Below the Radar goes up the Alps into the hands of Blakeway Productions (ok, you write a better headline!)

Lunchtime’s email from Broadcast brings news that local factual independent producer Below the Radar have been acquired by Blakeway Productions (itself a subsidiary of Bob Geldof’s Ten Alps).

As the BBC and Channel 4 increase the level of network (ie, not local) productions made in the nations and regions (rather than in London) it’s always been expected that some of the bigger UK indies would start to gobble up (ahem, invest in) smaller local indies and move where the broadcasters’ money was going.

Blakeway already have a northern division, north of England that is, with offices in Manchester and Derby. So adding Ireland to the roster is a natural extension west. Time will tell whether other local indies will tie up with the bigger players, consolidating the disparate but colourful local production market.

While you mightn’t immediately recognise the name Below the Radar, you’re more likely to remember their BBC 1 Northern Ireland programme The Honeymooners shown last year which took a look at the relationship between Ian Paisley and Martin McGuiness. Dr Peter Collett came to on-screen prominence as an expert in the first series of Big Brother. Here, Collett applied the same behavioural psychology to look behind the Chuckle Brothers to give viewers an insight into what was really going on between the pair.

Below the Radar also sponsored the talk by Sir Jeremy Isaacs on Public Service Broadcasting (PSB) as part of the 2008 Belfast Festival.

IT Crowd - Fridays on Channel 4 at 10pm

The IT Crowd is back for another series on Channel 4 at 10pm tonight.

Last year’s series allowed Jen, Moss and Roy out of their basement fluorescent-lit lair and showed them interacting in the outside world. It’ll be interesting to see if Richmond will be back behind the Red Door, or whether his self confidence will continue to blossom out in the community.

Dead Set and Spooks

It’s that violent time of the television scheduling year!

So I know that technically the film 28 Weeks Later didn’t feature zombies since the “Infected” were still alive. But it’s my closest point of reference to E4’s Dead Set that was shown a week or two ago.

Written by the Guardian’s TV reviewer Charlie Brooker, the zombie, horror satire is set inside the Big Brother house. It’s eviction night, but something goes wrong. Riots break out across the UK, forcing the live eviction show to be taken off air and replaced with a special C4 news bulletin. But as the eviction goes ahead outside the house, zombies run amok amongst the crowd.

Soon the madness is erupting in the production areas, and works its way into the camera runs. Kelly – a runner on the show – seeks refuge in the BB house, though the contestants mistake her for a new housemate (albeit covered in blood and more tense than normal).

There’s a zombie Davina, a variety of violent methods to smash the head of a zombie (seems to be the only way to kill them), and a great ending. Not the usual squared-eyed fodder for AiB, but jolly good TV if you can stomach a bit (a lot) of gore.

For the PC/Windows users out there, it’s still available to watch online (there’s a feature version or else the five episodes) or for free download via 4oD.

Spooks is back on BBC One. That’s grown up Spooks and not BBC Three’s baby Spooks - Code 9 spin-off that took a while to warm up by the end of series. The first episode lost a major character (careless! but not unusual), the second was a lot less tense than normal, and the third show was back with its sinister, chest-tightening soundtrack and the countdown to disaster and split second redemption.

Next on 4 - Channel 4 sets out its public service broadcasting role

Channel 4 have been setting out their stall this morning, outlining their vision and purpose. Independent from government, yet also without shareholders, Channel 4 it brings plurality to public service broadcasting in the UK.

Twenty five years old, their vision was summarised this morning in a webcast in front of a London audience (or was it a London meeting that was webcast?):

• To nurture new talent and original ideas - not just about a few UGC clips on the C4 website;
• To champion alternative voices and fresh perspectives;
• To challenge people to see the world differently - powerful, uncomfortable viewpoints, questioning assumptions;
• To inspire change in people’s lives - stimulating learning and new behaviour, giving liberating practical advice.

Do we still need C4 to carry out this role in an age of digital media? Their answer: Yes, more than ever.

Some practical steps are being taken to move forward their agenda.

Reducing US acquisitions to spend money on UK productions.

