products such as chicken nuggets, diet cola and white bread. Please someone explain, I don't get it.

The Grocer wants Ofcom to change the formula for deciding which products are subject to the restrictions on food and drink adverts. Makes sense to me.

2007-02-06T08:58:00.000Z

Iraq Super Bowl

With 93m Americans tuning in to the Super Bowl and some detected the war in Iraq just below the surface.

Two years ago Budweiser ran a patriotic spot paying tribute to US troops serving in Afghanistan and Iraq.

There was nothing like that at Super Bowl XLI where the Indianapolis Colts beat the Chicago Bears 29-17.

Instead, more than a dozen spots celebrated violence in an exaggerated or cartoo- like fashion, which was intended to be funny but according to the New York Times was often cruel or callous.

In a Bud Light beer spot, one man beats another at a game of rock, paper, scissors by throwing a rock at his opponent’s head. Ouch.

In another Bud Light ad, face slapping, reminiscent of happy slapping, replaces knuckle touching as a greeting.

It gets worse, an astronaut is apparently wiped out by a meteor hitting the moon in a Fedex spot.

Others, noted by the NY Times’ are a bank robbery for E*Trade Financial, fierce battles among office workers trapped in a jungle for CareerBuilder, menacing hitchhikers for Bud Light, and a clash between a monster and a superhero reminiscent of a horror movie for Garmin.

A Deutsch ad for General Motors had a factory robot obsessed about quality imagining the dire outcome of making a mistake. And, of course, there was TM Advertising's spot for Nationwide Financial with Mr Britney Kevin Federline as a rap star only to find that it’s a dream and in reality his life is a fast-food joint. If only.

"It was as if Madison Avenue were channelling Doc in 'West Side Story', the gentle owner of the candy store in the neighbourhood that the two street gangs, the Jets and Sharks, fight over. 'Why do you kids live like there's a war on?' Doc asks plaintively. (Well, Doc, this time, there is.)"

So what exactly is Madison Avenue up to? Usually it’s the place to find the peaceniks. Well, you would have done in the days of the Vietnam war. It was that conflict that gave rise to the classic Coke spot “hilltop” and a rendition of ‘I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing in Perfect Harmony". Peace in our ad break.

Then, too, there was the unfortunate homonym at the heart of a commercial from Prudential Financial, titled “what can a rock do?”. The problem with the spot, created internally at Prudential, was that whenever the announcer said “a rock” -- invoking the Prudential logo, the rock of Gibraltar -- it sounded as if he were saying, yes, “Iraq”.

"To be sure, sometimes 'a rock' is just 'a rock', and someone who has watched the Super Bowl XIX years in a row only for the commercials may be inferring things that Madison Avenue never meant to imply."

So as George W Bush gives one last push is Madison Avenue and the advertisers of America hanging on in there as well? It certainly doesn't seem to be calling for the troops to come home.

More on the Super Bowl in the New York Times.

2007-02-05T09:11:00.000Z

Monday night football

Finally, someone has Sky by the balls, or some of them at least, as Setanta says it plans to put Premiership football on Freeview for just £11 a month.

Before Sky came to dominate top flight football, Monday night was a big draw and it can be so again. The move will put Premiership football back on terrestrial TV for the first time since 1992. That’s 15 years -- it’s amazing with what people can get away with -- and about time too.

Setanta snapped up the rights to screen 46 live English Premier League matches each season last year in a three-year £392m deal, kicking off from August 2007.

Sky might still have the majority of the games, taking four of the six Premiership packages, available, but making football available for a reasonable price could have a real impact.

It could, if pushed right, turn plenty of subscribers away from Sky and break its dominance of the game.

Sky's premium package costs around £40 a month, as part of a bigger deal. Most people do not want to fork out such almost £500 a year, but £130 is another matter.

Setanta bosses Leonard Ryan and Michael O'Rourke, said in Observer: "When the BBC has scheduled live FA Cup games at this time it's enjoyed very good viewing figures. And there's no reason why Monday nights can't be just as strong as they were 10 years ago. We may not have Chelsea v Liverpool or Man Utd v Arsenal [as Sky did on the weekend of 20 and 21 January], but we can guarantee 10 matches for each club every year."

2007-02-02T10:07:00.000Z

All conquering iPhone

Steve Jobs is a genius. No seriously. Not only is Apple's iPhone an MP3 player and a phone, but it is also an explosive device, a mace dispenser, a....

I love the grenade, but I'm worried about having coughed up £300 you only get to blow it up once. Somehow I'm thinking that's not value for money.

2007-02-01T11:32:00.000Z

IED promotion

Are Improvised Explosive Devices part of your marketing plan? Turner Broadcasting is giving them a go after it put bomb-scare-style panic onto the streets of Boston yesterday with a campaign for the Cartoon Network.

A promotion for Turner's Cartoon Network called 'Aqua Teen Hunger Force' (OK, lets not dwell on the title, can there really be hungry teens in the US?) saw electronic devices placed at bridges to project an animated cartoon image.

Great idea, lots of animation... except the authorities thought they were Improvised Explosive Devices beloved by insurgents of Iraq, but as already saw in the UK yesterday tactics first seen in Baghdad are being exported.

The IED-like things caused a day-long security scare that closed bridges, shut major roads and put hundreds of police on alert causing the biggest security scare since 9/11. Talk about your marketing impact. It is all very iconic given that the Aqua Teen crew (part of the Adult Swim strand) are local superheroes in the guise of a milkshake, a floating order of fries and a meatball who…safeguard the world (when they feel like it that is).

The discovery of the first device on a bridge halted morning rush-hour traffic on an interstate highway north of Boston and halted a train line. The area was cordoned off, the bomb squad were called in and the device blown up.

Nine more devices were found, with federal agents, bomb squads, hundreds of police and the US Coast Guard kept busy as traffic was frozen.

You can understand the panic. The devices consisted of blinking lights... wired to an electronic circuit board.
Turner could have brought huge chunks of the US to a standstill, the promotion was due to run in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta, Seattle, Portland, Austin, San Francisco and Philadelphia.

The trouble isn't over for Turner. US authorities are considering legal action. Boston Mayor Thomas Menino said he was prepared to sue and Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick is "deeply dismayed" and outraged.

"It is outrageous, in a post 9/11 world, that a company would use this type of marketing scheme," he said. "I am prepared to take any and all legal action against Turner Broadcasting and its affiliates for any and all expenses incurred during the response to today's incidents."

Hungry teens to the rescue? Probably not.

2007-01-31T13:15:00.000Z

Telegraph poles

Simon Waldman, The Guardian's digital media chief, has hit back at the Telegraph's number one website claim.

He tackles the whole web auditing business in detail and if you were ever a little shaky on what exactly means (and why it matters) what then you should be reading it.

His piece comes in response to the claim that the Telegraph started talking up late last year in a £300,000 ad campaign created by Clemmow Hornby Inge. If you've sat on a Tube recently you've probably found it hard to miss the ads from the Telegraph Group proclaiming that, according to figures from internet monitor Hitwise, Telegraph.co.uk had the most amount of visitors of any quality UK newspaper website between July and September 2006.

Of course, anyone who knows even very little about web stats knows that Hitwise figures are not quoted by publishers when it comes to auditing their websites or selling advertising on them.

However, the problem is that because there are multiple currencies in use it’s confusing and allows people like the Telegraph to come out and say "We're number one (according to someone or other)".

So why are the Telegraph using them you ask? It’s a good question. If you're not the number one or even number two, er, or even number three newspaper (ouch) and someone shows someone within your organisation figures showing you're suddenly an all-conquering number one, then I think someone, who really shouldn't be allowed to, starts making stupid decisions – resulting in £300k ad campaigns.

The campaign has clearly irked a number of people because complaints have been made to the Advertising Standards Authority about the Britain's No.1 quality newspaper website claim.

You might wonder how the Telegraph managed it, when in November the ABC Electronic had Guardian Unlimited with 13,841,182 users, followed by the Times Online with 9,028,963 and The Sun Online 7,578,042. Telegraph.co.uk had 6,374,362.

Going from 4th to 1st would be something of an achievement. Who knows maybe the silver surfers, (no not the Marvel one) have suddenly gone web crazy, allowing the Telegraph to soar.

Waldman writes: "Initially, I thought this was just a marketing wheeze - just to put themselves back in the frame. But word gets back that they really believe it. There has been a complaint to the ASA (not from me, I should add), and ultimately it will be their call whether this is legal, honest and decent etc. But, in the meantime, I think it probably makes most sense to have a look at the figures in a bit of detail here and let people make their own mind up.

"And yes before I get going, the big question is does it matter anyway? But I’ll get to that at the end."

Read the rest of Simon's piece here.

2007-01-30T11:40:00.001Z

Inside out upside down

News International does magazines. Just not very well.

Today it pulled the rug on home style magazine Sunday Times Inside Out. The title never published an ABC and is thought to have struggled in a tough market. News International spent £6m on the launch marketing campaign alone with two million 28-page sample copies given away.

The Two weeks ago it pulled the plug on its project Dannii women's magazine…before it had even launched.

That title was due to launch last September, but a series of delays have meant the date has moved back several times.

This doesn't exactly bode well for News International's next magazine launch a rumoured weekly news, comment and analysis magazine that could draw on the editorial resources of The Times.

The company had registered the name Spectrum with the Patent Office and news analysis is thought to be the most likely route for the new magazine.

Still there has been some success it did win the contract to publish Sky Magazine…oh wait it won that from sister company BSkyB.

That said celebrity real life magazine Love It! recorded an initial ABC of 405,441 exceeding its 400,000 sales target.

There also meant to be a proposed Sunday Times-branded motoring title, but with star columnist Jeremy Clarkson involved with BBC Top Gear magazine that's not likely to happen anytime soon.

2007-01-30T08:53:00.000Z

Sun does Britishness

In a striking front page today The Sun tackles Britishness.

The effects of 'Celebrity Big Brother' are still rippling out and today The Sun has suspended Page 3 to replace it with a double page spread supporting its striking front page, which tackles what it means to be British to 12 kids from across the ethnic spectrum.

While the splash shows them all holding cards with vile terms of racist abuse they have suffered, inside they tell their stories. It's a great idea and a tabloid newspaper working at its best. It’s the kind of thing you would expect the Daily Mirror to be doing.

"They are some of the most offensive and ugly words in the English language. Words like 'nigger', 'spic' and 'raghead'.

"But today The Sun makes no apology for printing them -- or the pictures showing children who are the innocent victims of such repugnant insults.

"The youngsters, whether Muslim, Jewish, Sikh or Christian, have two things in common.

"Like 'Celebrity Big Brother' winner Shilpa Shetty, they have encountered racism in this country. But they are also all BRITISH.

"Shilpa's victimisation by bullies Jade Goody, Danielle Lloyd and Jo O'Meara ignited a national debate on how racism, like a monster from the deep, still lingers and lurks in 2007.

Read the rest here.

2007-01-29T09:08:00.000Z

Sour times

The Sunday Times took a huge swipe at The Guardian yesterday.

The paper laid into The Guardian accusing its Berliner relaunch of being a failure, saying that it was looking tired and old, and that there was discord at senior levels about the digital future of the paper. Ouch.

The piece sketched a number of storm clouds ahead for Alan Rusbridger, editor of The Guardian, not least of which is dwindling online classified revenues at Guardian Media Group cash cows such as Trader Media Group, which owns Auto Trader, not to mention Society and Media Guardian for jobs. It went so far to go right over the top and suggest that "the looming classified crisis threatens to put the business on the skids".

The piece, which damns the Berliner as being slightly larger than the Daily Mail, and lauds the cheaper conversion by The Independent in 2003 before adding that The Times moved successfully to compact format the following year (although, let’s face it, it is one of the dullest rebrands a paper has ever had in merely copying the Indie -- which loathe it or loathe it [sorry I mean like] did break new ground).

It goes on to say that The Independent and The Times are both taking sales from The Guardian. Although I'm not sure how -- in December, The Times' circulation was down by 3.9% to 635,777, while The Guardian fell by 4% to 365,635. Admittedly the Guardian was down, but no way did the Times take those sales.

While The Guardian is damned, its sister title The Observer is praised and Roger Alton "is now widely seen as having produced a better paper with the new format".

It quotes an unnamed media "pundit" saying "The Guardian is boring and already tired-looking, whereas The Observer has become a lot livelier. Worse for The Guardian in some ways is that The Independent is punchier and has achieved success at a much lower cost."

No that's just plain wrong, the Independent is dull dull dull. Interesting one-trick pony frontpages, but if you want news -- go elsewhere. So much for punditry. Despite producing a good paper, Alton's job is reported to be on the line, with Ian Katz, long seen as a replacement for Rusbridger, as the one who might get it.

The Sunday Times then moves on to the Guardian Unlimited, which remains one of the best newspaper sites around and says that poor integration is causing friction with Rushbridger wanting them closer together and Emily Bell, editor-in-chief of Guardian Unlimited, resisting. The paper has done a great job online and while sometimes you wonder about a design revamp, is more integration what’s needed?

There is more from the Sunday Times, which I suppose is worth noting, but its only contribution to fresh newspaper development is to stick its cover price up to £2 without offering anything much new in return.

Read the rest of the Sunday Times piece here.

2007-01-26T10:57:00.000Z

Pom victory

The Australians love to call Brits “whingeing Poms”, but no more. A group of Brits in Australia have succeeded in their long campaign to ban an ad that depicted Englishmen as whingers.

The Australian version of the ASA, the Advertising Standards Bureau, yesterday ruled that the Englishmen were right to be offended by an ad for beer that negatively stereotyped and demeaned English people.

The radio ad for Toohey’s New Supercold beer (let’s face it they advertise nothing else in Australia other than beer) featured a group of Englishmen singing Land of Hope and Glory with various synonyms for whinge, including whine, moan, slag and complain.

The ad ended with a voiceover saying: "Introducing Toohey’s New Supercold, served so cold it’s a Pom’s worst nightmare".

The bureau ruled that negative words in the ad detracted from what it said was the otherwise playful nature of the word Pom. It said that Pom had been given "a derogatory and almost hostile meaning", Mark Jeanes, the acting chief of the bureau, said. The ad has been withdrawn.

The Aussies are obsessed by us in a way we're not about them. The ASB considered five TV, print and outdoor ads that made reference to the Australia-England rivalry in the advertising material.

While complaints were held against the Toohey's ad, others were not. Some examples of other ad taglines used last year included "sends shivers down a Pom's spine"; "the Poms are going to choke"; "Aussie cricket fans can stick it to the Poms"; and "for backyard fun, tonk a Pom". It's a strange place.

In deliberating on the complaints, the ASB considered that the use of the word "Pom" is part of the Australian vernacular and largely used in playful and often affectionate terms.

The board also said that Pom is not used in a way to vilify, or incite racial hostility towards, people of British extraction, particularly when considered in the context of the cricketing tradition and affectionate rivalry between the two countries.

2007-01-25T12:20:00.000Z

Dream jobs

Apparently most people are not in their dream jobs.

According to a report on Reuters the dream job for most Americans is something that is "fun" and 84% are not in their dream job. So I guess that means 84% are not having fun at work. It’s a tough life. You have to wonder what they were expecting with the whole world of work thing.

I mean I like work, but fun isn't an adjective that I generally use to describe it.

Oddly, salary was one of the least important requirements of a dream job and was cited by just 12%. Clearly, none of these people have to live in London if cash is their least important requirement.

"That fun was more important than money, that was reassuring when you're looking at the workplace and what defines happiness for people in their jobs," said Jennifer Sullivan, spokeswoman for CareerBuilder.com.

No Jenn, what it means is that people were lying.

According to the survey having fun at a dream job was cited by 39%, with 17% percent saying making a difference in society was most important.

The survey was carried out by jobsite CareerBuilder.com and Walt Disney, which is holding a contest in which winners can get a chance to work at a Disney theme park job for a day.

Disney theme park for a day? Isn't that where you get punched by kids and generally abused and have to wear a stupid suit? This sort of reminds me of a story in Irvine Welsh's The Acid House.

Apparently the people in dream jobs are most likely to be firefighters and policemen, followed by teachers and estate agents. I tell you that makes no sense. Not surprising people in retail thought they had the least dreamy of jobs.

No mention of hard-working new media and journalists. What gives guys?

Asked what they had wanted to be when they grew up 22% of children said firefighter, 17% said princess and 16% said professional dancer. An equal number of people – 14%-- wanted to be cowboy or president.

Cowboy, I understand for the obvious reasons, but my careers officer had nothing doing when I suggested this.

The only presidential job worth having is surely Martin Sheen in the 'West Wing' or 12 colonies president Mary McDonnell in, yes you guessed it, Battlestar Galactica. She gets to order bad people out of airlocks. Clearly not something that gets advertised as part of the job.

2007-01-25T08:55:00.000Z

Alas Wendy's

For a moment it looked like McCann Erickson had held onto the $400m Wendy's account.

Sadly, clearly proving that fast food is really bad for you this was just a sub-editor's error over Advertising Age, which sent out this breaking news at 18:23.

Wendy's $400 Million Creative Account Goes to McCann Erickson Unclear if Media Buying and Planning Will Also Move

By 18:46 it was all change as the US magazine had a change of heart and sent out this breaking news instead.

Wendy's $400 Million Creative Account Goes to Saatchi & Saatchi Unclear if Media Buying and Planning Will Also Move

New York (AdAge.com) -- Wendy's is moving its $400 million creative account from Interpublic's McCann Erickson to Publicis Groupe's Saatchi & Saatchi, according to executives familiar with the situation. It was unclear if media buying and planning, now at Universal McCann, will also move. The agencies either couldn't be reached or referred calls to the marketer. Wendy's CMO Ian Rowden declined to comment.

2007-01-24T12:12:00.000Z

Life on Mars

The BBC's time-travel show 'Life on Mars' is back next month and if you haven't seen this promo trailer its really worth watching.

Created by Red Bee Media the viral transforms the show's two star coppers, modern day Sam Tyler, played by John Simm, and the unreconstruced 70s 'Sweeney' man Gene Hunt, played by Philip Glenister, into 'Camberwick Green' style claymation characters. A nice idea that's really well executed.

It's worth mentioning that Red Bee weren't first on the band wagon with this. Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO were there last year with its cheeky TV ad campaign for Quaker's Oatso Simple porridge range. That spot featured Windy Miller and ended up with a bit of a genital controversy if you remember. It involved Windy's eccentric Uncle Gruber, a naturist, coming to stay and exposing himself to viewers as you do.

I'm still intrigued how they are going to resolve this show. Is it a bump on the head? Seems a bit obvious and too close to "and it was all a dream". Time travel is another option, but again how likely is that?

2007-01-23T09:07:00.000Z

Saying sorry

Channel 4 is unsurprisingly not going to axe 'Big Brother'. It isn't even saying sorry.

In a statement issued last night, Channel 4 chairman Luke Johnson launched a review of the show, which might involve some slapped wrists, but it seems that the broadcaster has become too attached to the piles of cash that the original reality show makes it.

This despite the complaints total about the racism row between former 'Big Brother' contestant Jade Goody and Bollywood star Shilpa Shetty now standing at 40,000

Johnson said: "The Channel 4 board recognises that the events of the last week on ‘Celebrity Big Brother’ have provoked an unprecedented level of public complaint. We believe this has triggered an important debate

"Clearly many people were worried and offended by what they saw. I want to reassure them that we take the views of our audience very seriously and profoundly regret any offence that may have been caused.

"On behalf of the board the chief executive and I have commissioned a review of the editorial and compliance processes that support Big Brother. The board will receive a full report and seek to identify any lessons that can be learned for the future. The programme remains on air for a further week and the channel is focused on its completion.”

Oh hang on a second, does that last bit sound like it has some bite in it? The "channel is focused on its completion", sounds like almost a veiled threat that the show, which has one week to go before the summer orgy for real gets going, could still be in trouble.

Clearly, nothing is going to happen now, viewing figures, which hit almost 9m for Goody's eviction, will slope off and Shilpa, who is odds on favourite to win the show, will be crowned 'Celebrity Big Brother' queen and all will be happy.

Personally, I'd like to see it go. I'd like to see a lot of them go. Where do they get these people from. If it's dimwits like Jade, it's post Lucy's like the one on 'Shipwrecked' who supports slavery!?

Channel 4 could then free up its schedules for some half decent programming and spare us from the vile mutterings of talentless media wannabes.

It should buy some programmes, did I mention that that the revamped 'Battlestar Galactica' is the best show on TV?

But don't take my word for it, The Guardian among others raves about it and said the other week that it was the only "award-winning drama that dares tackle the war on terror".

2007-01-22T19:39:00.000Z

Bomb scare

What with the evacuate "the building for two hours there's a bomb threat" today completely slipped away from me and I didn't get around to posting.