A £50m new media digital fund called 4IP (4 Innovation for the Public) has been set up, seeded with £20m from C4 itself, and also funding from regional partners such as Invest NI. Basically, a model of experiment and partnership, with sufficient scale to make an impact, to see how emerging technologies can be more widely applied to the UK audience. Seeking to exploit digital technologies to inform and enhance public value, through partnership with sporting bodies, computer gaming etc.

Belfast will be hosting one of the 4IP hubs, which “will benefit ... from the creative, technical and marketing skills of Channel 4, using our infrastructure to achieve economies of scale”. (Whatever that means, but it sounds positive for the local creative industry!)

The presentation finished with a two-fold proposition: upping the quality of C4’s governance and accountability in return for sustained, stable funding.

Channel 4 now has a viewer’s editor. A new content subcommittee of the C4 board will review their public service remit from editorial perspective. And they’ll publish an annual statement of public value alongside their existing annual report.

Yet in return they want funding (~£100m) equivalent to the value of the terrestrial spectrum that they have been given (but is diminishing in value through the switchover to digital terrestrial viewing).

Throughout its existence, Channel 4has benefited from an implicit subsidy in the form of gifted analogue spectrum which, at its height, is estimated to have been worth 15-20% of turnover.

Channel 4 has been arguing for some time that as the analogue spectrum declines in value, a significant funding gap will emerge. The residual value of analogue spectrum will fall away completely once the digital switchover process is completed in 2012, by which time Channel 4 estimates the funding gap will have grown to around £100 million.

With C4’s twin public-purpose/commercial background, it is perhaps interesting to compare their four purposes with the public purposes adopted by the BBC as part of the charter renewal:

• sustaining citizenship and civil society;
• promoting education and learning;
• stimulating creativity and cultural excellence;
• representing the UK, its nations, regions and communities;
• bringing the UK to the world and the world to the UK;
• in promoting its other purposes, helping to deliver to the public the benefit of emerging communications technologies and services and, in addition, taking a leading role in the switchover to digital television.

There's a more active emphasis on changing people and broadening horizons within Channel 4's purposes that surpasses what the BBC deliberately shies away from. Advocacy and lobbying vs information and debate?

Interestingly, only two mentions of Channel 4's digital radio plans in all the talk this morning.

Later in the year we move into digital radio and here too, it will be our mission to experiment ...

Our plans for digital radio are well publicised and are progressing.

C4 round-up

C4’s Tuesday offering of Shameless continues to produce more and more surreal episodes as the Gallagher family and their neighbours create mayhem in Chatsworth Estate. The violence and gang culture is largely gone, replaced with ludicrous yet fun storylines, each still told from one character’s perspective.

Sometimes I wonder whether the participants on Grand Designs have ever watched the show. Do they really believe that they’ll be able to successfully get past the foundations without being filmed pouring five pound notes into the yet-to-set concrete? Yet occasionally, someone pulls off the impossible, finishing nearly on time and only 10% over budget, creating a dwelling worthy of their time, money and attention. I only wish it was as entertaining to watch someone build a modest, low-cost house as it was watching people fritter away money they can’t always afford.

Having got fed up with Without A Trace a few series ago, not much else on Channel 4 catches my eye this season. Though Monday night’s Dispatches investigation by Andrew Gilligan looks interesting:

Checking-in To Airport Chaos

With ever-increasing numbers of passengers passing through their terminals, Britain's airports are raking in huge profits - which are only set to get bigger as they seek expansion through extra runways or terminals. But matching the increase in passenger numbers is the threat from terrorism and concerns about the environment.

The foiled terrorist attacks at London Heathrow and Glasgow airports have seen an unprecedented heightening of security at Britain's airports. But how effective are these new Government-imposed measures? Dispatches reveals how the current restrictions on fluid would not prevent terrorists detonating a liquid bomb and questions whether the focus on weapon-seeking technology and body-searches at security gates is the most effective way of preventing breaches.

Gilligan meets a security expert who criticises the way in which security processes have simply played catch-up with terrorist attempts over the years instead of proactively seeking new means of prevention.

Fairy Tales - Echo Beach / Moving Wallpaper - Shameless - Grand Designs - Torchwood - Primeval

Quick TV round-up for those who care!

Last night saw the airing of the first of four Fairy Tales on BBC One, with Rapunzel finally letting her hair down at the tennis. The anthology of tales with a contemporary retelling were all shot in Northern Ireland by Hat Trick. The Daily Telegraph were uncharacteristically upbeat in their review:

“Cross dressing, cod lesbianism and idiocy on the international tennis circuit probably wouldn’t be most people’s idea of the perfect background for a modern reappraisal of a classic fairy tale. But unlikely as it may seem, BBC1’s reworking of Rapunzel as a slapstick comedy, in which a failing East European tennis pro is persuaded to bluff his way into a UK ladies’ tournament in a desperate bid to win some cash, was an unexpected hoot.”

Also started last night was ITV’s new soap Echo Beach (Jason Donovan and Martine McCutcheon based in sun-kissed Cornwall) immediately preceded by the behind-the-scenes show Moving Wallpaper which takes a fictional look at the production process and stars Ben Miller as the series’ producer. Didn’t catch it live last night, but it’s got mixed reviews in this morning’s press.

The twelve episodes of Echo Beach and its associated mockumentary are made by Kudos, who rarely (if ever?) pick up commissions from ITV and are better known for their BBC and Channel 4 fare: Life on Mars, Hustle, Spooks, The Amazing Mrs Pritchard, Pleasureland.

Update - having caught up with the first week's run, I'd comment that Moving Wallpaper was reasonable viewing - and it made Echo Beach bearable (standalone it would have been pretty naff). Worth taping and giving it a chance for at least the next couple of episodes in it's 12 week run. Suspect it'll be a terrific success - but won't be recommissioned. Update - Second episode of MW was worth it purely for the Casualty joke - tripping on the mint imperials and landing headfirst on a fork stuck in blutack!

The latest series of Shameless snuck on Channel 4 on New Year’s Day and continues on Tuesday nights at 10pm. If like me you missed the first few episodes of the sixteen-part series, they’re available for free on C4’s catch-up service 4oD.

Kevin McCloud is dusting off his hard hat and optimism in the face of doom to present another series of Grand Designs starting at 9pm next Wednesday (16th) with a house that is being built 60% underground to meet planning restrictions. The half hour Grand Designs Trade Secrets sister series over on more4 immediately afterwards is often worth a watch to find even wackier examples of crazy architecture.

Update - Given that the couple's architect wasn't retained during the build, his/her design must have been very detailed and well thought out for the build to have completed so successfully. Felt nearly too straight-forward and drama light for the first in the new series? Property shows = watching other people make mistakes at their cost. Interesting that C4 didn't seem to trail the more4 Trade Secrets show as part of the closing credits - preferring to promote Jamie Oliver.

And making the assumption that the audience for property shows doesn’t significantly overlap with those who will tune in for sci-fi, BBC Two have scheduled the new series of Torchwood in the same Wednesday 9pm slot (repeated on BBC Three at 11pm). Available in high def on the BBC HD satellite channel. The promised family friendly repeat looks to be at 7pm the following Wednesday evening, immediately followed by the Torchwood Declassified behind-the-scenes spinoff.

Update - Thank goodness for iPlayer having Torchwood available to stream (and download) immediately after the show finished on BBC Two. Great opening, with the real life comment that Cardiff residents make about the show's filming - "Bloody Torchwood!" worked into the script. A show that didn't take itself too seriously, but had pace, tension and enough confusion to get the viewer through to the end (where they neatly summarised the background to Torchwood for anyone unfamiliar). And good to see that Gwen's life hasn't become any less complicated!

And if Russell T Davies doesn’t provide enough beasts and monsters, the second series of Primeval starting on ITV at 7pm on Saturday night (12th) will surely quench your thirst for dinosaurs and other animals that had to be CGIed as they were too dangerous to be taken out of their cages.

If you care that you can’t remember what happened at the end of the first series of Primeval, ITV are helpfully showing the last episode at 1.45pm on Saturday - just in time to put young kids off their lunch - sandwiched in-between a Coronation Street Omnibus and Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. Guess which scheduler wants to win this Saturday’s ratings war!