I'm trying to work out if it was a disgruntled former Haymarket employee, someone late for work or some genuine nutter. Possibly a combination of the two.

Great day for it, January 22 was officially misery day (there was a story about it somewhere today, but all I could find at this hour was one referring to misery day 2005, but you get the picture). This must be why my lunch appointment was 45 minutes late and when he did turn up it emerged he had been made redundant.

2007-01-19T13:53:00.000Z

Dear Jade

The Indian Tourism Office is writing to Jade they want her to come visit. In an open letter to Jade that has run in a number of the nationals including the Times, Daily Telegraph, Guardian, Independent, Metro, and Evening Standard.

The India Tourism Office is welcoming Jade and her "friends" to experience India for themselves. Actually not a bad move by them to jump on the bandwagon. The idea was the brainchild of Smarter Creative Director Rob Scott and was put together in record time yesterday afternoon.

Apparently she has already been. The bottles for her perfume (pulled from the shelves of The Perfume Shop yesterday) were made in India and she went and met the factory manager.

She is 50-1 odds on favourite to go tonight, but sadly her public will not be there to greet here.

In a statement re tonight's eviction, C4 said:

"Over the past few days, Celebrity Big Brother has generated an intense and, at times, heated public debate which the evicted housemate will be unaware of.

"As a result, Channel 4 and Endemol have taken the decision to conduct tonight's eviction in front of a studio audience and without a crowd."

2007-01-19T09:16:00.000Z

MyLawSuit

MySpace is being sued and it's a serious case of child safety, but…

…why is that Americans reach for their lawyers faster than you can say 1-800-so-sue-me? Just asking.

The families of five teenage girls are suing MySpace over claims that they were sexually assaulted by men they met through the social networking website.

The case argues negligence on the part of the Rupert Murdoch-owned site. It is obviously a very upsetting case, but is it really MySpace's fault?

The site has increased its security and hired experts. It has, for instance, made it impossible for users aged 18 and above to contact 14 and 15-year-old members unless they know the younger person's email address. The girls involved in this case were of that age, but really there is only so much that can be done. The rest is up to the guardians and parents of the children involved.

Sadly, this kind of thing is going to happen. People always find ways to abuse systems to the ill of others. Just like the case of some other teenage girls posting video clips on YouTube of them beating up another girl. Someone's going to be suing over that one as well.
While getting a pile of cash is no doubt an attractive prospect, it doesn’t actually have anything to do with protecting the children concerned. Nor will it likely stop other attacks.

2007-01-18T15:00:00.000Z

Sponsor this

After days of dithering and trying to weather the storm and sidestepping the issue Andy Duncan, Channel 4's chief executive, has finally said something about what is going on inside the Celebrity Big Brother house, but its worth noting that he only made thes statment after Carphone Warehouse suspended its Celeb Big Brother sponsorship.

"The latest series of Celebrity Big Brother has strayed into particularly controversial territory - the issue of racism and whether or not it remains ingrained in British attitudes despite all the progress we have apparently made towards becoming a truly multi-cultural society.

"The level of complaint and comment shows the programme has touched a real nerve.

"The debate has been heated, the viewing has at times been uncomfortable but, in my view, it is unquestionably a good thing that the programme has raised these issues and provoked such a debate. These attitudes, however distasteful, do persist - we need to confront that truth.

"What constitutes racism is a complex question. We have been monitoring extremely carefully events in the house and have reached the view that we cannot with certainty say that the comments directed at Shilpa have been racially motivated or whether they stem from broader cultural and social differences.

"We have already intervened with Danielle and, as viewers will see tonight, again with Jade where we felt their comments might be construed to have racist overtones. Producers also spoke to Shilpa today who said she did not feel that behaviour towards her was racist.

"We will not hesitate to intervene again if apparently racist behaviour occurs.

"Big Brother's unique strength is that it is ultimately the public who will decide whether or not the behaviour of certain contestants has been unacceptable.

"Tomorrow night Jade and Shilpa will face the public vote. The British public has the opportunity to cut through the claim and counter-claim and pass its judgement on the events of the last week."

2007-01-18T08:50:00.000Z

Stop C4

Someone please stop Channel 4. It's all a little embarrassing and rather hard to watch.

This has blown out of all proportion. I watched some of it last night and had to stop. Jade Goody is on some mission of self destruction that maybe even the Impossible Mission Force could not accomplish. Brand Goody is toast. Really burnt toast at that. I guess if she knew the word irony she could lament "Big Brother made me and now its broken me".

I think just about every national newspaper has gone overboard with it as effergies are burnt and Gordon Brown ruing the day he decided to go to India when 'Big Brother' was on.

Clearly Channel 4 are not going to take this off the air. The ratings have surged, hitting 4.5m, but its taken a moral dive. Last night hit a new low, C4 needs to wake up. It keeps trying to weather this with the cultural clash when it is new clearly more than that. Goody needs to be taken out/voted out for her own/our sanity. Then we can quietly forget about the show again.

2007-01-17T08:59:00.000Z

Big Brother

There's an MP involved, so it must be serious if the scent of free electoral publicity has wafted its way to the House of Commons.

Worse still for Channel 4, Carphone Warehouse might review its lucrative multimillion-pound sponsorship forcing the broadcaster to do something.

The count is all over the place. If you read the Metro this morning, 20,000 people are complaining. Elsewhere its 10,000, but whatever the number it has five digits and reality TV is in for a welcome kicking.

Although Bollywood star Shilpa Shetty, the focus of the alleged racist abuse, has not yet complained to the outside world it does appear she is being picked on with some racism thrown in to boot. She has, however, been reduced to tears by her gang of white working class tormentors and their manifest conservatism.

It was bound to happen you throw in morons like Jade (is it worth mentioning how sad it is that someone celebrates what a dimwit they are? Probably not), coupled with a couple of newly acquired minor celeb side kicks in the Jo O'Meara, who was in S-Club (not that there is anything wrong with Romford... OK now you mention it), Goody's boyfriend Jack Tweed and disgraced former Miss Great Britain Danielle Lloyd.

Keith Vaz MP was yesterday talking of an early day motion in the Commons after constituents in his Leicester East constituency contacted him. He was on Channel 4 News last night calling for the broadcaster to intervene and to set higher standards, although a vox pop done before his segment aired had several members of the public saying it was more bullying and ignorance than racism.

The text of the early day motion reads: "This house views with concern the comments made about’ Big Brother’ contestant Shilpa Shetty by other housemates; believes that ‘Big Brother’ has a role to play in preventing racist behaviour in the ‘Big Brother’ house; regrets that these comments have been made; and calls on the programme to take urgent action to remind housemates that racist behaviour is unacceptable."

It is on course to beating 'Jerry Springer: the Opera', which racked up almost 9,000 complaints when it aired, but had already picked up more than 55,000 before it aired. Those Christians know to hit the phone (should you ever be holding a telethon).

Goody has said such things to Shilpa as "She makes me feel sick. She makes my skin crawl." Her boyfriend Tweed is thought by some to have called her a "Paki" although what it was exactly he called her was bleeped out by Channel 4. The broadcaster said it wasn't racist abuse and what he actually called her was a "cunt". Well that's all right then. Lloyd called her "a dog" and also accused of her wanting to be "white". This related to use of cream to bleach her facial hair.

Channel 4 is so far doing nothing and says that much of the furore has arisen after misreporting of the exchange between Goody and Tweed ("she makes my skin crawl". However, a sponsor getting jittery could change all of that.

2007-01-16T10:17:00.000Z

High end freebie

Richard Addis, the former Daily Express editor, is launching a free daily newspaper targeting big earners.

According to Media Week, Addis, who was more recently FT Weekend editor, is launching a free daily newspaper at the end of March, targeting high-worth Londoners with arts, leisure and current affairs content.

It sounds like an interesting idea, not so sure about the name: Newsstand? Maybe it’s a grower.

If you were thinking that the Tube and buses were already overrun with copies of City AM, thelondonpaper and London Lite flying around then don’t worry, Addis has given this some thought and has come up with a new distribution idea. Newsstand is going to be delivered every weekday morning to 30,000 homes with upmarket London postcodes.

So if you don't live in SW1 or thereabouts, I wouldn't worry about it because you're probably not going to see it.

In keeping with its compact circulation, editorially the paper is going to be filled with a little commissioned material, including some comment, but will mostly comprise third-party deals for much of its content.

Some of which Addis says will come from websites that have no print arm. Addis sees it providing a new outlet and distribution for these sites. It’s a nice idea.

He's also planning further launches, including some more specialist publications such as a magazine targeting London's large Polish community. Maybe combining it with those upmarket Londoners looking for builders.

2007-01-16T10:07:00.000Z

2007-01-15T09:17:00.000Z

Wal-Mart

A sigh of relief for Interpublic Group. Somehow, after the DraftFCB pitch fiasco it still managed to maintain the $580m Wal-Mart account.

If you want to know how important that one ad account is to the troubled Interpublic then look what happened to its shares. They rallied 4% on Friday night when the decision was made.

When it first won the business it was seen as proof that Michael Roth was turning Interpublic around after those accounting scandals. When DraftFCB lost the account, its shares tumbled.

As you'll remember, the account went for review again in December when DraftFCB was stripped of its prize. This time around, it’s Interpublic's Martin Agency that will take the lead in handling creative work on the account while Publicis agency MediaVest takes the media work.

In December, Wal-Mart called in Select Resources International to rerun the creative and media pitch after its December appointment of DraftFCB and Carat for media.

Then it all got complicated. Wal-Mart parted company with Julie Roehm (she of Lingerie Bowl fame when she was at DaimlerChrysler), its senior vice-president of marketing communications, and then dumped Draft FCB, which Roehm had appointed with talk of murky goings on, riotous diners at Nobu and rides in Howard Draft's flash cars among other things.

Roehm told Reuters at the time "the entertaining was part of the normal course of business" and denied any inappropriate activity.

Roehm was only at Wal-Mart for a year and was really not seen as the traditional kind of person the retail giant hires.

Anyway, despite the possibility that the account might go elsewhere, Interpublic managed to hold onto it after a pitch against WPP Group's Ogilvy & Mather and Omnicom Group's GSD&M. DraftFCB was not allowed to participate.

This time around the review was run by John Fleming, the Wal-Mart chief marketing officer who said the Martin Agency had been selected for its "deep retail experience, recognised creativity and an understanding of our customers".

2007-01-11T09:08:00.000Z

West Wing

ITV1 is reported to be planning to make a 'West Wing'-style drama set in Buckingham Palace.

'The West Wing' (IMHO possibly one of the best things on television equalled now only by 'Battlestar Galactica' - which owes something to the 'West Wing') will be about life in the palace and made by All3Media-owned independent producer Company Pictures, according to Broadcast.

ITV has apparently commissioned 8 hour-long episodes of the show dubbed 'The Palace'. The TV title says it will have a contemporary feel and will not portray real members of the Royal Family (a very good idea, too distracting), but rather fictional ones like president Jed Barlett (the best left-of-centre president the US never had) in the 'The West Wing'.

On paper it sounds brilliant and, although it doesn't have the talent of Aaron Sorkin behind it, it is being written by Tom Grieves, whose has previous writing credits include Channel 4 police drama 'Ghost Squad', which starred Elaine Cassidy.

If last year's film 'The Queen', which was also made by ITV and starred Helen Mirren, is anything to go by then quality drama might be making a slow but steady return to ITV.

2007-01-11T09:06:00.000Z

P&G reaches out

P&G is entering social-networking arena with the launch of two websites aimed at creating online communities where the consumer-products giant can learn more about its customers.

One site will apparently be celebrity and fan driven and will be tied to P&G's decades-old People's Choice Awards. The other is Capessa, a women-oriented site produced by Procter & Gamble for the health section of Yahoo.

Capessa is designed to be a forum for women to discuss subjects such as parenting, pregnancy and weight loss. The People's Choice Community site formally kicked off this week, a day after CBS broadcast this year's People’s Choice awards.

The Wall Street Journal and others report that there will be no P&G ads on Capessa and the only mention of P&G on the site is a line at the bottom of web pages that identifies Capessa as being produced by a P&G company. Yahoo, which is promoting the site as a big feature of its health section, says it doesn't want to over-commercialize the site given the serious nature of subjects being discussed.

However, the new sites will be less about promoting specific brands and more about market research and both new sites will act as continuing focus-group-type environments where P&G will attempt to learn more about its target audience's likes and dislikes and what consumers in different stages of life care about.

In a separate move, P&G's Herbal Essences shampoo brand has now got a MySpace page that allows people to show off pictures of their hairstyles. What fun.

2007-01-10T14:28:00.000Z

Price hike

With the ABCs due on Friday the Sunday Mirror is expected to be down by around 13%, or 200,000 copies. Is putting the price up really the answer?

December figures are always bad so this is not totally unexpected, but the Sunday Mirror slid 3.09% to 1,333,255 in November. If the latest is correct it will fall to just 1.1m, falling ever closer to the million sale mark.

It's a tough problem for Trinity Mirror chief executive Sly Bailey, who just finished a strategic review of the company that resulted in the venerable Racing Post and 138 regional titles being sold off.

That all comes on top of more than 700 job cuts being announced in October as Trinity Mirror looks for cost savings after experiencing tougher trading conditions and a slowdown in advertising.

Still as far as the Sunday Mirror is concerned Sly has come up with a solution. The answer? Hike the paper's cover price to 90p and make it more expensive than top selling rival News of the World. Huh? Can someone call in a management consultant to explain that to me?

It doesn't seem quite the way to push up sales.

There's more woe in store for Trinity Mirror, the sister Sunday title The People is also down by 13% or 122,000. For The People this comes on top of a 3.12% drop to 764,409 in December.

2007-01-10T13:41:00.000Z

Lift work

Lift work - Leagas Delaney chair lift company Stannah, butt of many jokes, an advertising make over and rather good it is too.

The TV and press campaign, which breaks next week has been created to address the stigma attached to the old stair lift business and will introduce the strapline 'Stannah. The Stair lift people'.

Leagas says that the campaign is targeting people in denial of their need for a stair lift and so have come up with press advertising features hard-hitting (and amusing – okay we laughed) lines such as "Ever heard the phrase Home Sweet Nursing Home?".

The TV spots were directed by Mark Mylod, of 'Royle Family' and 'Shameless' fame with one spot featuring a couple making the decision to get a stairlift, talking about it, but not quite being able to openly use the word ‘stairlift’.

Another change is that the press ads will no longer just tucked away at the back of the weekend supplements, but actually appear as full page ads in the nationals and in magazines.

Although oddly, the campaign breaks at the same time as a story about a disabled worker at Stannah...who was denied a chair lift.
Apparently, Stannah dismissed the employee David Radcliffe's request that the lift be installed at its offices in Andover because "everyone would want to ride on it and no work would get done".

I'm thinking that David Brent works for Stannah. It's just a guess.

2007-01-09T13:42:00.000Z

'No licence fee news this week'

1.30pm: The government's announcement about the BBC's licence fee deal is unlikely to be made until at least next week. By Tara Conlan.

It's wrong to take the michael out of your rivals, but this story that is currently gracing the homepage of MediaGuardian can not escape unnoticed. No licence fee news this week? Well thanks for the heads up...about the lack of news. The subs must be at lunch.

Hang on a second, its all change at MediaGuardian, new headline: "Licence fee uncertainty drags on", dragging well that's definitely January news.

2007-01-09T09:15:00.000Z

Fast food nation

Saw this last night and it's a must see. Like 'Dazed and Confused’, but with a message.

Richard Linklater's latest movie, which opens shortly, is a fictionalised version of Eric Schlosser's hit non-fiction book 'Fast Food Nation'.

With the tagline 'The Truth is Hard to Swallow', you'll know that's true once you've watched this journey to the dark heart of where your two all-beef patties come from.

Greg Kinnear plays Mickey's Fast Food Restaurants head of marketing, and inventor of the "The Big One", and he is sent to check out not so tasty goings on at the meat packing plant where Mickey's (standing in for McDonald's here) burgers come from.

He drives out to beautiful Denver, Colorado, and it looks like you're floating over open prairie until the camera swoops in and reveals miles and miles of steel pens crammed with cows chowing down on genetically engineered food. No roaming longhorns here.

His story runs parallel to that of some young Mexicans crossing the border for the first time to work in the US. Some of these unlucky sould end up working for Uni-Globe Meatpacking for low wages and dangerous conditions.

Inside here is where you realise the true meaning of fast food. So many corners are cut in making the food (in killing and processing the animals) and ensuring that only cheapest meat makes it down the line as fast as possible. This leads to mishaps as cow intestines splitting and shit getting into the meat.

Bruce Willis does a good turn as the man responsible for the meatpacking contract for Mickey's in Denver. He plays a hardball Republican whose answer to healthy quibbles is a diatribe about all the things wrong with "this country today" speech. His response to a bit of shit on the food is to "cook it". He doesn't mention anything about eating it.

Linklater favourite and 'Before Sunrise' star Ethan Hawke is back, but this time he plays mentor to a new generation of slackers and is merely there to retell stories from his days of student activism, which leads to the final strand in the movie, where Hawkes’ niece in the movie leads one of the film’s funniest scenes as he and her student friends try to set the cows free... only to find that they can not get them to leave their grass-free steel enclosures because that is the only life they know.

It gets gory at times, but if you're going to eat the stuff, you should at least know where it comes it from.

2007-01-08T16:14:00.000Z

Master and no servant

Its not a climb down or anything, but Channel 4 just announced that it has ended the whole Upstairs/Downstairs master and servant thing.

The shopping task, which split the house, prompted two housemates to leave and ruffled more than a few feathers, has now come to an end. This afternoon, the seven servants returned to the main house to re-join the 'Family' members, Jade, Jack, Jackiey, Shilpa and Jermaine.

All passed the task apart from Leo - who fell asleep during his servant shift - and Jo, who allowed Ken to prepare his own cheese and bisucits. However, two fails still meant that the housemates passed the task.

Big Brother has rewarded them with a luxury shopping budget of £4 per person per day (for the next six days - whooppee), a total of £336. The twelve housemates will also enjoy takeaway food of their choice later this evening.

And it has nothing to do with losing two celebs after the introduction of dimwit Jade. Seriously it doesn't.

2007-01-08T08:59:00.000Z

TV prayer

Muslims are apparently mightily unhappy that convert Jermaine Jackson's fives time a day praying has been edited out of 'Celebrity Big Brother'.

Someone has posted elsewhere on this blog that "Jermaine has caused national controversy by openly praying his obligatory five time prayers live on national TV. However Channel Four the Broadcaster has censored any footage of the former Jackson Five practicing his faith.

"Outraged Muslims have begun to complain on grounds of fair representation as Shilpa Shetty was broadcast practicing Yoga, they are demanding an explanation from Channel 4 as to why Jermaine praying has been censored.

"Complaints to Ofcom the body that adjudicates media complaints are set to flood in this Monday. Jermaine has begun to attract many thousands of Muslim votes."

Well several things really, one last I checked yoga was not a religion. I know this as I went yesterday and not one person mentioned god and there was no praying. Although, granted, yoga does have a prayer position, but I don't think it has anything to do with opening a direct line to god. I could be wrong.

The only thing I ever got out of yoga was plenty achy and plenty of flexibility.

Secondly, who wants to watch someone pray five times a day? It’s not a spectator sport (OK technically and non technically not even a sport) and it’s also a private matter, not a subject for entertainment.

He's also not the first Muslim in the BB house. Geordie Narinda from 'Big Brother 2' and Shahbaz Chaudhry from 'Big Brother 7' were Muslim… admittedly the last was gay and not practising, but Narinda was and I don’t remember a hoot from the Muslim rent a mob.

We'll check later to find out with Ofcom if Muslims are really as outraged as the poster would have us believe. My guess is not.

While we're on the subject of 'Celebrity Big Brother', exactly how bad an idea was it to bring Jade Goody, her boyfriend Jack and her mother (where the answer about Jade's looks and brains is settled) into the house?

Since the introduction of Jade and making most of the housemates into pissed off servants living in grot, Tower of London singer Donny Tourette has gone over the wall delivering some honest rock'n'roll lifestyle and now film director Ken Russell has had enough after falling out with the loudmouth waste of broadcasting space Jade.

No surprise at all. Dear oh dear, someone at Channel 4 must be getting worked up over this as the whole thing goes down the toilet.

2007-01-05T15:25:00.000Z

The truth about ad sales

Someone has been busy on YouTube working up a humorous take on the world of ad sales and media agencies.

It's a pastiche (a rather close one) of another effort done a few years ago, the US made Truth in Advertising, which is better.

But that said the Truth About Ad Sales definitely raises a laugh or two and is definitely worth a look. The back stabbing, the bollocks and the bullshit is all there.

The scrubbing out of one clients name on a PowerPoint presentation and the adding of another is all spot on. As is the liberal sprinkling of buzz words. That's strategy for you.

...and if you haven't see the original, well take a look.

Truth in advertising

2007-01-04T15:38:00.000Z

The OC gets it

Fox has axed its one-time gem of youth culture as 'The O.C.' is canned after just four seasons, so long from 'The O.C.' beeyiatch.

There was a moment when this teen drama about a boy from the wrong side of the tracks who finds a home in the pool house of a rich family in Newport Beach, Orange County, was a must-see, hey even I couldn't help myself, but that moment has long since been and gone.

Fox has only ordered 16 episodes of the final season rather than the usual 22-plus.

According to series creator Josh Schwartz, the finale "will deliver real closure to the series, to the story we began telling four years ago. It will be fun and emotional and I think really satisfying. It is the finale we always planned to do."

That has to mean that someone ends up

A) Dead
B) Drunk
C) Pregnant
D) A combination of the above

This is what always happens to people in 'The O.C.', well that and the fact that a lot of people get punched as well: "welcome to the O.C., bitch".

When it launched it was the kind of runaway success that US TV does so well. It pulled in 10m in its first season, 2003-2004, and did well for Channel 4 and E4 in its time. But that 10m turned to 7m and the last season that is about to wrap has been pulling in around 4m.

Well miss the ideal, non-denominational season festival of Chrismukkah and as many references to 'Star Wars' as you can shake a stick at.

It's farewell to broody Ryan, played by Benjamin McKenzie, who was sort of eclipsed by co-stars Seth Cohen, played by Adam Brody. Of course, Mischa Barton’s Marissa Cooper paid the price already, her character got killed off with the earlier death by booze and cliff diving.

The final season is about to start on Channel 4 shortly, in which we can look forward to Ryan confronting the death of Marissa and… getting into cage fighting. Oh sharks have been jumped here.

On the plus side, the first couple of episodes of 'Ugly Betty' that I saw over Christmas were really very very good. It's very 'The Devil Wears Prada' and the general level of hell that working in glossy women's magazines must be. Its painful to watch to see America Ferrera's Betty in those horrendous clothes and braces but a lot of fun as well. All sharply observed, slickly written and bounds along at a suitable snappy pace. All of that and Ashley Jenson from 'Extras' is good again as initially the only friendly face in building.

Big laughs and outlandish plots and lots of skeletons in the closet what more could you ask for in January. Begins tonight on Channel 4.

2007-01-04T09:26:00.000Z

Free Ken

I watched 'Celebrity Big Brother' again and liked it. Although I'm worrFied about poor Ken Russell.

I think it might be getting better or my taste for low brow is plumbing new depths. It really is just like Channel 4 said, an eclectic mix they have this time.

And Ken Russell (he of 'Lady Chatterley', 'Gothic', 'Tommy' and 'Women in Love' fame), he's 80 this year for god's sake, I think Channel 4 have taken him prisoner. That said Ken looks like he will be value for money, is impression of "mad Pete" was spot on.

No one other than Sunday Mirror journalist Carole Malone (how did they let her in? She seems nice enough, but... she's a journalist, the first, not sure what's with that) and Leo Sayer seemed to know who he was.

Talking of Leo, he clearly is going to be maddest of the bunch. All of that "I'm very funny" and then making noises like a chipmunk is not funny Leo, seek help.

The annoying one of the bunch is clearly the Tower of London's Donny Tourette. Lame band, lame character. All this "fuck you, fuck you all" act is like some poor Johnny Rotten impression. It could be Rory Bremner for all I know.

Who else, well there is the top but wonderfully dim totty in former Miss Great Britain Danielle Lloyd, who seems confused and doesn't know who anyone else is and is missing shopping and boyfriend Terry Sherringham of West Ham. Not even former 'A-Team' man, Dirk Benedict who seemed (unsurprisingly) quite interested in her. There's that woman who used to be on the 'Kenny Everett Show' Cleo Rocos. That's about all there is to say about her...oh she says she wants a husband - good luck with that.

There was Ian 'H' Watkins from Steps, who seemed all right for a camp former cheesy band type. Busy day for him having been outed by the Sun yesterday. Jermaine Jackson was clearly regretting the whole stupid idea and plotting ways to have his agent killed. Oh, there was the Bollywood woman Shilpa Shetty, who like Jackson seemed out of it. They both want their hired help back. Nicest of the bunch seemed like the one who could sing in S-Club, Jo O'Meara. We kind of liked her "I'm just Jo from Romford" schtick.

Plenty of time to enjoy this, Channel 4 is keeping them in for five weeks, it’s going to be a long cold winter.

Anyway, here's the full low down from Channel 4 should you be interested.

Name: Carole Malone
Age: 47
Occupation: Journalist
Lives: London

Famous for her outspoken views as one of Britain's leading journalists, Carole grew up in a small mining village near Newcastle and knew from an early age that she wanted to be a journalist - causing family friction over her ambitions.

The first tabloid columnist to enter the Big Brother house as a celebrity housemate, Carole writes her weekly column for the Sunday Mirror commenting on stories of the day. Never afraid to speak her mind on headlining topics - ranging from current affairs to celebrities - Carol is not afraid of coming face to face with a celebrity she has criticised.

Carole has been married for 14 years to her Bosnian husband who is eight years younger than her. They met in a bar following a journalists party.

Why are you taking part in Celebrity Big Brother?

"Every journalist in the country wants to know more about Big Brother, so this is an absolute story for me and it's a test. I've never had to compromise before and it'll be interesting to see how I'll be in that situation."

What do you think you'll get out of the experience of taking part in Celebrity Big Brother?

"I'm expecting the worst and hoping for the best."

Name: Cleo Rocos
Age: 44
Occupation: Actress / Writer
Lives: London

Cleo is best known for her work with Kenny Everett on his legendary radio and television shows. She became Miss Whiplash of his much-loved BBC1 show in the early 80s. Cleo and Kenny enjoyed a 15-year friendship fuelled by fun and laughter until his tragic death in 1995.

More recently Cleo has performed with Leigh Francis in sketches for his Channel 4 series "Bo In The U.S.A", produced "The Seven Year Itch" in the West End and is currently writing a new comedy series - a stark contrast to her first job as a professional skateboarder.

Cleo was once kidnapped in Buenos Aires and counts Darryl Hannah and Robbie Williams amongst her famous friends. She lives with her mother, loves to eat Mexican salsa for breakfast and has a pet parrot called Max.

Why are you taking part in Celebrity Big Brother?

"It (BB) used to scare me a bit, but I've become addicted to it over the past couple of years. It's dangerous and unpredictable and I think I'll have a lot of fun in there. I like throwing all the saucepans in the air."

What do you think you'll get out of the experience of taking part in Celebrity Big Brother?

"Nobody I know would ever think I'd do something like this. I'm not a good sharer, I'll probably be the most neurotically private person in there. But I push myself: I've trained with matadors and I don't think you should play anything too safe."

Name: Danielle Lloyd
Age: 23
Occupation: Glamour Model / Former Miss England and Miss Great Britain
Lives: Greater London (originally from Liverpool)

Danielle is a successful glamour model and was crowned Miss Great Britain in 2006. However, it was reported that Danielle was in a relationship with West Ham footballer and Miss Great Britain judge Teddy Sheringham two months before the contest had started. In addition, Danielle posed topless for Playboy Magazine. Both factored in Danielle being stripped of her title. Still dating Teddy, Danielle knows all the WAGs including fellow scouser Colleen McLoughlin, as they socialise regularly.

Danielle recently competed in Miss World in China in 2005 where she came seventh, she has created her own lingerie range, and posed in various men's magazines. She believes in beauty on the inside as well as the outside saying, "we are all beautiful in our own way".

A keen online poker player, Danielle's ambition is to have her own TV show. She once blagged a first-class flight to Dubai with good friend Sarah Harding. She has trained as a beautician, specialising in massage, and is also a qualified nail technician.

"Teddy probably thinks it's a good idea to get rid of me for a few weeks - stop me going to the shops and spending the money."

Why are you taking part in Celebrity Big Brother?

"Probably just for the experience and to let people know what I'm really like, rather than what they've read about me."

What do you think you'll get out of the experience of taking part in Celebrity Big Brother?

"I don't know what to expect. I just hope that people are nice in there. I'm quite easygoing, laidback and down to earth."

Name: Dirk Benedict
Age: 61
Occupation: Actor
Lives: Montana, USA
Best known as dashing Templeton 'The Face' Peck in cult action adventure show, The A Team, in the 80's TV series about a group of ex-US Army Special Forces on the run, working as soldiers of fortune.

"I enjoyed The A-Team immensely. By nature I'm terribly serious, so as an actor I tend to want to be silly. It was a comedic show, almost like a cartoon. The actors I worked with, especially Mr T and Dwight Schultz, were very fun people. It was pretty much four years of laughter."

Growing up in the wilds of Montana, Dirk spent his childhood hunting, fishing and playing sports. His father died when he was 18 and as a trainee actor, Dirk started using the stage name 'Benedict' after his agent suggested it, inspired by Dirk's breakfast of choice - Eggs Benedict.

An author of a number of books, Dirk was diagnosed with prostrate cancer in 1981 and claimed to have survived the disease without surgery, through following a macrobiotic diet combined with exercise and fasting. He has three children, is an expert fly fisherman, holds a private pilots license and composes his own music.

Why are you taking part in Celebrity Big Brother?

"Two reasons, my teenage sons. They persuaded me to do it. I'm a recluse, I haven't been around people in a while, so they think it'll get me out of my comfort zone."

What do you think you'll get out of the experience of taking part in Celebrity Big Brother?

"Well, this is my coming out party - and probably my 'going back in hiding again' party! I expect 25 days of absolute hell, I can't find one thing that I'll like about it. I don't like celebrities, I don't hang out with actors, I hate being in front of the camera."

Name: Donny Tourette (real name Patrick)
Age: 25
Occupation: Lead singer of the band 'Towers Of London'.
Lives: West London (Originally From Liverpool).

Donny Tourette is the front man of rock/punk band 'Towers Of London' who have supported Guns 'n Roses and Baby Shambles and released their debut album 'Blood Sweat And Towers' in June 2006. The band formed in 1999, when Donny and his brother Dirk, who plays guitar and recruited their fellow band members from school assembly..

Donny's reputation as a rock lothario has made him a regular in the tabloid press in part due to his on-off relationship with Peaches Geldof. Donny wants to "tell the kids who watch Big Brother what a real band is all about". He has a dog called Toto, hates bad manners, idiocy and liars, and says the things that make him happy are "booze, fags and music".

"Our band can be summed in a sentence as punk rock'n roll stars.

"I think we do have a bad reputation. I think as it happens I do seem to land myself in a bit of trouble.

"I've been arrested a few times. I got arrested for criminal damage, they banged me up in a cell.. Think they liked having me in there to be honest."

Why are you taking part in Celebrity Big Brother?

"I've got f**k-all else to do at the moment".

What do you think you'll get out of the experience of taking part in Celebrity Big Brother?

"I imagine I'll have a good time when I'm in there".

Name: Ian 'H' Watkins
Age: 29
Occupation: Singer and actor, currently performing in panto and various West End musicals
Lives: London (originally from Rhondda, Wales)

Former Butlins redcoat Ian was christened 'H' when he started out in the band Steps - it stands for hyperactive. After huge success, Steps split in 2001 and he briefly duetted with fellow ex-Steps member Claire. Welsh-born Ian has since returned to college, studying musical theatre at the Royal Academy of Music, and has worked in the West End, starring in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat, Jesus Christ Superstar and 'Buttons' in panto.

Prior to his entrance in the house, the former Steps singer revealed his sexuality and admitted to being 'the only gay in the village', having grown-up in a small Welsh village. He also admitted it is only now that he is truly comfortable with his sexuality that he could be honest with his fans.

Ian says he is happier away from celebrity circuit. "The Met Bar is cack, they're all w**kers. I like normal people. I have normal friends. I like real people and the real world is a much nicer place." Ian loves collecting art, which is his greatest extravagance. The most expensive item of clothing he has ever bought was an YSL jacket for £5,000.

Why are you taking part in Celebrity Big Brother?

"Because everyone thinks my surname is 'Steps' - I'd like to come out of the house with people knowing that I'm an individual. I want people to see that I'm a genuine, hardworking guy, not a blonde yellow pedal-pusher wearer anymore."

What do you think you'll get out of the experience of taking part in Celebrity Big Brother?

"I just want to have loads of fun and make a few friends! I've got no agenda, I know other people might play a game but I'm just gonna be myself."

Name: Jermaine Jackson
Age: 52
Occupation: Singer, writer, guitarist. Former member of The Jackson 5
Lives: Dubai (originally from Indiana, USA)

Jermaine was co-lead singer of The Jackson 5 with his brother Michael. He began a solo career in the 1970s and enjoyed success from then on with several hits including "Let's Get Serious", "Do What You Do", "Don't Take It Personal". He has an album out this year.

Jermaine is now known as Muhammad Abdul Aziz. He converted to Islam after a visit to Bahrain in the 1980s and prays daily. Jermaine has been married three times and has eight children. One of his former wives, Alejandra, was the ex-wife of his brother Randy.

During Michael's 2005 child abuse trial, he was a staunch supporter of his brother and appeared with him in court on numerous occasions.

The three things that make him happy are waking up, family and sunshine. He dislikes pasta and any kind of alcohol. He is a huge admirer of Nelson Mandela and says his greatest fear is "sharing the toilet".

"2003, my brother (Michael) had a court case, we knew from the beginning he was 1000% innocent. It put our family through a lot. But we were strong case when we came out here we had each other so it gave us a chance to pull us together even closer.

"I have servants here. I do the white glove test and I'm very picky with germs. I won't touch door knobs in public places. I'll wait for people to open or take a tissue.

"The BB house looks very interesting. Do we do the cooking? I'm a very picky eater.

"Michael is going to watch… my whole family will watch online."

Why are you taking part in Celebrity Big Brother?
"Just to have peace and quiet from the industry, and maybe to get over my shyness."

What do you think you'll get out of the experience of taking part in Celebrity Big Brother?
"Maybe the sun might shine?! It should be very interesting to meet people I've never met before. But the diet thing...I'm a vegan."

Name: Jo O'Meara
Age: 27

Occupation: Former Singer in S Cub 7
Lives: Romford, Essex

Instantly recognisable as the lead vocalist from pop band S Club 7, Jo first came to the public's attention through the television series that launched the band in 1999 - Miami 7. Living with her fellow band mates Paul, Hannah, John, Bradley, Rachel and Tina, the series charted the group trying to crack America as well as showcasing their music. At one point S Club 7 were on television in 91 different countries.
Despite huge hits, including 'S Club Party', 'Reach' and 'Don't Stop Moving', when the band split in 2003, Jo decided to take time out to catch up with friends and family and her hobby of playing the slot machines in her home town of Romford. In 2005, Jo returned to singing briefly but a lack of chart success, with her solo album, sees her spending most of her time breeding dogs. Jo has seven tattoos and her perfect day would be to sleep late and to enjoy a Chinese and a movie.

"It was a love/hate relationship (being in the band) and we were so jetlagged. One morning we woke up thinking we were in Ireland and we were in Taiwan."

Why are you taking part in Celebrity Big Brother?

"I've absolutely no idea why I'm doing it! It's just something I've never done before."

What do you think you'll get out of the experience of taking part in Celebrity Big Brother?

"I'd just like the public to see me for who I am, behind the person people think I am."
What's your greatest fear about joining the Celebrity Big Brother house?
"All my fellow housemates hating me! I'm sure they'll nominate me because of my moaning, crying or being a pest."

Name: Ken Russell
Age: 79
Occupation: Film director
Lives: London

The undisputed 'bad boy' of British cinema, Ken Russell's appearance on Celebrity Big Brother fulfils a recent ambition of his. Known for his controversial and sexually ground-breaking films 'Women in Love' and 'The Devils', Ken is a huge fan of Big Brother and watched the summer series avidly and was outraged when Pete was not allowed his letter from home.

Ken lives with his fourth wife who he met via a dating agency using his fame to win her over. He has eight children. The selfconfessed 'grand enfant terrible' of the UK film industry, whose career high point is having three films showing in the West End simultaneously, is in the process of creating a film for YouTube based on Charlotte Bronte meets Big Brother.

Offended by dog poo on pavements, Ken has a phobia of large leaves and is not a fan of George Bush, Tony Blair or weather forecasters for that matter, either. He loves rain, classical music and movies and hates sun, heat and humidity.

Why are you taking part in Celebrity Big Brother?

"I used to be at a nautical establishment when I was young, which was full of sado-masochists. I've got a hankering for those days which I'm keen to recapture."

What do you think you'll get out of the experience of taking part in Celebrity Big Brother?

"Worse than I can possibly imagine in my wildest dreams - or nightmares! I'm looking forward to meeting Faye Dunaway, we're old friends."

Name: Leo Sayer
Age: 58
Occupation: Pop Singer
Lives: Sydney Australia

Equally famed for his curly head of hair, pop singer Leo Sawyer scored number 1 hits around the world with 'When I Need You' in the late 70's and recently hit the top spot again with a remixed version of 'Thunder In My Heart Again' featuring Meck.

Following an early career as an artist and a stint in a car factory, Leo has spent over thirty years in the music industry achieving massive success in the States, Australasia and Europe. Currently living in Sydney with his partner Donna, Leo is heavily into formula 1 motor racing and once drove with Niki Lauda He counts Nigel Mansell and Damon Hill as close friends.

#Why are you taking part in Celebrity Big Brother?

"I love being back in the UK and at this point in my life it'll be great for people to get to know a little bit more about me. It's a way of exposing myself (in the nicest possible way!)"

What do you think you'll get out of the experience of taking part in Celebrity Big Brother?

"I've no expectations. I've got an open mind and I live on my wits. It'll be fun and challenging, like being trapped in a lift or being taken hostage."

Name: Shilpa Shetty
Age: 31
Occupation: Film Actress
Lives: India

Shilpa is an award winning box office actress in her native India and a household name to Bollywood fans around the world. Having set her sights on an acting career, Shilpa was offered the lead role in her first film "Gaata Rahe Mera Dil" at the tender age of 17. Going from strength to strength she wowed the critics in Phir Milenge playing a HIV positive victim and was awarded the Giant International Award. Shilpa is lauded for having the best body in Bollywood and she is "worried about the lack of gym facilities in the house".

Shilpa sees herself as an ambassador for the Bollywood film industry. She is determined to win Celebrity Big Brother but will have a number of cultural differences to contend with. She is a black belt karate champion and says her ambition is to work with Jackie Chan.

"I've recently been described as the Indian Angelina Jolie., I'm not sure how to take that.

"I honestly truly believe I'm special. It would scare me if people didn't recognise me or didn't want to know more about my life.

"I constantly travel with an entourage and I know I won't have that in the BB house."

Why are you taking part in Celebrity Big Brother?

"Because it's the first time an Indian artist just as myself has had the opportunity to do this. To clear out the myths and misconceptions of indian people: we are modern, intelligent and glamorous. But mostly so all Indians can feel proud."

What do you think you'll get out of the experience of taking part in Celebrity Big Brother?

"I have zero expectations. The only thing I really hope to keep is my self-respect and my dignity."

2007-01-03T09:18:00.000Z

That life

Never go back. Ouch that was painful and wrong in so many ways.

'This Life +10' brought the characters back after a decade away from our screens and, although many of us wanted to see how life had worked out for them, it turns out that really we'd rather wished we hadn't. Its like old girlfriends always a total disaster.

It started with a funeral, creative writing 101, for Ferdy who starred in much of the second series of the show to fill the shoes vacated by Warren who left to go travelling. And you really wished he hadn't come back. His character of psychobabble and endless self-analysis was the absolute pits.

The characters then came together in a country house owned by Miles, which turned it into some horrible sort of 'Peter's Friends' -- all bloated and over written. Creative writing 101 was really getting into full swing.

We then proceeded to run through the 30 something checklist.

Kids: Miles and Milly check.
Ticking biological clock: Anna, check.
Breakdown: Warren, check.
Divorce: Miles, check.
Loose touch with culture: check (the Kaiser who?)
Get bad hair cuts: Miles, check.

Oh there was much more... there was the trite post-modern touch of Egg having made it as a novelist and being followed around during the weekend by some 20something documentary film-maker, who Miles and Egg each chase after with their tongues hanging out, but get nowhere with before she leaves with some line about “metrosexuals”.

We strayed into politics with a discussion at one moment flaring into political bile as Egg laid into Miles for:

1. Being a Tory
2. Having a Chelsea tractor
3. The Iraq war.

'This Life' never previously strayed into politics: it was always a subject matter left out of their 20something lives and it was the better for it.