Update: Primeval failed to achieve the balance between levity and taking itself seriously. The fact that massive creatures could come through a time anomaly and eat up human civilisation isn't really that terrifying ... or funny. So unlike Doctor Who with its doom-laden yet jokey plots, it didnt really engage me. Besides, weren't dinosaurs boring by the second Jurassic Park film?

Exodus (Channel 4 / ArtAngel)

Exodus (or Margate Exodus) was a film shown on Channel 4 towards the end of November. But as part of a one man bid to help speed the death of linear television, I picked it up on 4oD (Channel 4’s on-demand catch-up service) and watched it tonight just before it was due to expire.

It’s a modern day retelling of the biblical Exodus story – seems to be all the rage at the moment – written and directed by Penny Woolcock. Set in a mythical country that bears an uncanny resemblance to Margate, its leader Pharoah [sic] condemns all undesirables to live in a secure camp, based in the disused Dreamland amusement park. (It has more than a touch of Children of Men about it.)

As a baby, Moses was abandoned on a beach by his mother, found by Pharoah’s wife, and brought up in his privileged household. Played by Daniel Percival, Moses’ social conscience ran against his father’s beliefs (Bernard Hill). Witnessing an attack on a young woman while on a guided tour of Dreamland, Moses hits a soldier with the butt of a gun and accidentally kills him. So finds himself trapped, hiding inside the camp. Over time he meets his real Mum as well as his sweetheart Zipporah – the house-maid his father sacked.

The film’s website explains the parallels:

"The story of Exodus is thousands of years old and cuts across many faiths and cultures. Immigration has never been more meaningful than it is today. Exodus begins with the Egyptians complaining about the immigrant Hebrews – there are too many of them, they’re having too many children. They are ‘the undesirables’ and a problem to get rid of."

Filmed in Margate – itself a major UK entry point for asylum seekers and illegal immigrants – we follow Moses as he adapts to camp life, throws himself into education, and wrestles with the military pressure Pharoah puts on the camp.

When Jethro the school headmaster is shot, the undesirables erect a massive wooden sculpture as a funeral pyre – the burning bush - and Moses sends a stark message to those outside the camp, including his father. But is that the voice of God he hears? (The burning man was actually created by Antony Gormley.)

But his non-violent approach isn’t working. How can Moses lead the people out of the camp? And so a series of plagues are released on the outside world. Algae contaminate the water. A computer virus infiltrates broadcast and IT systems. Food is poisoned. People start dying. Are they innocent or complicit in Dreamland’s suffering? God’s voice is no longer heard. As the military retaliate by storming the camp and shooting randomly, is Moses really following the right course of action?

As the plagues continue, we see Pharoah become more and more irate and crazy.

But when the undesirables are eventually free to leave, can they control their anger and need for revenge? Can Moses live with the consequences of the domino chain he started to topple? Thou shalt not kill doesn’t seem to be commandment of the month now.

It’s a superbly shot film with understated music. Part of the film’s creation was the involvement of the multi-ethnic resident and immigrant community in Margate, culminating in Exodus Day on Saturday 30 September 2006, when the major crowd scenes were film along with the burning of the waste sculpture.

A film that doesn’t duck the big questions of how to counter loss of identity, intolerance and social inequity? A film that doesn’t stop short of asking what sort of God would kill the Egyptian first borns?

Yet the ending – spoilers ahoy! – stops short of the undesirables escaping their oppression through a parting of the English Channel. There is no solution. Instead, Moses fails to bring complete liberation, and the cycle of violence and oppression seems to start again, this time with the roles of oppressed and oppressor reversed.

It’s an ending, and perhaps not as clichéd as it would otherwise have been, but it’s imperfect and perhaps the film deserved better.

Channel 4 HD service launched on Sky 140

Back in September, Channel 4 announced that they’d soon be simulcasting their main C4 channel on Sky in HD. And the service started yesterday (December 10), tucked away on Sky channel 140.

While some shows will still only be available in upscaled standard definition (SD), many of C4’s US originations (including hits like Ugly Betty ... must confess I’ve never watched it!) and movies are already produced in HD for the US and international markets.

Channel 4 - along with most other UK broadcasters - are increasingly producing in HD to increase their potential sales abroad and protect their investments for repeat showings when HD does take off in the UK.