Writer Amy Jenkins just ranted away and it only added to the spiralling gloom, which all ended predictably with Egg and Milly arguing and seeming on the edge of breaking up, which was funny because last time we saw them, they had broken up over her affair with her bald boring boss.

That wasn't even glossed over, it was more ignored, as was much else. Actually nothing made sense. Don't even mention the fact that the last episode finished with Miles marrying Francesca and this opens with him married to a Vietnamese model Me-Linh who quickly exits stage left leaving our "friends" to argue and bicker and dance to the Manic Street Preachers.

Then in the space of minutes we have Miles go bankrupt, Egg give up novel writing, happy clappy Warren pill popping and snorting coke and the documentary was chucked in the lake. It was all too confusing only underscoring the fact that really it was great first time around, but second time sucked.

2006-12-14T09:22:00.000Z

Wal-Scam

Seconds out, round two. The whole $580m (£295m) Wal-Mart review has made fascinating reading and they're off again.

We haven't been following the Wal-Mart story on this side of the Atlantic with anything like as much detail, but because the retail giant kicks off its second review of its $580m advertising account it’s probably worth recapping.

In late October, Wal-Mart appointed Interpublic Group's DraftFCB and Aegis Group's Carat USA to handle its $580m advertising and media account accounts respectively.

That appointment was a major blow to long-time incumbent Omnicom Group agency GSD&M, not to mention the other shops involved in the pitch such as WPP Group's Ogilvy & Mather and Publicis Groupe's Saatchi & Saatchi.

Wal-Mart had already eliminated a further five agencies, including another incumbent, Bernstein-Rein, which is based in Kansas City and had worked for the retailer for 32 years.

Early on in the review, Julie Roehm, vice-president of marketing communications at Wal-Mart Stores, indicated there would be a change in direction for Wal-Mart and a move upmarket.

None of it was sounding very Wal-Mart like. Not surprising really, Roehm had joined from DaimlerChrysler where among other things she had been responsible for the 'Lingerie Bowl'.

Do you remember that sexist twaddle where models in underwear played American football. It stunk up the place and sponsor Dodge pulled out of the event.

Roehm just wasn't Wal-Mart. Anyway, she went ahead and appointed Draft FC, which should have been the end of it except she got fired, the agency sacked and the review started over.

Not only did it start over, but with the same search agency running the show - Select Resources International.

Roehm has been described elsewhere as being about fast cars, sex and rock and roll to, which just doesn't stack up to the Wal-Mart family values and station wagon way of life.

Now she has gone there are allegations of an inappropriate relationship with a junior colleague and funny goings on with DraftFCB, which was fired before it even began work.

There was talk of a famous lunch at Nobu with DraftFCB, which reads like a celebratory dinner -- except it was a month before the agency was officially awarded the account. The dinner is said to have ended with Roehm sitting on someone's lap, but I'm sure that kind of thing always happens at Nobu. Then there's reports of Julie riding in DraftFCB founder Howard Draft's Aston Martin, which I'm sure is very nice and only shows what a generous chap Mr Draft is.

There's much more to read on this on various US blogs and George Parker over at AdScam has done more than most. He's going to be blogging on Brand Republic in the New Year so get a taste now.

"The deja vue, Wal-Scam agency revue to take place in January, will be run by the same consultancy, Select Resources International, as last time, who will invite the same agency's (Minus Howard's mob, of course) to repitch... To which I have ask... Why... Why... Why? As I have said in previous posts, just pick whoever came in second last time, or leave it with Bernstein-Rein and GSD&M, the incumbents. What is the point of going through that shit again? If I was O&M, or the Martin Agency, or GSD&M, I would just say, you've seen what we considered to be the best we could do for you, so just make up your mind. Yeah, fucking right! Do you think for one minute that is going to happen? Whoever is working on the pitch at those three shops, and because of its size, that will be hundreds, can kiss Christmas and New Year goodbye..."

George also has a book out called MadScam and it seems only fair to plug it. Someone has done a very favourable review of it on Youtube, so take alook.

2006-12-12T14:31:00.000Z

La La la Al-Jazeera

It's all Israel's fault. Yes all of it, says Al-Jazeera's editor-in-chief.

Here is an interview by Pierre Heumann of the Swiss newspaper Die Weltwoche with Al-Jazeera Editor-in-Chief, Ahmed Sheikh, in which he explains the root cause of the Middle East's problems:

How do you see the future of this region in which news of wars, dictators and poverty predominates?

The future here looks very bleak.

Can you explain what you mean by that?

By bleak I mean something like "dark." I've advised my thirty year old son, who lives in Jordan, that he should leave the region. Just this morning I spoke with him about it. He has a son and we spoke about his son's education. I'd like my grandson to go to a trilingual private school. The public schools are bad. He should learn English, German, and French -- Spanish would also be important. But the private schools are very expensive. That's why I told my son to emigrate to the West for the sake of my grandson.

You sound bitter.

Yes, I am.

At whom are you angry?

It's not only the lack of democracy in the region that makes me worried. I don't understand why we don't develop as quickly and dynamically as the rest of the world. We have to face the challenge and say: enough is enough! When a President can stay in power for 25 years, like in Egypt, and he is not in a position to implement reforms, we have a problem. Either the man has to change or he has to be replaced. But the society is not dynamic enough to bring about such a change in a peaceful and constructive fashion.

Why not?

In many Arab states, the middle class is disappearing. The rich get richer and the poor get still poorer. Look at the schools in Jordan, Egypt or Morocco: You have up to 70 youngsters crammed together in a single classroom. How can a teacher do his job in such circumstances? The public hospitals are also in a hopeless condition. These are just examples. They show how hopeless the situation is for us in the Middle East.

Who is responsible for the situation?

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one of the most important reasons why these crises and problems continue to simmer. The day when Israel was founded created the basis for our problems. The West should finally come to understand this. Everything would be much calmer if the Palestinians were given their rights.

Do you mean to say that if Israel did not exist, there would suddenly be democracy in Egypt, that the schools in Morocco would be better, that the public clinics in Jordan would function better?

I think so.

Can you please explain to me what the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has to do with these problems?

The Palestinian cause is central for Arab thinking.

In the end, is it a matter of feelings of self-esteem?

Exactly. It's because we always lose to Israel. It gnaws at the people in the Middle East that such a small country as Israel, with only about 7 million inhabitants, can defeat the Arab nation with its 350 million. That hurts our collective ego. The Palestinian problem is in the genes of every Arab. The West's problem is that it does not understand this.

So, now you understand.

This post originally appeared on Harry's Place.

2006-12-12T09:19:00.000Z

Blake revival

First the BBC did 'Doctor Who', now someone is having ago at another cult SF drama 'Blake's 7'.

Just like 'Doctor Who' with its paper and plastic sets and quite scary aliens, 'Blake's 7' flew across the galaxy fighting for freedom in quite a nice looking ship. Now they're coming back.

First as a radio series and then as a TV show. The production company behind the show, B7 Productions, is doing a bit of a 'Battlestar Galactica' (but without the budget or network backing) and reimagining the show from the start.

All the old characters are back, voiced by new actors. Best of all is Daniela Nardini, Anna from 'This Life', who will play Supreme Commander Servalan. The sexiest and baddest woman in the galaxy what with her jet black short spiky hair and penchant for wanting to kill everyone who stood in the way of her typically diabolical plans. Nardini is perfect for it.

When they do film it, she gets my vote for that role (you know if I had a vote).

Also on board is someone called Derek Riddell, who has been in 'No Angels' and 'Doctor Who', as rebel leader Blake and the other prize role, that of cold-hearted killer Avon with a great line in sarcasm and icy one liners, is played by Colin Salmon who starred in Pierce Brosnan movies as a MI6 agent and had roles in action flicks such as 'Alien vs. Predator' and 'Resident Evil'.

It will initially run as a series of all-new 36 x five-minute audio dramas based on the original cult series broadcast on the BBC in the 1970s, with a special extended CD edition released for retail the month following broadcast.

In the original series, which ran 1978-1981, Terry Nation (who also wrote much of 'Doctor Who' - but had nothing to do with 'Torchwood'...talking of which is back for a second season, according to the BBC) gave us the world a vision of the future, a future where the galaxy is ruled by the iron fist of a galactic federation where citizens are drugged and where freedom and justice are things of the past. Enter our band of freedom fighters and outlaws. A magnificent seven in space onboard a ship called Liberator.

The much-anticipated, live-action revival of the 'Blake’s 7' is in the pipeline, but there are no details yet.

2006-12-11T16:23:00.000Z

Sky Lost

Sky seems to be losing 'Lost' viewers faster than you can say difficult third season.

According to the overnight figures the BBC's not that good really 'Torchwood' is now managing to beat 'Lost' now that it has moved to Sky.

'Torchwood' was watched by 971,000 viewers on BBC Three in its 10pm slot, which up from last week's 958,000, I've seen a couple and really not so impressed. I've been to Cardiff and really aerial shots don't help. And why are they're only four of them, I know budgets are tight but four slightly annoying people and one care seems a little tight.

As for 'Lost' it is down to considerably less than 1m viewers and only pulled in 863,000 viewers on Sunday. Not so good.

Since the move from Channel 4 to Sky One there has been a steady decline for the cult show whose lack of plot movement is painful. Its first outing on attracted 1.4m viewers, compared with the average 2.8m that tuned in to follow the fortunes and mysterious plotlines of the survivors of Oceanic Airlines flight 815.

Obviously a lot of people have stopped watching and I'm one of them. One of the problems is the scheduling. Sky airs it and then repeats it later in the week at ten whereas E4 would air 'Lost' at on Sundays as part of its Second Chance Sunday or you could always catch it on C4 around sixish. It just seemed to work better on Channel 4.

After paying all that money to buy 'Lost' could at least sort the scheduling out.

2006-12-08T09:17:00.000Z

Grey day

Say it ain't so: Ed Meyer, Grey's 'benign dictator', is off. I can hardly believe it.

We'd come to believe in this office that Ed would never go. We had many theories about the one nicked named "he who walks at night", which is surely the only explanation to account for his longevity.

He retires after 50 years in the industry and 36 running Grey, which is an incredible achievement.

According to Campaign, an official announcement on his departure is due before, Christmas, possibly one saying that he will only stay for another 20 years...or leave in April. People always seem to go in the spring.

Meyer will be 80 in January and is still in the office everyday, kind of like the Queen, but you know, different.

Who knows why he stayed so long. It was only recently that Meyer netted £105m from sale of WPP shares two days after the Grey the merger completed.

He must literally have pots of money lying around but has no time to spend it. I mean no time because he spends his entire life in the office. Clearly the rest of his time is devoted to walking those New York streets with a huge cape. Okay, he might not actually do that, but apparently you can't libel the living dead, so really that should be okay. Come on, it can't just be us who have come up with the theory that he is a member of the family that only walks at night.

It isn’t just the £105m swelling his back pocket, but the salary of $3.65m he picks up each year. This is on top of the $500m he picked up with the deal with WPP was first done.

Sir Martin Sorrell and Meyer have been said to not be the chummiest. You can maybe see why. Meyer makes the famous workaholic Sir Martin look, well, slightly less workaholic. Maybe they share tips about how to evade doing anything in life that does not relate to building a large, successful business.

The prince of darkness of the agency world as we also like to think of Ed is said to have ruled Grey with an iron authority and he only sold out at the last minute – being 78 when he signed the deal with Sorrell.

But this isn’t even the end of the Ed Meyer story. Despite "retiring", he has a clause in his contract entitling him to office accommodation, support staff and expenses for five years after his retirement.

So in five years time, expect to be reading again that Ed is leaving the building. Maybe even for good.

2006-12-06T09:51:00.000Z

Veiled Christmas

Channel 4 is taking the veil for Christmas and it strikes me as a stunt.

The decision to host a potentially controversial alternative Christmas message featuring a fully veiled Muslim woman has grabbed dozens of headlines this morning, as you would expect.

The broadcaster said it would screen a 10-minute Christmas Day message from Khadija, a Zimbabwean-born lecturer in Islamic studies who is now a British national and who has worn the niqab for 10 years.

I was going to make a joke at this point at nobody is going to be able to hear her, but that would be plain wrong, so obviously I will do no such thing.

Khadija is going to reflect on differences between western and Muslim culture over the last 12 months, including the debate about wearing the niqab in the UK, the cartoons of the prophet Mohammed published in the Danish press and comments made by the Pope.

That's all well and good and a debate to be had, but putting someone up in a niqab appears to me as a cynical move that will see the content of the message and debate washed away by the furore and headlines it will create about the wearing of full-body religious armour.

Channel 4 has chosen the best person to discuss the issues of the last year, just a controversial image on the back of the trouble stirred up by Jack Straw earlier this year when he said it hindered communications and Muslim teacher in Dewsbury, who lost her industrial tribunal. We have no idea who the person is, I suspect no one knows her from Adam and she'll quickly return to obscurity after the fact.

Being generous, you can see where they might have been going with all this by choosing a controversial candidate for the Christmas message, but you only have to look at others it has chosen in the past, such as Sharon Osbourne, 'The Simpsons' and Sasha Cohen's Ali G, to know what is at the root of Channel 4's thinking: publicity innit?

In announcing the decision, Channel 4 said: "The right to wear religious symbols from niqabs to crucifixes, remarks made by the Pope about Islam and the publication of Danish cartoons depicting the prophet Mohammed have all generated a debate about multiculturalism, secularism and integration.

"A debate in which British Muslims have played a key role and one that will shape the future of British society."

The 'Alternative Christmas Message' will be broadcast at 3pm on Christmas Day, when ITV and the BBC show the Queen's Christmas address to the nation.

Not even the Muslim Council of Britain is impressed. All it was saying was. "It is not worthy of comment."

2006-12-05T09:06:00.000Z

Viagra kids

US doctors think kids are seeing too many ads for Viagra, among other things.

No, seriously. A report on Reuters says children should be exposed to fewer television ads for anti-impotence drugs and more for birth control.

Who would have thunk it?

Having just sat through the long-running junk food ads debate in the UK, which has finally reached some sort of conclusion with tough restrictions (rightly) imposed on the purveyors of junk food, it’s strange reading about something like this on the other side of the Atlantic.

I know anti-impotence drugs like Viagra are advertised on US TV, but when on earth do they show them that children get to see them. Sensibly a pediatricians group is calling for erectile dysfunction drug ads not be shown until after 10pm, when fewer children are watching television.

It makes you wonder what kind of impact that kind of message could have on kids. Talk about extra anxiety. It's all very odd and its raises an interesting point about as to whether children should not only be shielded from the likes of junk food ads, but from advertising more generally.

The American Academy of Pediatrics is calling for limits to children's television viewing and access to the internet, as well as restrictions on how alcoholic beverage makers promote their products. All sounds sensible on the basis that inappropriate advertising contributes to many children's ills, from obesity to anorexia and to drinking too much alcohol.

"If we taught kids media literacy, you can essentially immunise kids against advertising,”"said Dr Victor C Strasburger, a pediatrician at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque and the lead author of the statement.

2006-12-04T09:19:00.000Z

800lb gorilla

James Murdoch seems to want it all ways. Complains about the BBC, but wants us to believe that BSkyB's investment in ITV is somehow honest.

On Friday, Murdoch junior, the Sky chief executive, accused the BBC of “megalomania” among other things.

In a speech in London, Murdoch laid into the BBC and said its digital ambitions smacked of megalomania, referring to what he said were its ambitions to create a British Google funded at the taxpayers' expense.

"Indeed, the UK's main state broadcasting agency, the BBC, famously fantasises about creating a 'British Google' -- and wants the taxpayer to fund it. This is not public service; it's megalomania," he said.

The words pot, kettle and black clearly mean nothing to Murdoch. He wants it all ways.

If the competition is, well, up to competing against the global might of News Corp then it must be stopped... competition such as the BBC, which is one of the few British media brands seen to have a global reach, or a merged ITV and NTL.

BSkyB spent £1bn breaking up that merger and seems to have got away with it.

Rupert Murdoch snapped up a 17.9% stake in ITV, effectively derailing NTL's £5bn merger bid for the commercial broadcaster. The move is currently being investigated by Ofcom, but I don't see any thing happening.

On Five Live last night with Jeff Randall, James Murdoch was explaining BSkyB's investment in ITV with lots of talk about being in it for the "long term" and seeing "value" in the business.

He hinted at why it was really done, by saying the "dynamics of the market around ITV played a part in creating the opportunity for us” before stressing "the reason we did it was very straightforward; that we see a lot of long-term value in ITV”.

Little of it rings true. Everyone knows that it did it to frustrate the competition, to unsettle the market, and its long-term am is to continue to frustrate anyone else who might want to buy ITV (such as European player and Five owner RTL) and create a credible commercial rival to Sky's 800lb bully of a gorilla.

BSkyB might have already lost a pile of money on the deal (it bought high at 135p and shares are now at 110p), but that is worth it to control the market in the way it does.

Of course no one is going to say that, because then there really would be an outcry and an investigation, but in the meantime it’s business as usual for the Murdochs, the regulators and the government.

2006-11-30T09:10:00.000Z

Talk talk

Tommy Sheridan, the News of the World's favourite socialist, is joining one of TalkSport's stations joining other failed left wingers on the airwaves.

First there was Derek Hatton, the man best known for running Liverpool into the ground in the 1980s under the auspices of the Trotskyist group the Militant Tendency, and sending redundancy notices to workers by taxi.

He found a berth on 105.4 Century FM. I'm not sure what he talks about, but according to Century, Degsy, as he is better known along with someone called Di, offer "celebrity chat, cool tunes and lots of laughs". Me? I'm feeling the warmth already.

Then there is strange milk-licking 'Celebrity Big Brother' contestant and expelled Labour Party member George "I never get tired of the sound of my own voice praising various dictators" Galloway.

He can, of course, be found on TalkSport. I don't think he talks about sport, but more about his great chats with likes of Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad or the great times he had chowing down with Saddam Hussein.

Now joining the ranks of failed (but very sun-tanned lefties) is Tommy Sheridan another member of the now-defunct Militant Tendency and more recently of the Scottish Socialist party, and now pretty much on his own after all that business about orgies and such caused him and his loyal wife Gail a spot of bother with the tabloids. Not enough to stop Sheridan.

He has joined the TalkSport-owned Talk 107. Though to be fair, as Charlie Whelan wrote recently, Sheridan has gained near cult-hero status in Scotland, because unlike his compatriot, "gorgeous” George Galloway, he is seen as a serious politician. This is a man who would never dream of appearing on 'Celebrity Big Brother'. No, he is happier being snapped as he's arrested for the hundredth time outside a nuclear base.

But like Galloway he is another of these overly tanned types. Can he just on accept the fact that he is Scottish and be done with the paleness? OK, no, I guess he can't.

Sheridan is presenting "Sunday Morning with Citizen Tommy". I'm sure it will be all very topical. He will no doubt entertain his band of listeners with, not I suspect, tales of affairs and swinging, but more fanciful stuff like the curious allegations that he's a victim of M15 spooks. Please don't laugh.

But despite all his troubles he is still upbeat -- as he said on a recent TV interview: "You have got to have the ability to laugh at yourself because if you don't, then you won't get any affection from people in Scotland. No-one is above having the Michael extracted from them at one time or another - that's part of being Scottish. And I don't think anyone is too precious to have fun poked at them. You have to be willing to go with that."

I'm trying to work out who will be next...maybe Dave Cameron could get a man of the people show.

For more on Sheridan and his move to radio, there's a rather long Scotsman article.

2006-11-29T12:13:00.000Z

Blair and Hitler

Running an ad that compares the prime minister Tony Blair to Adolf Hitler is just plain wrong.

I'm not the only one as a number of people complained about the ad for NO2ID, an anti-identity card campaign group, which ran in The Guardian.

As you an see it shows a close-up of Blair's face in monochrome, with a barcode placed on his top lip to resemble the German dictator's moustache.

NO2ID said that the photograph of Tony Blair was retouched to make it look like a 1930s portrait and the layout was designed to recall the Nazi era. The campaign group argued that the photograph did not portray Tony Blair "as Hitler" but was intended to be "a comparison of Tony Blair with Hitler based on policy, not personality".

On policy? Well that's okay then.

NO2ID said that the ad contained an implicit claim that "identity cards were useful to the implementation of Nazi policies across Europe; they argued that that was beyond doubt" and asserted that identity cards themselves had "been used to control populations in occupied Europe and were very closely associated with the process of sorting victims for the concentration camps".

In its defence, NO2ID argued that free speech was a vital function of advertising and said the ad was intended to be insulting to Tony Blair.

In its defence, The Guardian said the ad did not make a serious comparison between Tony Blair and Hitler, but sought to highlight a particularly contentious policy. It said the newspaper was aimed at an adult and educated readership and, as such, it should allow a certain degree of latitude in the advertising it carried that depicted political figures.

The Advertising Standards Authority rejected the complaints after concluding the ad may be have been distasteful to some but was unlikely to cause serious or widespread offence.

The ASA said: "We considered that, although the ad may have been distasteful to some, it was unlikely to be seen as making a serious comparison between Tony Blair and Hitler but instead as highlighting a lobbying group's opinion that ID cards should not be introduced because of the threat to civil liberty they posed. We concluded that, as such, the ad was unlikely to cause serious or widespread offence."

2006-11-28T08:53:00.000Z

Grade A

Michael Grade's appointment as chairman of ITV is a huge coup.

While there has been endless amounts of speculation about who will succeed Charles Allen as chief executive by journalists and analysts, with just about every name in the industry mentioned at least once, no one has paid any attention to who will replace ITV chairman Sir Peter Burt. Then wham!, out of nowhere, ITV pulls something out of the bag.

If ever a broadcaster needs a figure like Grade and his years of industry experience then this is it.

Grade is only two-and-a-half years into a four-year term as chairman of the BBC. That's not a job you leave lightly.

Grade is clearly relishing the challenges ahead. The first will be to finalise the appointment of a chief executive.

Stephen Carter or Andy Duncan seem to be the floating favourites.

After that, there is the challenge of programming and advertising and ITV knows it. In the announcement, Burt said it straight.

"ITV's challenges, particularly on the programming and advertising side, are considerable."

What's left after the programming and the advertising? Oh right the static.

Grade knows it as well.

"My first priority at ITV will be to support the team in accelerating the improvement in programming performance for our viewers and advertisers. This is the best way to enhance the value of the company for our shareholders," he said.

At the BBC, he has been looking on as the, largely the BBC continues to innovate and succeed with its entertainment programming, creating smash hits such as ' Strictly Come Dancing', 'Doctor Who', 'Jane Eyre' and documentaries such as 'Planet Earth' while ITV flounders.

There is little to compare on ITV at times. Other than its hit soaps, it’s all a bit of a forgettable wash. Although to be fair as reality TV shows go, 'I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here!’ is a winner. At least ITV axed 'Love Island' to the collective relief of all but tabloid gossip writers. Now, with the failed NTL merger behind it, if it can focus on quality, ITV's future is suddenly this morning looking a little brighter.

UPDATE: Another thought, everyone is no doubt wondering how much exactly ITV is paying Grade. No idea, other than a lot, but to give an idea back in July Grade did say the BBC was underpaying its executives as he deflected criticism of director-general Mark Thompson's recent pay rise to £619,000.

Grade said that the ten members of the BBC's executive board all could earn more if they worked in the private sector, rather than for the publicly funded broadcaster.

He has obviously taken his own advice.

2006-11-24T15:52:00.000Z

Userless content

This is quite surprising. Looks like there are still a few hiccups for media owners to sort out on their journey into the world of user generated content - namely lack of users.

Not entirely, it seems that blogs are going strong and people are coming forward to do them, its just the other bits.

From Newsnight editor, Peter Barron

A few weeks back we launched Oh My Newsnight, an invitation to make a short film for the programme to run early next year. Of course we're not alone in asking viewers to provide User Generated Content - these days everybody seems to be at it.

At least, lots of programmes, but I'm not so sure lots of users are.

We asked you to send us a film of around two minutes duration on any subject of your choice. And yes, we've had a few offerings so far, but very much of the YouTube "me and my cat" variety.

What's surprising is that while many viewers are prepared to sit down and create lengthy and thoughtful blogs about what we're doing on Newsnight - or what we should be doing - which will be read by about 50,000 hardened blog watchers, almost noone seems to want to commit those thoughts to video, with a potential audience of a million viewers.

So, this is last orders ladies and gentlemen. If you want to get your message across there is a short time left to get cracking with camera, webcam or mobile phone. If your message is you'd rather leave it to us, that's also fine.

Or maybe your view coincides with that of the Daily Show's Jon Stewart in this fabulous savaging of CNN's efforts in the field of User Generated Content.

Peter Barron is editor of Newsnight.

Hat tip Mark.

2006-11-24T15:10:00.000Z

Durex Mates

Durex airs its male adult toy ad on TV next week and its creative looks like it’s been borrowed from a rival.

Durex got a splash of headlines this week with the news that it was to become the first brand to promote an adult toy for men on UK national television. Of course, being quite naughty it will not air until after 11pm.

The Durex product on offer is a "vibrating penis ring". It will appear in a 30-second spot, created by McCann Erickson Barcelona.

The ad follows a couple sitting at a dinner table and the woman has what looks like an engagement ring box in her bowl. She picks it up and it starts to vibrate, she smiles and says: "Yes, I do." The strapline says: "New Durex Play Vibrator. The vibration ring for him to give pleasure to both of you."

It's a nice idea - the engagement ring creative works well. Well, at least that’s what Claydon Heeley thought back in January when it created a similar viral film for rival condom brand Mates and its vibrating penis ring.

Created on a tiny budget, the film features a couple at dinner where the man tries to woo his love with a ring. It’s only on the third attempt - when he proffers the vibrating toy - that the woman says ‘yes’. Sound familiar?

The original Mates spot has been seen by about 100,000 people and is still doing the rounds.

Admittedly, as the Mates film is a viral it is a little racier. It finishes with the man dropping his trousers, buttocks to the camera, and we are left to imagine the vibrating toy in place, giving us some comedy porn. Well if it works once, why not use it again?

2006-11-23T11:00:00.000Z

Tory 'tosser'

Oh dear. The Conservative Party is attempting to ditch its stuffy image through new advertising that uses a "tosser" to warn against getting into debt.

Yes that's right, a Tory "tosser". They always think of these things first. The "tosser" film is the first of six "sort it" initiatives from the Tories. They are going to put it on YouTube among other places.

The web ad shows a young man being influenced by his "tosser inside".

"Inside all of us lives a conniving dirty little parasite the tosser within. He wants you to spend spend..."

I'm not sure about the "tosser" inside, more like the Tory inside. It just reminds me of Loadsamoney and the 80s. I suppose that's where David Cameron got his political grounding.

There is a serious message in here somewhere about getting people to take personal responsibility for a series of issues, beginning with personal debt.

According to a Conservative spokesperson: "The 'sort-it' campaign is not a political campaign. It is about getting people to think about their own social responsibilities. We don’t agree that in opposition all you can do is talk about what you might do in government."

...which is handy because I haven't really heard a lot of talk about what Cameron is going to do.

The campaign has been created by advertising agency Karmarama.

David Buonaguidi, Karmarama's creative director, said: "The Tosser Inside is a wake-up call designed to appeal to an audience that usually screens out this sort of message. And by posting this film online, we’ve cut out the need to toss away millions on media spend."

UPDATE: You can now see this on YouTube as some one in the comments has pointed out.

2006-11-23T08:45:00.000Z

YouTube effect

CBS has seen a massive increase in viewers after it started posting clips on YouTube.

US TV network CBS only opened its channel on YouTube last month and has already racked up 30m viewers.

Incredible stuff, and it really shows you how powerful this site is. While the music firms such as EMI and Universal talk of suing, they should really be looking at what CBS is doing.

CBS has three of the top 25 most viewed videos this month, including clips from naval crime drama 'NCIS', 'Late Show with David Letterman', 'The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson' and 'The Early Show'.

Letterman's 'Borat Meets David Letterman' posted more than 1m viewings alone. So take a look. If you take any more Borat that is.

On the back of the 'Letterman' clips being posted, CBS says that notable increases in ratings have been recorded for these programmes, in particular, 'Late Show with David Letterman', which has added 200,000 new viewers.

This is exactly the kind of stuff that ITV should be doing in the UK, its in the process of relaunching its website and CBS is really pointing the way forward to show how you can give stuff away, engage with your community and reap the benefit in viewers.

2006-11-22T09:14:00.000Z

ASA

Some people have too much time on their hands and complain to the advertising watchdog.

I've often wanted to complain to the Advertising Standards Authority. Usually when looking at an ad and thinking “I bet you could interpret that as racist, sexist, homophobic and anti-semitic", but before I get a chance to put pen to paper or pick up the phone, I have to remind myself that it’s wrong to complain just so we can have a really good headline on Brand Republic. Besides I would be found out and, well, it would be embarrassing if I was.

I digress, sort of. More than 20 people this week complained to the ASA about the Lynx ad where the guy in it showers people in huge amounts of sweat.

They were pissed off that the ad made fun of people who suffered from excessive perspiration.

Twenty people is a pretty big hit. They must have been having a group meeting or something. That, or people really do have too much time on their hands.

They complained it was "offensive", "insensitive" and "made fun of sufferers of hyperhidrosis", which is apparently the condition describing excessive sweating.

Everybody sweats, it can be embarrassing, but no one sweats like the guy in the Lynx ad and no one could possibly take that ad seriously. The guy has a hose pipe under his arm and it’s funny. It’s almost a really good ad. I say almost, as the most annoying thing about it is the naff Scottish voiceover that accompanies the spot.

It clearly wasn't shot in sunny Scotland. The beach and skyscrapers kind of give that one away. It was shot in south America and created by Lowe Argentina.

Some from the agency emailed me a while ago to complain about how their ad had been butchered with the adding of the voiceover. I'd have to agree, it’s terrible, but as I gather a naff Scottish voice over is not reason enough to complain to the ASA, which is a shame.

The ASA was, of course, having nothing to do with the missives from the 12 step hyperhidrosis boys and dismissed the complaints, although it did say that some people might find the ad distasteful, but didn't elaborate as to whether this had anything to do with... OK I'll stop now.

2006-11-21T09:39:00.000Z

Balance sheet

Who would have guessed… Rupert Murdoch has some kind of a conscience, better known as a balance sheet.

Murdoch has scrapped OJ Simpson's book and scheduled television interview calling the project "an ill-considered decision".

We all know why he did… no one was going to buy the book (published by News Corp-owned Harper Collins) or watch the TV show (on News Corp-owned Fox). Advertisers were pulling out and that's really it. Game over.

Murdoch isn't concerned about the morals of this project, where OJ Simpson describes a hypothetical way of killing his ex-wife. He did apologise, but it’s a little late. The book was due to be published on Nov 30 and he waited to the last possible moment before changing his mind and bowing to intense pressure from the US public. I'm sure he would have ploughed on, if it would had made a buck or two.

When I first heard about the project, it seemed almost impossible to work out at first why anyone would do it. I was being slightly stupid, of course, as I forgot to enter pots of money into the equation. Doh! Simpson had signed a deal worth £1.8m although he personally wasn't getting the cash -- his family were. So that's OK then.

I'm sure when Harper Collins signed the deal they thought it was gold. A book about OJ and a TV interview to sell it, how could it all go wrong?

But still, as barrel-scraping goes, this takes the biscuit. OJ Simpson was cleared of murdering his former wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her "friend" Ron Goldman in 1995 but was then found liable for their deaths in a civil case and had to pay as much as $35m in damages.

Murdoch's News Corp had planned to publish Simpson's book called 'If I Did It' (described as an "imagined confession”), and a television special later this month.

But there has been genuine outrage in the US and rebellion from Murdoch's own Fox TV network, which is one of the more surprisingly twists of the case.

In the interview, Simpson was to have spoken in hypothetical terms about how he would have committed the 1994 killings?! It’s so bizarre. Clearly OJ has some time on his hands and pretty much thinks about nothing else than: how would I have done it? Not that he did of course... because he's innocent. A court case proved that. Well, one of them anyway.

"I think News Corp finally stepped up, admitted they made a mistake, and did the right thing," said Jonathan Polak , a lawyer for Fred Goldman, Ronald Goldman's father. "This is everything we have been asking News Corp. to do for the past two weeks."

According to various reports, at least a dozen Fox affiliates across the country had already decided not to air the interview and all the advertisers wanted out. It would have appeared as virtually paid-for programming. Who wants to have their product associated with OJ and schlock like this?

Michael Palmer, vice president and general manager of WFVX, the Fox affiliate in Bangor, said his station would have reluctantly aired the interview had Fox broadcast it. "It was reprehensible, and certainly not something suitable for the holidays."

There you have it: not suitable for the holidays.

2006-11-20T09:27:00.000Z

Yahpoo

Yahoo! is in trouble, according to an internal memo that could see its workforce slashed.

A confidential internal memo reported in The Wall Street Journal has revealed that Yahoo! needs a dramatic organisational shake-up and cuts in its work force of up to 20%, according to an internal memo written last month by senior vice-president Brad Garlinghouse.

Garlinghouse, described as a second-tier Yahoo! executive who has taken increasing powerful roles in the company since joining three-and-a-half years says that Yahoo! suffers from a "lack of consistent leadership, business focus” and a "single cohesive strategy".

"We lack a focused, cohesive vision for our company. We want to do everything and be everything -- to everyone."

The document was published in the Saturday edition of The Wall Street Journal and a Yahoo! spokesman has confirmed it is authentic.

According to the WSJ article , Yahoo! shares have fallen about 31% since the start of the year, compared with a roughly 20% rise for Google. EMarketer predicts Google will command 25% of U.S. online-ad revenue this year, compared with 18% for Yahoo, when certain marketing expenses are factored out. Both had a roughly 19% market share last year, according to the research firm. Yahoo's quarterly revenue has essentially plateaued near $1.5 billion for the past four quarters it reported.

Yahoo last month said third-quarter net income dropped about 38% from a year earlier, largely because of changes in accounting for stock options, and it lowered its 2006 revenue projections, citing competition for ad dollars.

The Journal story also describes rumours that chief operating officer Dan Rosensweig and chief financial officer Sue Decker could be elevated to become co-presidents, in preparation for the retirement of chairman and CEO Terry Semel, age 64, who joined Yahoo! five years ago.

The call for restructuring follows a series of embarrassments that have caused Yahoo! shares to lose 31.5% of their value so far this year as it struggles to keep up with rival Google.

Google has been piling the pressure on Yahoo! after its YouTube acquisition. Despite being told by some that it is just about to enter a world of legal trouble with its huge $1.65bn acquisition of YouTube, Google is seen as leading the way in terms of dotcom innovation.

Google has made some inspired acquisitions with the likes of Blogger and Picasa, as well as others. Now people are looking to see what Yahoo! will do, and whether it will be able to clinch a deal to buy the number two social networking site Facebook.com to recapture momentum from Google.

It badly needs something major. If Yahoo! waits around too long it will be beaten to the punch as the sector gains in confidence and, more importantly, the valuations continue to rise. Second-tier players are seeing their valuations rise in turn. Facebook looks like it will cost $1bn. This is a price that Viacom has already blinked at before slinking away.

The memo, which is for some reason known as "The Peanut Butter Manifesto" because it argues that Yahoo's investment strategy is like spreading peanut butter too thinly on bread – calls for a "radical reorganisation" of the web giant.

Garlinghouse says Yahoo! should cut its staff by as much as 20% as part of a plan to reshape the current business "There are so many people in charge (or believe that they are in charge) that it's not clear if anyone is in charge. I believe we must embrace our problems and challenges and that we must take decisive action," the memo states bluntly."

He focuses on deleting a variety of duplicative groups that pit established business units against new initiatives, including music, photos, search, applications, social networks, global strategy and even who controls the Yahoo! homepage.

Is anyone running this company?

In a statement, Yahoo's leadership has defined three areas of focus for its business.

"The memo itself highlights that we have an open, collaborative culture and a senior management team that is intensely committed to helping Yahoo! fulfil its potential as an internet leader," the Yahoo statement said.

The WSJ says the memo has received support from Yahoo! senior management and that Garlinghouse had been asked to head an internal committee to investigate the issues he raises.

The memo itself was written in response to a New York Times article last month that Garlinghouse describes as "a painful public flogging".

"While it lacked accurate details, its conclusions rang true, and thus was a much-needed wake up call," the Yahoo executive writes. "It's time for us to get back up."

2006-11-16T09:14:00.000Z

Celebrity hell

ITV's latest outing for 'I'm Celebrity...' is possibly its best (worst) to date.

I admit, I watched a little last night and was stunned. With Lauren Booth, David Gest, Jan Leeming and company, ITV has pulled off one of the worst car crashes of Z-listers there ever was.

You would never have thought that any of these characters would amount to much in such a show. But no, former news reader Leeming is a bitter and twisted so and so. Gest is bonkers ("Zebra milk"?!) and worst of the bunch (I mean best) is Booth the total waste of space who is Cherie Blair's half sister and so the PM's sister-in-law.

For the last nine years, she has used the connection to pop up all over the place and slag off the Blairs. She is the sister-in-law from hell. Most of her work has been in the Daily Mail where she has pronounced on cue on the wrongs of New Labour, the ills of the war in Iraq and why Tony Blair should go.

She is a shameless embarrassment who has made a career out of Blair bashing, which is why it was so entertaining last night to see her reveal herself as the gauche celebrity wannabe that she is as she came out... all black.

She outed herself as a reggae fan (sang reggae), talked of the Brixton massive, dope smoking and then moved on to hip-hop. It was hard to watch, but so brilliant. It was like Borat was a blonde.

"I don't think many people would think of me sitting outside a club with a Tennents at 16 with the Yardies."

Yardies? Are you sure? She rethought this one:

"Well, not the Yardies but the ragga crowd."

"I had 10 years of just getting down, whether it was the reggae scene, going out in Camden Town, whatever. I am just the hip-hop girl. I went to cool clubs, rap clubs."

Of course, Myleene Klaas is in there too, wearing bikinis and smiling for the camera and seems alright, as does Jason Donovan and the ex-Busted guy Matt Willis (despite his crimes against music) while designer Scott Henshall… oh just shut up. What a big girl (I mean that with respect of course in the gender neutral sense).

2006-11-15T08:55:00.000Z

Al Jazeera English

Months late, a last-minute change of name (Al Jazeera English?!), but Arabic news channel Al Jazeera, best know for its Al Qaeda footage, launches its English-language channel today.

The channel has changed its name at the last minute from Al Jazeera International to Al Jazeera English. It doesn't exactly roll off of the tongue. Actually it is a terrible name, knack handed. Made the Emir came up with the one.

The channel will initially broadcast for 12 hours a day and becomes a 24-hour news operation from January 1. It had been meant to launch in the spring, but was hit but internal disagreements and problems about exactly what it was going to be.

A story yesterday said that British staff working for the new English-language channel drank so much alcohol that they were ordered to undergo special "cultural awareness" training on how to behave in a Muslim country.

Clearly the Sultans of Arabic news didn't realise that drinking alcohol is considered journalistic training in the UK.

Not to worry, the presenters and producers hired on lucrative tax-free salaries to launch Al-Jazeera International were lectured by Islamic groups on "appropriate behaviour" after a series of marathon drinking sessions in Qatar, where the new service is based.

The channel's owner, the Emir of Qatar, is understood to have personally ordered the move.

Broadcasting from studios in Doha, Kuala Lumpur, London and Washington DC (bomb proof, I hope) it is on course to reach 80m homes in Europe, Africa and South-East Asia. How many will be watching is another matter.

It hit a bit of a hiccup in the US. It has no major cable or satellite distribution. It is available on something called GlobeCast, which is French or something.

In the Middle East, it has won a reputation of taking a distinctly Islamic view of the world, which is fair enough, and we can expect more of the same from the English-language version, which might mean more problems for London and Washington.

According to one presenter Felicity Barr -- yes that's really her name, Tarquin, James and Henry -- are all on board, says "It is definitely an international channel, but it's certainly going to have a Middle Eastern feel about it. The instant reaction for, say, a Western organisation, is to get analysis from the United States or from the UK. We will be getting our reaction, first and foremost, from the Middle East."

While Al Jazeera stormed the Arabic world with not much problem largely by running footage released by Al Qaeda, including videos of Osama Bin Laden and 7/7 bomber Shehzad Tanweer. The Arabic channel controversially refers to Palestinian suicide bombers as "shaheeds" (martyrs) and has been accused by the Bush administration of being an Islamist propaganda tool.

Predictions are it is going to find the-English language version a bit harder. The easy thing about the Arabic world is that is not big on freedom of speech and the big players like the Saudis don't like criticism. This is what did for the BBC's Arabic service years ago, which Al Jazeera rose out of the ashes of.

Interestingly, the new English language channel has already faced accusations of "selling its soul" to the West.

A list of critics including former employees, Right and Leftwing bloggers and Muslim commentators, have all predicted a disastrous future for the fledgling channel as it attempts to crossover into the mainstream.

2006-11-14T11:07:00.000Z

Letterman balls

Did Fallon get its award-winning idea for its much admired Sony Bravia ad from someone else?

This bit of video is flying around the web. It looks kind of familiar and it was done by David Letterman in San Francisco 10 years ago.

OK, it isn't exactly the same, it isn't set to music, but the genesis of the idea is there and both were shot in San Francisco.