Unfortunately, I can’t find much about HD on the Channel 4 website, other than details of the London Freeview HD trial.

There’s an interesting divergence of approach across C4 and the BBC.

C4 are choosing to simulcast their main channel, simply encouraging HD viewers to swap “4” for “140”.

In contrast, the BBC HD service - currently in trial, but now recently approved by the BBC Trust to become a fully-fledged service - will

“not aim simply to replicate the BBC One schedule in HD but should simulcast content from other BBC channels that best utilises the quality gains that the format provides”.

While in practice this will mean the simulcasting of “the core peak-time ‘spine’ of BBC One”, there will be opportunity for other content and genres to break through.

Despite the public value (ie, more licence fee bang for buck) in showcasing more than just BBC One, I wonder if the simplicity of (C4's) simulcasting - particularly alongside the terrestrial channel’s announcement that they will work together to introduce BBC1, BBC2, ITV, C4 and five in HD on a Freeview multiplex near you as soon as technology and bandwidth allows - won’t catch the (still limited) HD audience’s imagination and appreciation more quickly and effectively? Don't hold back on telling me what you think!

Happy birthday Channel 4 - 25 years old today

Many happy returns to Channel 4 which started broadcasting to those in the UK who could receive it at 4.45pm back on 2 November 1982.

My early memories of Channel 4 include:

• Treasure Hunt (with Kenneth Kendall, Anneka Rice, and a couple of helicopters, Keith the pilot and Graham the cameraman)

• UK basketball shown on a Tuesday (?) night in the early days when the schedule wasn't terribly full and advertisements weren’t too plenty! The little I know about the rules of basketball is a result of Channel 4.

There were other shows that made their mark over the years (notable to me anyway):

• Wanted. Back in 1996/7, the show was based around two runners travelling through England, Scotland and Wales for one week on the run from a tracker. The public were encouraged to be on the lookout and phone in leads to help the tracker find them. The runners had to travel a certain distance each day and complete certain tasks, so they couldn’t stay holed up in a friend’s house all week.
  
  In an age when video links and outside broadcasts were difficult and expensive, the runners had to spend an hour in a phonebox at the end of the week (during the live show), not that the extra technology bolted onto the phone box and the OB van around the corner made them a sitting target for the tracker!
  
  Presented by Richard Littlejohn and KGB defector Oleg Gordievsky (who later received a CGB), the show went on to win a Silver Rose at Montreux in 1997, the same year as Cold Feet won the Rose D’Or.
  

• Lost - perhaps the show with the most potential and the least impact. Back in 2001, three two-member teams were dropped off near each other in unknown locations with only a backpack of clothes and their wits to help them. Followed by a cameraman who couldn’t help them (but could often slow them down) they had to race back to London. Successful teams went on to compete in the next race.
  
  There was an interesting book by Nikki Arend to accompany the late night series that diarised the team's travels, commented on the exploits of the competing teams and revealed the workings of the show. Wikipedia describes the teams being:

“abandoned in Northern Russia, Mali, Venezuela, Quebec and Azerbaijan. The teams had to race back to Trafalgar Square, London, except in the Azerbaijan episode, where the destination was the Angel of the North statue in Gateshead.”

You can check out the animated C4 logo and relive the original theme music “Fourscore” over at Channel 4 at 25 along with lots of archive shows that are freely available (to PC users!) on 4oD until mid-November.

Oh, and a belated happy birthday to S4C which celebrated a quarter of a century of broadcasting in Wales yesterday!

Richard & Judy ... Aliens Love Underpants ... Alphaoops!

In book news, Richard and Judy are spreading their commercial literary expertise to start up a children’s book club. Channel 4, tonight at 8pm (competing for your attention with Waterloo Road over on BBC1 and some football match on Five).

And I’m pleased to report that the splendidly fun Aliens Love Underpants! by Claire Freedman and Ben Cort is on their initial list. Although placed in their Early (5+) category, I can confirm that it’s one of the current favourites of our just under three year old daughter.

One deserving book that hasn’t made it to their list but is a joy to read (over and over and over again) is Alphaoops! The Day Z Went First by Alethea Kontis and Bob Kolar which I picked up in San Francisco airport about eleven months ago. The story of what happens when the Z decides not to go last, and the other letters mess around too. Explains why we have a ("J is for") Jack-o'-Lantern in the house, rather than a pumpkin!