The Letterman version is ran on 'The Late Show' in 1996. It wasn't just about balls, but melons as well. No, I'm not sure what that's about either.

It is, of course, only the first example, Apple was embroiled in a spat last year and before that the Honda 'cog' ad was at centre of rip-off debate over 1987 film after two Swiss artists considered legal action against the ground-breaking two-minute-long Honda 'cog' ad, complaining that it bears similarities to a 1987 short film.

According to a story in Creative Review at the time, Peter Fischli and David Weiss are concerned that the "cog" ad, created by Wieden+Kennedy London, bears a resemblance to their film 'Der Lauf Der Dinge'.

That spat echoed a dispute between Guinness and a filmmaker, Mehdi Norowzian, who claimed that the brewing giant's 1995 dancing ad ripped off a short film he had made.

Despite marked similarities between the Guinness spot, created by Dublin agency Ark, and Norowzian's film, the court ruled against the filmmaker, who ended up liable for costs.

Another artist, the Turner Prize-winning Gillian Turner, threatened to sue BMP DDB and Volkswagen over an ad she said ripped off her "signs" work.

2006-11-14T09:38:00.000Z

KFC defence

Fast food is really bad for you, which is why KFC is warning people from space.

At least that's how I read it. A huge ad of Colonel Sanders outside Area 51 near Roswell, home of various space craft that the US government don't want you to know about or just lots of desert.

Either way, it’s a fitting choice to create a really big ad or 'astro-vertisement' as I like to call it (OK, that's not me) of Kentucky Fried Chicken's founder Colonel Sanders.

It's like a planetary warning telling passing little grey men to stay away from the planet Earthy because we're infected by junk food.

It could be seen by KFC as an act of penance for making and selling all of that disgusting crap and selling it on every street corner.

Hopefully passing interstellar vessels will see it and cancel any plans to say hello to pals at Area 51, invade or convene with John Travolta (a fan of KFC) and the rest of the Scientologists, who are waiting for Battlefield Earth to being for real... or something.

Seriously though, KFC has created the huge face in the desert as part of a worldwide redesign of the chain's restaurants and brand logo.

I don't know, what is it? It strikes me as odd to choose the desert to kick off your global rebranding.

In the rebrand, Sanders appears in a red cook's apron, rather than the iconic white suite jacket, as this gives KFC the "chance not only to make sure we stay relevant, but also communicates to customers the realness of Colonel Sanders and the fact that he was a chef."

He was a chef? Well, they could at least tell us what he cooked.

2006-11-08T10:51:00.000Z

LA inevitable

Resistance is futile. The LA Times editor has lost his battle over staff cuts and quit.

Back in September, Jeffrey Johnson, publisher of the Los Angeles Times, and Dean Baquet, the editor, refused to lay off staff at the paper on the orders of bosses at parent group the Tribune Company, sparking a rebellion between title against its parent company.

Johnson was said to have reached a "temporary understanding" with his employers and that neither he nor Baquet were about to be sacked.

Today, Reuters is reporting that Baquet has resigned and that in a sombre meeting with hundreds of staff in the newsroom, publisher David Hiller said: "Dean and I spoke, and we decided we really have a different vision of where this newspaper is going." He added that there would be staff cuts next year but declined to say how many or whether they would be achieved by attrition or layoffs.

The publishers always somehow manage to survive and escape the swing.

Apparently Hiller's comments were greeted mostly with silence from reporters and editors, some of whom were in tears, according to people who attended the meeting.

Baquet is being replaced by Jim O'Shea, currently managing editor of The Chicago Tribune, will take up the position on Monday.

This all follows the rumour earlier this week that entertainment mogul David Geffen's sale of a Jackson Pollock painting for $140m (£73.4m) has intensified speculation that he plans to buy the LA Times.

Reports say that Geffen, founder of Geffen Records and co-founder of the Dreamworks film studio, is prepared to pay up to $2bn in cash for the newspaper. Other businessmen to register an interest in buying the LA Times are Eli Broad and Ron Burkle, who made their fortunes in real estate and supermarkets respectively.

2006-11-08T09:23:00.000Z

Ebay fakes

Ebay needs to get a grip of its community as sellers are exposed as hawking fakes.

I've used Ebay a few times, not much of a fan. My mum likes it, but she likes 'CSI' and is obsessed by Las Vegas, so really I'm not sure what that says.

BBC One's Watchdog last night showed that some of the sellers that eBay calls its most reliable sellers ("pillars of the eBay community") are selling high quality counterfeits, but that's not really the point.

Among the products bought by the programme's researchers were counterfeit Prada shoes sold as authentic. The real shoes would cost around £190, but a £40 bid for a pair of "genuine" new ones was successful.

Two bogus Christian Dior bags that were sold as 100% brand new and authentic were snapped up for £75. The bags apparently appeared to be bought from different sellers, in fact they were from the same one. Watchdog said these were the worst copies the programme obtained, with shoddy detail and - here's the big clue – the bags were stuffed with Thai newspapers.

Also bought was a good copy of a Chloe bag and some highly sought after Adidas Y-3 trainers. Small details revealed these to be fake: no shoe should have the same number, but these did.

The report comes on the back of others about people being ripped off by the unscrupulous on eBay.

Ebay really does need to do more to protect customers from being conned and to protect itself. While the early model seemed ground breaking and exciting, it now seems worryingly prone to attack from the unscrupulous.

eBay says counterfeit goods are not allowed. But several big-name manufacturers feel the online marketplace – the most visited commercial website in the UK - isn't doing enough to police the problem.

Mike Roylance of Adidas said: "There are some really serious criminals behind this. We're seeing people going out to the Far East to bring containers in just to sell on eBay. They're making millions - it's big, big business."

eBay has a system for monitoring counterfeit goods, but the onus is on genuine brands to alert them of the ones to remove. That's the wrong way around.

When eBay does take down adverts for fake goods, it is easy for the traders caught out to do exactly the same again using a different name.

Since hearing the programme's findings, eBay has taken down ads from the sellers identified as selling counterfeit goods.

2006-11-07T16:20:00.000Z

Female Beauty

People seem to have realised, courtesy of a Dove ad, over the weekend that female beauty is a con.

I could have you this (in a nice way of course) a long time ago. Who hasn't had the before and after experience. The after being at 7am and alcohol free. What that's just me? You're kidding.

Luckily it's the person that's inside that counts, you know, or something.

There's a big feature about this in The Times today where Mary Ann Sieghart gets The Dove treatment. Her conclusion, she looks better but feels fake. Fake's good right?

Anyway, we wrote about this on Brand Republic a couple of weeks ago. So if you haven't seen it take a look.

This is what we said when we made it ad of the week.

This Canadian ad, called "evolution" and created by Ogilvy Toronto, for Unilever's Dove ad continues the theme of using real women by showing how most cosmetics advertising use make-up, lighting, camera angles and image manipulation to create the illusion of beauty. The ad starts by focusing on a young woman's spotty face. She is then made up by stylists, has her hair done by hairdressers, is photographed under intense light, has her image manipulated by computer artists with her neck stretched, eyes lifted and face airbrushed. The image is then put on a billboard. The ad ends with the tagline "No wonder our perception of beauty is distorted. Take part in the Dove Beauty Workshop for Girls."

2006-11-06T10:50:00.000Z

Nice war

The MoD is under for fire for spending £1.5m on an Army TV ad.

The ad, made by Publicis, was shot in Chile in South America. The £1.5m cost makes it one of the most expensive British Army ads ever made.

Critics are suggesting that the "forward as one" spot, which features paratroopers running out of the back of a C-130 transport plane and clearing a house with grenades, roping out of a helicopter, before converging on a bridge with more troops and vehicles, is a waste of taxpayers’ money.

It looks pretty expensive and you imagine it’s the kind of thing that happens in the Brecon Beacons and on Salisbury Plain all the time.

Which is why you have to wonder why they flew all the men and equipment to South America for the ad.

This all comes at a time when troops fighting in the field are short of everything from Kevlar to bullets and properly armoured vehicles.

Ad agencies love to travel and even better to travel on a client's budget. Everyone knows that long-time favourite locations are New Zealand where you can film everything from people hula hooping (Heart FM), apples in an orchard (Magners), young people in the street (T-Mobile) and so many more. South Africa is a long time adland favourite as well.

So, it is good to see Chile getting a look in. Although, to be honest, the explanation of the MoD doesn't quite ring true.

"Part of the appeal of the Army is that you get to travel the world. The ad was intended to show that and did so very well."

Really? Scrub land and forests with some mud and a bridge that looks like England. Or possible more like Scotland?

Looks like another example of the COI not controlling costs and allowing budgets to spiral as the governments spending on advertising continues to soar.

In August, it was reported the COI had spent £168m on advertising as the department came under fire as departments including the Home Office and the Department for Work and Pensions questioned its value.

2006-11-02T16:13:00.000Z

Awash with MTV

Copenhagen is awash with pictures of the youthful Justin Timberlake, as MTV makes its attempt to own a significant portion of the promotional space for this year's MTV Europe Awards ceremony.

Artists confirmed for the event, held at the city’s Bella Center, include The Killers, Timberlake himself, Keane, Muse and the newly added Australian rock act Jet. This year’s sponsors include Replay Blue Jeans, Opel/Vauxhall and Sony Ericsson, which seems to be winning the battle in the advertising stakes, not only being included on all the MTV Europe Awards promotional material, but also taking several high-profile sites throughout the city to promote its new W850i Walkman mobile phone. If the other sponsors have their own promotional sites, they certainly aren't as visible.

The mobile phone company and Replay seem like a good brand fit, but the connection between Opel/Vauxhall and the youth music channel is less obvious, although the car marque is set to complete a pan-European television and web campaign based around the awards tonight to coincide with the ceremony. Copenhagen’s press is also full of stories regarding the event including a secret gig from The Killers, which was attended by Timberlake and his A-list movie star girlfriend Cameron Diaz.

Events to come include the pre-show party, starting at 7pm local time, the event itself, which starts at 8.30pm and the aftershow party that starts at 10.45pm and that eventually closes at 4am, and includes sets from actress Juliette Lewis and her band The Licks and DJ sets from Santa Cruz residents Goldierocks and DJ Lazer. Only a few hours to go, until one of Europe’s biggest music events starts and is broadcast to the world.

The journalists are out in force, and every media or creative agency chief executive that could blag a ticket already has. And if your names not down, you’re definitely not coming in...

2006-11-02T11:29:00.000Z

MySun

The Sun, from a relatively slow start, is really starting to show how Web 2.0 should be done online.

Its user-generated content website MySun already has more than 130 blog entries with bloggers regularly posting and picking up decent amounts of reads, with a surprising number of literate and readable blog entries.

Users can also create a MySun homepage complete with personally selected categories of articles, with the personalisation clearly taking its cue from News Corp comrade MySpace.

Its forums are sparking with debate and its online videos are pulling a real pull.

This all less than two months after the major overhaul of The Sun's website, which is putting it ahead of some of its more established newspaper rivals.

It has also put the investment into the project editorially, with MySun boasting a six-strong team dedicated running the project in which a community editor, hired specifically to run the feature, oversees a team of editorial moderators.

Pete Picton, Sun online editor says that one of the key drivers was to get the readers involved, and why not? It's free content, more ad inventory and then there are all those page impressions.

Picton says that traffic numbers and numbers of people signing up has exceeded expectation and that new features and developments of the service would soon appear.

"Previously we haven't given readers a huge number of option to get involved with the website. This is giving them the chance to respond to content, to write and review content, and create their own comments.

"What we hope this will grow into is readers creating their own areas around the site, to review albums and review holidays, to start to create that kind of rich content. Doing this creates a loyalty because the readers feel more involved with the site," Picton said.

2006-11-01T14:12:00.001Z

AdVerbatims

Newish site called AdVerbatims, really this is apparently just want people say, and you can easily believe it. Very funny with lots of quotes from agency and client idiots, all laugh out loud stuff.

For instance:

#118- "It's amazing how well you interpreted the brief. This piece is exactly what we wanted, you could not have made it any better, I love it. But I also think it’s too good. This is for a bigger client, a more international one. We're not like that. See if you can do something shittier that we can use."
(Client, same Marketing Manager)

Or others just as choice:

"I don’t get paid for thinking."
(Agency, Art Director)

"Thinking in vain, that's our business."
(Agency, Account Director)

2006-11-01T09:28:00.000Z

Google ad

Google is set to overtake Channel 4's ad revenue by the end of year and ITV1 by 2008.

If you hadn't realised the ground had seismically shifted, then this is your final wake-up call before you roll over and go back to sleep.

Last month, it was reported that UK internet advertising spend rose by more than 40% in the first half of the year to £917.2m, and is now just under a percentage point behind national newspapers in terms of share.

The IAB said that the gap between online and newspaper advertising is narrowing fast and if this growth rate continues then online will be a £2bn medium by the New Year.

Newspapers are one thing, but television really seals it. The search giant will pull in around £900m of ad revenue in the UK by the end of the year according to Duncan, in comparison with Channel 4's estimated £800m.

If it’s passing C4, it must have passed Five already and that means ITV is not far off from being surpassed as more and more cash goes online.

Media buyers are saying that Google overtake ITV1 as early as next year.

Duncan said that traditional media needed to wake up to growing threat of online ad revenue.

"People need to wake up and realise that this is not just a cyclical issue. There is a deep structural change taking place. If we want to protect the fantastic legacy of UK broadcasting, we need to wake up to this sooner rather than later."

He's right, but it isn't just the TV industry -- it is the media industry as a whole that needs to wake up and really look beyond what they are doing to compete with pure-play online firms like Google.

As newspapers are passed, many in that industry must have already realised that they have become content islands quite separate from the rest of the online industry. Virtually all of the major newspaper groups, even those who have done great work online, lack any type of community and that is what everything online comes back to.

TV as well as papers should be in an ideal position to exploit it and bring in that extra ad revenue, but no one has yet.

2006-10-31T12:09:00.000Z

Express this

Some people shouldn't be allowed to own national newspapers. Richard Desmond is one of those.

Yesterday's decision to cut 35 jobs – including the entire City desk – is further evidence of this.

Former porn baron Desmond seems to be using the paper as a cash cow and pension fund. Last year, he received £27.2m in payouts and pension funds from the Express Group.

This week, he cuts 35 staff to ensure the "company remains in a sound financial position"!

No seriously, that's what group editorial director Paul Ashford told staff.

"We need to act quickly to ensure that the company remains in a sound financial position and circulations can continue to be supported.

"Very regrettably, this may mean approximately 30 to 35 redundancies across the editorial department plus tighter controls on freelance costs and contribution budgets."

The City desk could probably explain to Desmond that if you take out almost £30m out of the business, things are not going to be so financially sound.

Solution? Sack the entire City desk and replace it with Press Association copy. It's a first for a national newspaper: a title without a City desk.

The Express has been shoddy for years, this is just another nail in its coffin. In the latest ABC figures, the title dropped 1.27% to 818,942, but its six-month average circulation fall was sharper, down by 4.80%.

My guess is that in the not-too-distant future, Desmond will sell the Express after he has taken out of it all that he can.

Earlier in the month, the Daily Express dismissed six trainee journalists just one month into their two-year contracts following "a re-evaluation of the group's internet strategy".

Errr which one is that?

2006-10-31T11:26:00.000Z

Low Five

Jane Lighting didn't pull her punches in parting company with Dan Chambers.

Five's chief executive praised him with "Dan has done a good job" before sticking the knife in with "we now need a creative director with the skills and expertise to run a portfolio of channels".

Sorry Dan that isn't you, seems to be the subtext. Five has done a lot to move itself on from its early days of football, soft porn and movies.

It does have some quality programming from the US with the likes of 'Gray's Anatomy' and 'House', which put it firmly in Channel 4's back yard. Then it has the likes of its cop related slate of 'CSI' and 'NCIS'.

But, unlike C4, it hasn't ever really made the jump to producing much in the way of quality drama that way C4 has with 'Shameless', 'Black Books' and 'Green Wing'.

However, it is starting to do more and has a new backpacker drama, 'Tripping Over', starting this week from 'Cold Feet' writer Mike Bullen. Being something of a first, and funded by Chambers with the cash saved from axing lame soap 'Family Affairs', it has had some good write-ups.

Sadly, according to Media Guardian despite a largely positive critical reaction it debuted last night with an underwhelming 900,000 viewers and a 5% share between 10pm and 11pm, according to unofficial overnights.

Shame, but if you will tuck it away at 10pm then really, what do you expect?

Other than that, there is increasingly little to distinguish C4 and Five. They both rely on reality programming with Five filling up on the likes of 'The Farm', 'Make Me a Supermodel' and 'Back to Reality'. Not quite 'Big Brother'.

Five also rivals C4 on the home and gardens front, as well with its slew of house related programming, which is also pretty indistinguishable.

Maybe that is the problem. Maybe that is why Five's annual audience share has notably fallen since its high of 6.6% in 2004, and is now down to 5.8% this year.

Time to strike out. Its just-launched digital channels, Five US and Five Life, should give it some scope to do that.

2006-10-28T16:08:00.000+01:00

Whistle Dixie

NBC has banned spots promoting the documentary about the Dixie Chicks slating President Bush.

The major US TV network, owned by General Electric, said the ban was part of its policy of barring ads that dealt with "public controversy".

The documentary, 'Shut Up & Sing', has also been banned by the new CW network, created out of the Warner/UPN merger.

The film documents the incident in London back in March 2003 when the Dixie Chicks' said they were "ashamed" to come from the same state as President George W. Bush. That's harsh on the Lone Star state.

Ironically, Bush doesn't even come from Texas. The whole thing is a myth he comes from Connecticut. He is a god to honest Connecticut Yankee. He tried to get into Texas State to do Law, but they wouldn't take him. He went to Harvard instead...wonder how he got in there? Later he became Texas governor and that ranch he's always pictured hanging around? He bought it five minutes before he entered the Whitehouse. He's about as cowboy as I am.

'Shut Up & Sing', directed by Cecilia Peck and Oscar winner Barbara Kopple, offers a behind-the-scenes look at the backlash sparked by Maines' anti-Bush outburst in 2003.

Maines later said she was sorry for "disrespecting the office of the president" but fanned flames anew when she retracted her apology in a Time magazine interview this year, saying: "I don't feel he is owned any respect whatsoever".

The banned ad features the moment when lead singer Natalie Maines opened her mouth and got the whole "ashamed" band wagon rolling.

If it hadn't have been for her anti war remarks, and the subsequent banning of their music by conservative country music stations, they would have probably quietly slipped away as their sub Shania Twain country pop career ran its course.

It isn't as if their subsequent post 2003 career has been one where they penned some great 'Born in the USA' type anti war songs. They haven't.

There have been some of these, but they have come from people of substance, such as Willie Nelson who penned one for Christmas 2004.

Their career might be sustained for another ten minutes with this latest controversy as the film's distributor, the Weinstein Company says it's looking at "exploring taking legal action" to fight this political censorship by NBC and CW.

And it probably is a case of political censorship, no doubt about it, but Harvey Weinstein is over egging a little with his statement about "a group of courageous entertainers who were blacklisted for exercising their right of free speech".

Mmm, courageous entertainers who are just out for a buck like everyone else, more like, including the likes of Harvey Weinstein who is renowned for aggressive marketing tactics. Another cheap publicity ploy? Probably.

Ironic bit nunmber two: this is the same network that for seven years gave us the 'West Wing', possibly one of the best shows ever written, that year in and year out detail the life of the best democratic liberal president that America never had.

2006-10-25T15:15:00.000+01:00

Weiland '66

Paul Weiland is destined to be stood up. Having made a very funny film about next to no one attending his Bar Mitzvah, one of his stars Helena Bonham-Carter was a no-show for the UK premier of 'Sixty Six'.

Weiland, best known for directing some of the glossiest commercials around from the Guardian classic “points of view” to Walkers Crisps, has made a true(ish) story out of what was intended to be the biggest day of his young life as his Bar Mitzvah loomed.

With 250 guests planned and a lavish dinner, it was to be a Bar Mitzvah of Bar Mitzvahs. If only England hadn't come from nowhere to win the World Cup in 1966.

In the end, 23 guests turned up. Even the caterer cancelled. At least it left him with a good story to tell, which he apparently did at his 50th birthday two years ago. Luckily Richard Curtis was in the audience and suggested turning the story into a film and a rather good one it is too.

Sadly its UK premiere at the London Film Festival had to go ahead without one of its stars because Bonham-Carter's 2 and a half year old sold broke his arm.

It isn't Weiland's first film. There is 'Roseanna's Grave' and 'City Slickers II', but this is likely to be his best received. Its funny, has that universal ring and is reminiscent of John Boorman's 'Hope and Glory', but with bombs swapped for footballs.

'Sixty Six' also stars Eddie Marsan, Stephen Rea, Catherine Tate and introduces Gregg Sulkin as 'Bernie' aka the young Paul Weiland.

'Sixty Six' is at cinemas from November 3rd and you can watch the trailer here.

2006-10-25T13:03:00.000+01:00

Stem this

Michael J Fox's hard hitting ad in stem cell research is shaking up the US mid term elections. It is quite hard to watch, but very hard hitting.

Fox and the Democrats who is supporting are under fire from the all the usual suspects from Catholic Church and anti-abortionists and George W Bush as well who vetoed a bill supporting research earlier this year.

2006-10-24T15:08:00.000+01:00

Laughable ITV

Pot kettle, kettle black means nothing to ITV. Otherwise it would realise how laughable it looks for it to tell Channel 4 it is being dragged downmarket.

This from the channel that gave us 'Rock Around the Block', 'Hit Me Baby One More Time' and 'Celebrity Wrestling', which had to be pulled from its primetime slot halfway through its eight-week run and put to the sword after attracting only 2m viewers.

None of this has stopped ITV accusing Channel 4 of relying on too few show formats to bolster its audience share, and going downmarket.

Firstly too few formats? Just one word: 'X-Factor'/'Pop Stars/ the Rivals'/'Pop Idol'/A N Other derivative format. Oh and of course 'Celebrity (will they shag) Love Island'. Proper posh, all of it. Then isn't the rest of the ITV schedule just full of the 'The Bill', 'Coronation Street' and 'Emmerdale'?

Marketing reported that Gary Digby, managing director of ITV Sales, made the claims to media agencies during the current “upfront” agency presentations, which precede the annual round of TV negotiations.

Digby apparently claimed that 'Deal or No Deal', which accounts for 10% of C4's impacts, has dragged the channel's profile downmarket. Mike Parker, head of strategic sales for C4, admitted that some programmes delivered a disproportionate volume of impacts, but said that the channel had a diverse schedule.

Digby also said that new programmes have caused Channel 4's share to plummet this autumn. 'Star Stories' was singled out as the worst-performing show ever in the 9pm Friday night slot, which is a bit harsh, seeing as how the show is a very funny celebrity spoof.

Again just two words: 'Celebrity Wrestling'. Well, ITV knows something about ratings disasters. Although it does the business on Saturday night, as far as I know there is nothing on ITV on Friday nights.

2006-10-24T08:51:00.000+01:00

Warzones ban

Bad news. The Ministry of Defence has banned Britain's biggest commercial news broadcaster ITV from frontline.

According to a report in The Times the government has withdrawn cooperation from ITV News in warzones after accusing it of inaccurate and intrusive reports about the fate of wounded soldiers.

There has been a storm brewing recently and the government has been taking it on all fronts, with stories about casualty reports being suppressed in Helmland, warnings of defeat in Afghanistan by senior staff officers and others of troops being mistreated in civilian hospitals back in the UK. Not good.

This only makes things worse. Did a spin doctor come off their axis? While it might feel justified this is the equivalent of putting a sign on the door and saying: this is going badly.

The Times says that the first casualty is ITV’s planned trip to Afghanistan to cover troops marking Remembrance Sunday. Usually a moment in the news cycle when the government can rely of some positive coverage.

ITV sources said last night that the trip had been cancelled because of the row with the MoD.

David Mannion, the head of ITV News, is reported to have written to the MoD and asked for an explanation. He also sent a copy of the letter to the Cabinet Secretary, Sir Gus O’Donnell, a move that is likely to drag Tony Blair into the dispute.

Trouble kicked off last week after ITV broadcast reports showing how British soldiers wounded during the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan are treated when arriving back home.

This has been a PR disaster that the government has let happen. The Sun has been all over this as well, as has the Daily Mail. They've both been running campaigns to improve the care of injured troops with stories such as that in The Sun yesterday exposing "the shambolic security that forced Tony Blair to set up a military ward" exclusively for injured troops.

The ITV reports are said to have topped the agenda at a meeting between ministers, including the Defence Secretary Des Browne, and military chiefs.

MoD sources told The Times that there was concern about images showing identifiable wounded servicemen arriving at Birmingham airport by night. It has been suggested that no permission was obtained from the men and that their families may have been caused distress.

ITV only broadcast later scenes from Headley Court, the MoD's state-of-the art rehabilitation centre where seriously injured personnel are taken. The MoD has accused ITV of a "hatchet job".

In an email to ITV the MoD’s director of news, James Clark, said: "As bad a hatchet-job as I’ve seen in years. Cheap shots all over the place, no context, no reasonable explanation. Like the Daily Star in moving pictures. If giving ITN detailed exposure to our people, lengthy briefing and open access results in this, then I dread to think how your editors and producers would look to exploit access to our people in theatres (of war), or our chiefs and ministers."

That email omitted any specific details of perceived errors.

Following that, the MoD ceased cooperation with ITV by withdrawing access to "embeds", the much-sought placements for reporters with battlefield units.

Mark Wood, chief executive of ITN, which produces ITV News, told The Times: "We are not happy about the way it has been handled. They [the MoD] have objected to some of our coverage but we haven’t quite worked out what the repercussions are. We welcome any criticism particularly if it is pointing to factual errors or inaccuracies. What we have had is criticism of our coverage which has not actually gone into any detail of what is factually wrong."

2006-10-21T11:56:00.000+01:00

Media loons

In case you missed the email exchange, which was sparked Julie Burchill's letter to the Sunday Times Letters page, responding to a India Knight column last Sunday defending the wearing of the veil, which annoyed Julie Burchill no end and prompted her to send an open letter suggesting India visit a mosque "after covering your filthy female head in the Islamist fashion, of course, and spread your glad tidings that 'Muslims are the new Jews'. You'd be lucky to get out alive."

To: letters@sunday-times.co.uk
From: Julie Burchill

Dear India Knight,
I dare you to walk into any mosque - after covering your filthy female head in the Islamist fashion, of course - and spread your glad tidings that "Muslims are the new Jews."
You'll be lucky if you get out alive.
Yours sincerely,
JB
PS: I see that your new book is a compilation of 'dirty bits' from novels. I'd love to know how this fits in with your new found love of feminine modesty and discretion.

To: Julie Burchill
From: India Knight

Oh, for fuck's sake. I don't have a "newfound love of modesty and discretion" - I just don't despise people on the basis of what they wear.
Regards,
IK

To: India Knight
From: Julie Burchill

What, not even the working class slags in crop tops you're forever slagging off, you hypocritical snob?

To: Julie Burchill
From: India Knight

I do NOT slag off working class people in crop tops, you fucking loon. Where? When? Why would I slag them off? I am many things but I am not a snob. God, you're driving me mad. Go away.

To: India Knight
From: Julie Burchill

I wrote to the letters page, not YOU, you stalking cretin. Why dont you fuck off and turn yet another of your husbands gay?

2006-10-19T11:56:00.000+01:00

Fat spoof

Religious fervour has been rumbling at The Express towers since the news broke that the Daily Star planned a spoof Islamic editorial piece, called the Daily Fatwa.

The inflammatory page six mock-up didn't see the light of day, and was pulled by deputy editor Ben Knowles at the last minute, in favour of an article about the Seven Wonders of the World. Needless to say, Jordan's breasts featured.

Intent on doing its bit for race relations, the Daily Fatwa featured a "Page 3 Burkha Babes Special", a reader competition to "burn a flag, win a Corsa", and most soberingly of all, a leader column headed "Allah is Great", entirely blank save for a censored stamp. "No news, no goss, no fun" was the page's strapline.

The NUJ chapel intervened late on Tuesday night once the news filtered through about the Daily Star's intentions, and issued this statement: "The chapel fears that this editorial content poses a very serious risk of violent and dangerous reprisals from religious fanatics who may take offence at these articles. This may place staff in great jeopardy."

NUJ general secretary Jeremy Dear, was more pointed: "This was an outrageous and hugely irresponsible idea which fortunately our chapel courageously resisted and, in so doing, protected both the paper and its staff from possible serious repercussions."

Staff at the Daily Star reportedly threatened to walk out if the Daily Fatwa article had been printed, showing the high level of emotion the issue has raised.

Had the Daily Star gone ahead with its Daily Fatwa piece, the consequences -- at least in the UK -- could have been as severe as the reaction to the Islamic cartoons, which were published by a Danish newspaper at the beginning of the year.

The editor of Muslim News, Ahmed Versi, agrees: "This would have created a huge, huge backlash and outcry. I'm quite sure there would have been huge demonstrations outside the paper by the weekend and internationally."

It makes you wonder exactly what would have happened outside Express Towers had the NUJ not intervened. The Daily Star's sister title, The Express, hasn't shied from jumping on the Islamaphobia bandwagon recently either. Yesterday's Express led with the results of a reader poll, which found that 98% of responders backed a total ban on the wearing of veils by Muslim women.

Of course, the issue wouldn't be so fervent hadn't Commons Leader Jack Straw recently told the press of his dislike of veils being worn by Muslim women. The issue isn't likely to abate any time soon. Come back Princess Di front pages, all is forgiven.

2006-10-19T09:05:00.000+01:00

Corporate life

Business are turning to virtual world Second Life to use it as a three-dimensional test bed.

Corporate marketers, including Sony BMG Music Entertainment, Sun Microsystems, Nissan, Adidas/Reebok, Toyota and Starwood Hotels are already on board.

Earlier this week we reported that Reuters were opening up shop, and Bartle Bogle Hegarty and Leo Burnett already have virtual space.

Is it just me or is Second Life, which started out more as a video game in 1999, where people can choose to look like pretty much whatever they like (a beautiful babe or a dragon), becoming a bit too much like…well, real life?

A three-dimensional test bed for corporate marketers? I can't imagine that's the real life most people are looking for let alone a virtual second life.

In Second Life, retailers like Reebok, Nike, Amazon and American Apparel have all set up shops to sell digital as well as real world versions of their products. Last week, Sun Microsystems unveiled a new pavilion promoting its products, and IBM alumni held a virtual world reunion.

Singer song writer Ben Folds is to promote a new album with two virtual appearances. At one, he will play the opening party for Aloft, the digital prototype for a new chain of hotels planned by Starwood Hotels. Folds will also appear virtually at a new facility his music label's parent company, Sony BMG, is opening at a complex called Media Island.

According to a piece in the New York Times today, until a few months ago only one or two real world companies had dipped their toes in the synthetic water. Now there are at least 30 companies working on projects and dozens more are considering ideas.

This is how it works A company or its ad agency buys an “island” for a one-time fee of $1,250 and a monthly rate of $195 a month. Nissan has done it for its new Sentra model. It then created a driving course where Second Life players could drive on Nissan Island.

It could just be me, but who wants to do stuff in a virtual world that you do in the real world?

Philip Rosedale, the chief executive of Linden Labs, the San Francisco company that operates Second Life, said: "It’s taken off in a way that is kind of surreal."

Well not really surreal, more like a virtual strip mall and no surprise that some Second Lifers are concerned that digital world will soon have a Starbucks on every corner.

Virtual coffee? That is never going to work.

2006-10-18T11:10:00.000+01:00

Sony Bravia Mk2

You really are only as good as your last piece of work. And when your last spot happens to be an award-winning Jose Gonzales sound-tracked advertainment by Fallon featuring the technicolour balls bouncing down the streets of San Francisco (here for your enjoyment) directed by Nicolai Fugzlig, then you have a lot to live up to. Sadly, the new Sony Bravia spot doesn't quite make it, there's lots too enjoy, but it hits a wrong note for me.

The Jonathan Glazer directed spot (you can watch it here) falls short, feels flat, hackneyed (it could well be Hackney’s fine council estates) and its full of paint. Was there a joke in there somewhere about paint balls? Maybe not.

There is the nod to 'Clockwork Orange' in there with the council estate and the classical music soundtrack (Rossini’s Thieving Magpie) but still, it isn't something that you could watch over and over and still enjoy. It’s hard to say exactly what it is, but the music is wrong, Rossini is nice, but doesn't quite fit.

I'm not alone. Visitors to Brand Republic's Forums are not impressed either.

Millie22 says "I think I am disappointed? I was really, really looking forward to it, but some bits (think there is a blue firework for example?) look so digitally placed it isn't right?"

Blindsided thinks it’s the music as well: "But the music is...how can I say it? $hit."

Mrs Belmont thinks the music sucks as well and has a few suggestions: "They should DEFINITELY have used better music like ‘My Colouring Book’ by Dusty Springfield, Abba or anything at all from Joseph and His Amazing Technicolour Coat."

While Linsterman says: "It is nowhere near having the same shivering-down-the-spine effect as the first one with Jose Gonzales balls."

2006-10-18T09:41:00.000+01:00

SueTube

Universal is suing video sharing sites. Not YouTube, but sites very much like it.

As people ponder the $1.6bn plus Google paid for YouTube, Universal is weighing in with what are expected to be the first of a number of law suits for alleged copyright infringement.

In the firing line are Grouper Networks and Bolt, which are being accused of using hundreds of music videos of artists such as Mariah Carey, Mary J. Blige, 50 Cent and Black Eyed Peas without permission.

This could be a real problem for the new wave of user-generated content video sites. For while it might be fun to watch quirky little videos, the real business is in content such as music videos which really drive traffic to the sites.

You can see why companies like Universal might be unhappy. They invest in artists, make music videos, and then sites which they have no stake in and gain nothing from make money out of their efforts.

"User-generated sites like Grouper and Bolt that derive so much of their value from the traffic that our videos, recordings and songs generate cannot reasonably expect to build their business on the backs of our content and the hard work of our artists and songwriters, without permission and without in any way compensating the content creators," a Universal spokesman said.

The move had an immediate effect as Bolt media president Jay Gould posted a message on the New York-based company's website asking users to refrain from uploading copyrighted music videos.

"We understand the love you have for your favourite musical artists," Gould wrote, "but Bolt respects rights of copyright owners such as Universal Music and their artists."

But Grouper CEO Josh Felser was upbeat and said he expected to win the lawsuit.

There was much talk prior to the sale of YouTube of legal trouble ahead.

Dotcom billionaire investor Mark Cuban predicting that YouTube will be "sued into oblivion" on the back of copyright violations.

"They are just breaking the law. The only reason it hasn't been sued yet is because there is nobody with big money to sue."

Analysts had predicted a flood of copyright lawsuits against UGC and social media sites, with some observers saying media companies will probably target several of YouTube's smaller competitors to establish a legal precedent before taking on YouTube itself.

If they can win some judgments saying these sites are not protected then music publishers will have all they need.

According to Cuban: "They [will] have all the leverage in the world to dictate licensing terms to sites that until now have not proactively enforced copyright but have instead chosen to rely on rights holders' takedown notices."

Like YouTube, Grouper allows people watch, share and create videos for the web. It is owned by Sony Pictures Entertainment, which paid $65m for the online video site in August.

I'm sure they'll come to a deal. It is all about being able to monetise the content and share that effectively with the owners of the content. Sites like Grouper and YouTube have the traffic and are making money, now they just need to share it.

And that is already starting to happen. Last month YouTube signed a deal with Warner Music Group to share revenue from online ads that appear on its site alongside uploaded Warner music videos. The agreement also applies to consumer-created content featuring Warner-owned music.

2006-10-16T16:00:00.000+01:00

Digital Fad

Former Express editor Richard Addis isn't buying everything on offer in the digital newspaper revolution.

Addis is writing in the Independent about the Daily Telegraph and its "digital revolution", on which subject has been a lot written about recently, centring particularly on multimedia convergence.

He isn't sceptical about the whole thing just part of it and rightly so.

Against a background of crumbing old media, and the prospect of all titles, even the Financial Times and The Guardian and The New York Times, becoming free in the not too distant future, he talks about two ideas that are dominating the digital debate.

The first is convergence and the other is citizen journalism or user-generated content. To his mind the first is a fad and the second is really going to rock the boat.

I couldn't agree more, as I've said a few times recently, there is a big future for UGC/citizen journalism. And even more recently about some of the problems UGC faces.

On the other front though, that of multimedia converged journalism where print reporters become broadcasters and camera men there is less of a future.

It all sounds rather like David Montgomery's Academy of Excellence at Trinity Mirror, do you remember that? He was going to get rid of production journalists and have reporters write them straight onto the page.

This idea failed terribly. For similar reasons Addis sees problems with the converged multimedia journalist.

"The most important point is that all types of journalism are a deep craft. Journalists know this. Management consultants tend not to. The problem is that in a business crisis like the one we're having now, the consultants get powerful.

"There are myriads of small skills involved in writing a good headline or producing a decent story that are individually not especially complex but collectively make all the difference. These skills do not transfer well from print to radio or from video to column writing.

"The second point is that convergence encourages the wrong kind of journalism. The stuff that does translate well is precisely the stuff that we want less of, the journalism of very little value. We're all sick of commoditised news. What we're hungry for is insight, wit, personality, attitude. That is precisely what dies first on the multimedia spokes. And then to cap it all, the fabled efficiencies are vastly over-rated. Fewer Jacks of all Trades are very seldom more efficient than a greater number of Masters of Some. Particularly now when part-time and freelance and home working is so much easier and more prevalent and there are Masters for hire all over the place."

You can see where he's going, but hey it's a learning curve and a time of experimentation and all of the newspaper groups are trying new things as digital development takes the lead.

The last but one great revolution of newspapers has come (tabloids/compacts and Berliners) and this all in the same week that Guardian Media Group has renamed its national newspaper division, which comprises The Guardian, The Observer and digital arm Guardian Unlimited, as Guardian News & Media.

Did you see what it did? It dropped the word "newspaper". GMG said the changes reflected the growth of its multimedia and online activities since 2001. GNL has undergone major new-media expansions in the past five years, with the launch of numerous websites, and the decision to rename is part of that change.

Update: There's just no stopping the Telegraph. Today it announced it has hired Shaun Gregory, former managing director of national brands at Emap Radio, in what Media Weeek says is a move is expected to see the newspapers' "multi-tasking newsroom contribute bulletins to linear TV news programmes".

His appointment follows a deal with ITN to produce video content for telegraph.co.uk, which is expected to be expanded into linear TV programming that could lead to a new television channel, featuring Telegraph content that is likely to be broadcast online initially with a view to securing carriage on the Freeview and Sky digital platforms.

Telegraph TV on your EPG? Who has the time.

2006-10-15T13:16:00.000+01:00

French affair

This is how the French are advertising a dirty weekend in London by EuroStar. It does make you look a little differently at baked beans. Okay, I'm off to the greasy spoon. It all looks quite tempting.

2006-10-13T11:10:00.000+01:00

Bomb Al-Jazeera

David Blunkett wanted to bomb Al-Jazeera. Clearly he is never planning to return to office.

With the acres of coverage in the UK press, on former home office minister Blunkett's diary, this admission nearly slipped through the net, but was covered by the Daily Mirror ahead of a Channel 4 programme.

He apparently urged Tony Blair to commit what would have been a war crime and bomb the Arabic news channel Al-Jazeera in neutral Qatar, which is an ally.

George W Bush had already been revealed at the end of last year to have suggested such a plan to bomb the Qatar offices of Al Jazeera. The Mirror broke that story too.

In that incident you'll remember that the British government went on to block the media from publishing the contents of a leaked memo, which recorded Bush allegedly suggesting the plan to bomb the Qatar offices of Arab television network Al Jazeera.

At the time Blair dissuaded him from doing so pointing out that such an attack would provoke a major backlash.

Blunkett tells the Channel 4 Dispatches programme (a two-part screening of the audio-diaries he kept during his time in the Cabinet), to be shown next week, that he viewed the Arab television station as a legitimate target. Clearly illegality and war crimes are not issues that trouble him.

Asked whether he was not worried that this would be "outside the rules of engagement", Blunkett says:

"There wasn't a worry from me because I believed that this was a war and in a war you wouldn't allow the broadcast to continue taking place".

Dispatches reporter Isabel Tang replies: "But al-Jazeera was a civilian target."

Blunkett replies: "Well, I don't think that there are targets in a war that you can rule out because you don't actually have military personnel inside them if they are attempting to win a propaganda battle on behalf of your enemy."

Tang points out that this is against international law, but Blunkett is having none of it.

"Well I don't think for a minute in previous wars we'd have thought twice about ensuring that a propaganda mechanism on the soil of the country you were invading would actually continue being able to propagandise against you."

The Mirror reports that two weeks after Mr Blunkett pressed the Prime Minister to attack al-Jazeera, the station's Baghdad offices were bombed by the Americans, killing journalist Tareq Ayoub.

Asked about that attack , Blunkett does at least draw a line there, making a vague distinction about the difference between taking out the transmission and taking out journalists "even if you don't agree with them".

UPDATE: There was a joke in here somewhere about the "Dog of War", but I couldn't bring myselt to make it. Oh wait...

2006-10-12T12:22:00.000+01:00

Community skills

Lots of post and comments recently about online community, I've certainly written a couple of posts about user-generated content and it was a big part of the Guardian Media Group chief executive Carolyn McCall's AOP speech.

One of the issues it throws up is the skills that are required by publishers to monitor and run all of these new community projects, particularly blogs and other types of users generated content.

The blagging blogger, in the celeb thread below (?!) has posted on this and it's worth starting a thread of its own:

"The online community is really beginning to drive the agenda isn't it? Having said that there does appear to be a skills gap out there. Witness Kevin Anderson, new head of blogging at The Guardian's email to staff:

"We need someone with basic online community experience to help us for a couple of weeks go through the threads at Comment is Free and monitor comments for libel and violations of our talk policy. Right now, we can guarantee two weeks of work, but there might be scope for ongoing work. References required..."

These are issues we're currently looking at on Brand Republic. As part of the relaunch we're going to be posting lots of user-generated content, which all needs to be looked at. And to service that we're hiring a community editor as one of the key members or our new expanded team. It's a big job, but a new and no traditionalist area of journalism, which could in a few years be commonplace.

At the recent AOP conference a speaker from CNET, Tom Bureau, managing director, spoke about the vast amount of UGC they were getting and the systems that had been put in place (you could only post after being a member for so long and good posters were rewarded), which goes someway to answering the problem.

But as the Kevin Anderson comment above shows it’s a huge problem and it only takes a little slip (a big slip will work also) to get through to open you up, which means ideally that everything that is published has to be checked once and anything even vaguely smelling of trouble is flagged for more senior eyes.

Part of the key to this is laying down a strict set to rules and one of these rules is avoid talking about individuals where possible (tough for Comment is Free to do), but easier for us maybe although still very challenging.

UPDATE: Obviously good timing to have this post. Yesterday a Florida woman has been awarded $11.3m after she was libelled online.

The award, believed to be the largest verdict of it sort relating to individual postings on bulletin boards or blogs, was handed down by a jury in Broward County, Florida, against a woman from Louisiana. The sum included $5m (£2.7m) in punitive damages

While British judges can't pump up court payouts with punitive damages it's worth remembering this when considering the mass of UGC posts and comments.

According to a report in the Guardian With almost two new blogs created every second, and 1.6m postings each day, said the San Francisco site Technorati, the mass of unmediated comment from individuals is changing the face of media law.

"This is a growing trend because of the exponential growth in the number of people publishing on the internet who do not have the training or oversight of traditional hardcopy publishers," said Dave Heller, a lawyer with the New York-based Media Law Resource Center which monitors legal actions arising from the web.

Craig Delsack, a media lawyer in Manhattan, said that many bloggers were publishing first, thinking later: "People are thinking they can say what they want but they don't realise the long-lasting implications of what they write and that they can be held accountable. Posting is not like having a conversation in the bedroom with your boyfriend."

2006-10-12T09:08:00.000+01:00

Celebrity a-go-go

Ad agencies are finding it easier to entice high-calibre celebs to do ads.

A report in the New York Times this morning says agencies are finding more, and better, choices among celebrities for their campaigns and they are not just talking about Bob Dylan and his recent turn for Apple to flog his new album Modern Times (which I sort of meant to get, but then thought better of).

They are talking about Oscar-winning actors like Nicole Kidman, Sally Field, Susan Sarandon, Diane Keaton and Robert de Niro who are no longer talking about going to Italy or Japan, where the likes of Sean Connery and others have gone in the past to shoot foreign ads (highlighted by Bill Murray as the world-weary film star character in Sofia Coppola's film 'Lost in Translation').

The piece says that at some point in the last five years, Hollywood lost its snobbery toward commercials, leaving only a few actors holding out.

Kidman has, of course been one of the most high profile advocates, but then she did sign up for that Baz Luhrman directed £18m two-minute ad for Chanel No 5, billed as the most expensive made to date.

In the US now, the figure for celebs in ads is running at about 20%, up from 10%, although it appears lower in the UK where most of the decent celeb ads feature Americans, such as Clooney for Martini or Jennifer Aniston for Barclaycard.

"That old stigma that celebrities were selling out by doing a commercial has gone by the wayside," said Linda Kaplan Thaler, the chief executive and creative officer of the Kaplan Thaler Group. She told the paper "The days of Brad Pitt doing a commercial in Japan that he thought no one was going to see are gone."

Of course, Pitt famous did a Heineken commercial that ran in the US during the 2005 Super Bowl, but it isn't quite true about celebs doing the whole big in Japan or anywhere you can get paid to flog some old crap being over.

It was only last year that everyone's favourite fighting Aussie (okay when I say favourite...) Russell Crowe launched a scathing, albeit verbal, attack on his Hollywood peers for appearing in high-paying ads including Robert de Niro, who has advertised American Express (in the US), and Harrison Ford, who has appeared in Japanese cigarette ads in the past.

During an interview with the US edition of GQ magazine, the 'Gladiator' actor said: "I don't use my celebrity to make a living. I don't do ads for suits in Spain like George Clooney or cigarettes in Japan like Harrison Ford.

This upset George, a sensitive save-the-world kind of soul, who fired back that: "I'm glad he set us straight. Harrison, Bob and I were putting a band together called Grunting For 30 Feet, and that would also fall under the heading 'bad use of celebrity'. Thanks for the heads up."

Ouch, and really Russell's music isn't all bad. It is definitely as good as the rest of the music that comes from Down Under... well maybe not as good as Men at Work. You just can't beat quality like that.

One of the points the NY Times article makes is that the spread of the internet has to a degree killed off the appeal of foreign ads as people get to see them world over... and laugh. The other thing the piece says is that celebs are cottoning onto "personal brand potential".

In other words they are looking are after their own brand, which is why they would now rather be associated with top end products at home than less-well-known brands abroad.

The American Express 'My Life. My Card' campaign that was a great example of that, starring the likes of De Niro (whose spot was criticised because it used footage of Ground Zero, but hey it was directed by Martin Scorsese) and our very own Kate Winslet.

2006-10-11T12:40:00.000+01:00

Yahoo! pressure

Google is piling the pressure on Yahoo! after its YouTube acquisition.

Despite being told by some that it is just about to enter a world of legal trouble with its huge $1.65bn acquisition of YouTube, Google is seen as leading the way in terms of dotcom innovation.

It has added YouTube to Blogger, dMarc and Picasa, as well as others it has bought, but YouTube, despite its potential problems, is by far the biggest and most interesting deal it has struck. YouTube has blown away everything else in video that others are trying, including Google's own video service.

Now people are looking to see what Yahoo! will do, and whether it will be able to clinch a deal to buy the number two social networking site Facebook.com to recapture momentum from Google.

Google has raised the bar to a new level with YouTube, echoing back to the 2000 dotcom boom years. Echoing, but not revisiting.

This time around there are just a few big players who are snapping up every new juicy minnow that comes along.

If Yahoo! waits around too long it will be beaten to the punch as the sector gains in confidence and, more importantly, the valuations continue to rise. Second-tier players are seeing their valuations rise in turn.

Who would have guessed a year ago that Google would be paying $1.6bn for a company that makes no money and has less than 70 staff.

Facebook looks like it will cost $1bn. This is a price that Viacom has already blinked at before slinking away.

It's almost double the price paid for Myspace, and Facebook has nowhere near the cachet nor international recognition. Of course, if you tried to buy Myspace this week (if you could) it would cost a billion plus dollars.

Analysts are looking at Yahoo! with disappointment as it gets outmanoeuvred by Google, and are looking for it to do something meaningful to gain positive interest and restore investor confidence.

I've never been a huge Yahoo! fan. From its early days it never looked like a internet firm that had that much vision. It was big and survived, but really it missed a massive trick with its Yahoo! Groups -- the early forerunner of social networking that was born out of its 1999 acquisition of eGroups. Not to mention Geocities, which Yahoo! also bought in 1999.

It evolved from being a search engine into a bit of a hard to define sprawl, no longer a portal, but a generic digital media company with search and content at its heart.

It is now paying attention to its Yahoo! Groups, but too little too late, which is why it is having to consider buying Facebook for $1bn, which is a huge price tag driven up by just months of talk on the future of the web.

Now as for Google, it needs a social network service of its own to rival that of Myspace and Facebook (if it doesn't mount a surprise bid), so I guess there is always Bebo, the UK player, which is still unclaimed.

Viacom has looked at it (as have others), but so far no bid. It won't be too long though.

2006-10-05T14:07:00.000+01:00

ITV lunchtime dilemmas

This is about ITV. In a roundabout way. It's lunchtime, I'm surfing. Having read some US spoilers about the first episode of season threee of 'Lost' and got predictably annoyed with reviews that tell of yet more episodes lacking any answers (I'm starting to think that really 'Lost' is like 'Seinfeld' a show where nothing happens, but just not so funny).

I then noticed a review of the season three premier of 'Battlestar Galactica' on the Boston Globe's site, by Joanna Weiss, which is infinitely better. They had 12 minutes of the season opener online, and I got really quite excited, but sadly was denied - its for US eyes only. There's a good piece in News Week as well.

But Weiss sums it all up nicely pulling together all that is good about 'Battlestar Galactica', about its parallels with the war in Iraq, its all a very post 9/11 world.

"I find myself proselytizing more for 'Battlestar Galactica' than any other show, with good reason. Yes, the series, which launches its third season tomorrow , has been wildly successful for the Sci Fi Channel. But given how far it surpasses nearly everything else on TV, I'm hoping a mainstream audience will follow.

"That it hasn't could reflect a fear that the show's plotlines are too complex ( in truth, "Battlestar" is easier to follow than "Lost"). It could be the lingering memory of the campy 1970s series, even though this new incarnation is completely -- almost shockingly -- dark. It could be a fear that if you're not a science fiction nut, the show won't speak to you.

But the secret to "Battlestar ," as one of my colleagues keeps saying, is not to think of it as science fiction. This is a show about religion, politics, parent-child relationships, and the moral dilemmas of insurgency. Consider it a workplace drama where the business is armed resistance.

She's dead right. I've mentioned this all before. In the UK 'Battlestar Galactica' is tucked away on Sky - home of Sci Fi - One. It should be on ITV.

Oh, but wait, who would ever expect leading edge programming on ITV's schedule.

2006-10-05T11:25:00.000+01:00

TheUKpaper

News International has ambitions well beyond London by the looks of it.

Having launched thelondonpaper, News International could also be looking expanding the freesheet nationally.

It has registered a bunch of internet domain names for cities across the UK including .co.uk and .com domain names for thebirminghampaper, thebristolpaper, theleedspaper, theliverpoolpaper, themanchesterpaper, thehullpaper, theyorkpaper.

Not just in England, but Scotland and Wales as well, with the domain names registered for theedinburghpaper, and theglasgowpaper and thecardiffpaper.

This would see it challenge the likes of Guardian Media Group in Manchester, which publishers the Metro (with Associated) and the Manchester Evening News.

It could also spell trouble for Johnston Press and Trinity Mirror, which publish a number of evening papers.

A free evening paper could spell the end for many of those paid for titles. Even more so if like a lot of the Metros News International takes most of the content from its London title.

If it does go down that route it raises the possibility of Associated following it.

A spokesman told The Guardian: "We registered several names when we launched thelondonpaper as a matter of course but we are 100% focused on London for the foreseeable future."

2006-10-04T12:36:00.000+01:00

AOP

Carolyn McCall was spot on this morning as she put online communities at the centre of her address to the AOP conference.

It might not sound like rocket science any more, but it’s surprising how few traditional publishers have made much progress when it comes to building online communities.

What the GMG chief executive said was that digital business that fail to embrace community will be relegated as content providers to aggregators and search engines, effectively the hard shoulder of the digital publishing revolution.

That doesn't sound like much of a future.

Part and parcel of that is user-generated content and getting that right. There is a long way to go on this front. There are some nice early foretasters of where this might go, but it is still a long road ahead.

For instance if I was running a travel site, I'd be having round-the-world bloggers and lots of them, with appropriate sponsors, which would generate its own large community. It could be huge.

There are lots of ways to create community, and part of that is, as McCall also said today, about changing the way you think about your audience.

Internet start-ups like Myspace, Bebo, YouTube and Flickr don't think or talk about users, they only talk or think about community. How to get it, how to grow it and how to involve it in your business.

But community is only one part of the puzzle. It needs to be combined with the shifting geography and multimedia.

The geography is something we've all seen. It’s not about the UK web or the US web or the Euro web, it’s a global thing. For Brand Republic, for everyone else.

For the Guardian, McCall said it is about being the leading global liberal voice on the web. That's their goal and you can see them doing it and achieving it. That isn't something they can do in print, but online is a different story.

That she said was about changing the way that publishers define themselves as businesses. About changing the model.

She went on to set out five challenges

The first was about staff. Building the brand talent – using the people you have and making sure they are all onboard your digital project.

"If your staff don't get it, everything will get stuck and will not move forward," McCall said.

The second challenge was about staying close to your users. Your community. This is all about listening because you will find that they know things about your business that you do not.

The third challenge she mentioned was innovation. Too often, traditional media publishers do not innovate.

Then we heard Tim Weller, the chief executive and founder of financial publisher Incisive, say "creativity is great, but plagiarism is far faster".

Somehow I think he both missed and underline the point. Creativity and innovation is the way to grow and develop, it is also where the leaders are and not the also rans.

Fourthly, McCall listed software development as something that publishers need to excel at. It’s often overlooked. If your developers aren't any good, neither will your product be.

A vast digital strategy falls to nothing if you do not have the developers. Oh, don't we all know this.

The problems is it is a step change for most publishers, but it has to be done.

Lastly, her fifth challenge was driving revenue growth. For that you just need to refer back to

Multimedia
Shifting geography
Community.

Get those three right and you will get your revenues.

2006-10-03T10:44:00.000+01:00

Squatted

Webcameron is under attack. Parodying cyber squatters have struck.

The people from UKIP, who once had perma-tanned, former morning TV presenter Robert "smooth" Kilroy-Silk as a member, are cybersquatting WebCameron.info and have a YouTube video of their own.

Actually, it's rather better than Dave "man of the people" Cameron live from the kitchen (as others have pointed out, domestic staff must have had the day off). It features a video parodying the similarities between Cameron and Tony Blair. Set up by the UKIPhome, who you'll never hear of again so I won't bother explaining about, it takes advantage of Cameron's attempts to plug into new-media phenomenon of blogs and social networking websites.

It purports to show Cameron wholesale lifting Blair's language and ideas and it does so pretty well. Anything Blair can say, then Cameron can say too. The video has already been viewed more than 6,600 times.

As well as being mildly entertaining, it does serve as a reminder to snap up all of the domains you can as politicians are just as vulnerable to online threats as film stars or any major brand.

One of the first steps of setting up any new website is checking the availability not only of your desired domain name, but also of alternatives including the .com and .co.uk versions. Unfortunately, in this instance Cameron has seen his effort to harness the power of the internet stumble at one of the very first hurdles.

Worse still if you click on Webcameron.com you get an Australian poet called Cameron M Semmens. Whose works include poems such as 'the jacket that never really fit'...wait that sounds familiar does it have something to do with wedging right-wing Euro politics with tax cuts and... oh no, it doesn't it is actually about a jacket that never fitted.

Talking of Euro-scepticism, Cameron still hasn’t registered the Webcameron.eu European domain name. How long that will be free remains to be seen.

2006-10-02T08:52:00.000+01:00

Webcameron

Nowhere is safe. Someone told the Tories about YouTube and now David Cameron is YouTubing it from his kitchen – he is doing the dishes and he wants to share it with you.

The frontpage of The Guardian on Saturday reveals how the Tories plan to use the internet to reach out and hit a new generation.

The paper says the Tories plan to target the blogging generation who are "disaffected and disconnected from mainstream politics". It wants to try to entice them in and, as part of that effort, the new community site they've launched is branded in pink and "consciously plays down the party message". It's very Web 2.0-looking.

At the centre of the Tories new internet driven strategy is the Webcameron. That's right, lame word play is pretty damn important in 21st century politics, as if you didn't know.

When I put this into Google it asked me if I meant to type Webkamera? That's right, see what they did there? Like a lot of German words it's almost English, but not quite, almost there, but a little off. The same could be said for the Tories attempt to storm the internet.

Talking of Google. The Tories have bizarrely signed up Eric Schmidt, the chairman and CEO of the search giant, to talk at this year’s party conference.

What's he going to tell them? Blog your way to victory? How to boost their search engine optimisation?

There is no clue in the FT article this morning. Asked why Schmidt had decided to speak at Bournemouth, a spokesperson for Google said: "He’s very keen on talking about the internet, and the impact it's having."

Schmidt keen on the internet? Get out of here.

I digress, as well as regular video blogs by Dave speaking direct to camera, there will also be podcasts and blogs with guest bloggers, kicking off today with perhaps the next US President Senator John McCain. Although neither of the blogs ("guest" or "open") are working right now, but like the new Tory party it's all in beta mode.

With Dave in the kitchen for his first Webcameron, he says he wants to tell us "what the Conservative party is doing, what we're up to, give you behind-the-scenes access so you can actually see what policies we're developing, the things that we are doing, and have that direct link ... watch out BBC, ITV, Channel 4, we're the new competition. We're a bit shaky and wobbly…"

He talks about behind the scenes access as the kids scream in the background. Caring father to the fore. He promises lots of stuff about party conference and speeches and then it’s over. Finishing with the line "right now I'm going to wash up the porridge". What a guy.

All this comes, sadly for Dave, as the Independent reported also on Saturday that the Tory lead has evaporated. That's a seven-point lead, gone. Tony Blair's great conference speech and a good conference all round has to have eaten into that.

The first outing conforms to the classic YouTube content formula in that it has absolutely no substance and, in that way, is no different from the tens of thousand of other video clips online. Like the one I watched yesterday called "Free gas (two girls dance around there 4x4 at a gas station…after getting free gas)".

It's hugely corny as well, continuing the whole Dave -- man of the people -- thing, like him cycling to work…followed by a couple of cars. Because that's how you save the environment.

But that aside, the Tory spokesman is right though when he says it shows that they "understand the web" and it is way ahead of what Labour is doing online. Remember those risible World Cup blogs with Alastair Campbell and company? Labour needs to get chasing.

Labour does have some videoclips, but it is all strictly old school. Where is Tony's conference speech? Nowhere to be seen. That should have been on available on the site to video share and open to people to comment on. But nothing like that. It needs, as the Lib Dems and others have done, open forums to help campaigning, exchange ideas and fun.

During the last US election, the blogs showed how powerful online could be. While it had little impact on the last British election, this will clearly change next time around with social media from blogs, community and video sharing all playing a much bigger role.

Out on the campaign trail, great videoclips of an off the cuff remark, or in John Prescott's case a general cuffing, could have a real impact once released online.

Gordon better get moving. The Tories are promising Webcameron twice a week. Next week he'll be in the garden digging up his turnips.

2006-09-29T09:12:00.000+01:00

YouTube morons

Not everyone loves YouTube. Dotcom billionaire investor Mark Cuban is no fan.

He had some very severe words for YouTube and says that anyone who buys it would be a moron.

This is clearly going to make the digital executives at companies like News Corporation and Viacom sit up. They had, no doubt, been running the slide rule over the video-sharing business with a view to possibly snapping the thing up.

Cuban, who co-founded of HDNet and owns the NBA team the Dallas Mavericks, has predicted that YouTube will be "sued into oblivion" on the back of copyright violations.

"They are just breaking the law. The only reason it hasn't been sued yet is because there is nobody with big money to sue."

It has been a constant problem for YouTube, but it is going some way to sort this out, by signing deals with the likes of Warner Music Group.

It signed a deal with Warner to avoid legal action for breach of copyright.

It is also in talks with other major record companies, including EMI about hosting old and current music videos for its users to view for free.

The discussions are believed to centre on the nature of the business model and how it will balance free viewing with ad revenue and revenue for the labels and their artists. Question is whether all this is enough. Just take a look and you will find lots and lots of copyrighted material on YouTube.

YouTube's ambition is to have "every music video ever created" up on the site, according to its co-founder Steve Chen.

YouTube already has more than 100m video showings daily, which has of course led to speculation that the firm will be sold or taken public.

Just yesterday Yahoo! snapped up another video-sharing firm Jumpcut. No news on how much it paid.

Cuban reckons that unlike other rivals in the social media space, there is a reason YouTube hasn't had an IPO or been sold and it is because it is going to be "toasted".

"User-generated content is not going away," he said. "But do you want your advertising dollars spent on a video of Aunt Jenny watching her niece tap dance?"

"Somebody puts up something really good and you get, what, 60,000 viewers?"