Update: The overnight viewing figures weren't so enthusiastic about Richard & Judy's Best Kid's Books - with only 684k viewers (2.9%) tuning in.

So far this year, this slot on Channel 4 normally averages 2.3m (10.9%). But as part of C4's Lost for Words literacy season, it may have been a worthwhile public service broadcasting gesture to schedule the programme in such a lucrative slot.

For comparison, Five captured 1.6m (7.4%) viewers on their sofas for Everton's Uefa Cup tie, while BBC 2 had 2.4m (11%) for The Truth About Property, BBC1 kept 4.6m (20.7%) behind after class for Waterloo Road, and ITV "beat" the competition with 4.9m (22%) tuning into The Bill. [source: Broadcast Magazine]

4oD, iPlayer and a temporary resurrection of Dennis Potter

I noticed recently that 4oD has opened up some of the Channel 4 archive as part of its 25th anniversary celebrations. So oft remembered but never repeated dramas along with old series of Grand Designs are available to download and enjoy for free.

For the discerning AiB reader who is less glued to the interweb, 4oD is Channel 4’s on-demand service that allows you to download C4, E4, Film4, AnythingElseEndingIn4 TV shows to your PC (got to be Windows XP or Vista) and watch at your leisure.

In general, you’ve 30 days to watch what you’ve downloaded, and 48 hours to complete watching programmes once you start watching them for the first time.

Technically, 4oD uses the same Kontiki peer-to-peer (P2P) software as BBC's iPlayer, meaning that while you have a show downloaded your PC may be used to send parts of it to other users downloading the same programme. Spreads out the bandwidth across the 4oD users and reduces the load on Channel 4’s servers ... but does have some implications if your ISP limits the uploads you make in a month.

4oD is also available as a catch-up service on Virgin Media, BT Vision and Tiscali IPTV platforms.

Knowing that he was dying from pancreatic cancer, Dennis Potter wrote two four-part dramas, asking that they be co-produced by BBC and Channel 4. In 1996, nearly two years after his death, Karaoke and Cold Lazarus were aired.

Karaoke told the tale of a dying writer, Daniel Feeld, and was as odd as anything Potter had previously written despite its touching parallels with Potter’s final weeks. In contrast, Cold Lazarus was quite breathtaking in its vision of the future, where Feeld’s cryogenically preserved head is leaking out its four hundred year old memories. Few who watched it will forget the RONs (Reality or Nothing) - a luddite resistance movement who want to destroy the virtual reality in which society now exists and go back to physical idealism.

A consequence of the unique co-production (both dramas aired on both channels, shown first on a Sunday night on one, and repeated the following evening on the other) is that unclear rights issues have prevented the series being released on DVD or repeated on TV. While not the faint-hearted, it’s a rare opportunity to watch them for free on 4oD. (The screenplay is still available on Amazon too.)

Being last broadcast in 1996, it probably shouldn’t surprise me that there are practically no still images from either drama available on line. Otherwise, this article might be better illustrated!

While we’re on the subject of on-demand TV, it’s also been announced that iPlayer (BBC’s on-demand catch-up service) will be introducing a streamed version (using Adobe Flash) as part of the official consumer launch of iPlayer at Christmas, allowing Mac and Linux users access to iPlayer’s catalogue of shows for the first time.

Nothing to stop PC users streaming either ... though I wonder if the streamed content will be poorer quality than the download service due to bandwidth and time constraints. Whereas the download service allows for convenient viewing offline on a train or plane, streaming has the downside of having to be online to watch the content (unless there’s some clever caching system).

It’s not yet clear whether streaming is an interim step before ultimately introducing the full-download service across multiple operating systems when the cross-platform DRM issues are sorted out, or whether this will be as good as it gets for the non-Windows community. The Guardian reports:

Ashley Highfield, the BBC director of future media and technology, said that there was a “cost per person reach” factor that meant that it was “too early to make the call” on when to develop a download service.

And iPlayer’s streaming service will also be available for free at The Cloud’s wifi hotspots. Ashley Highfield described the partnership with The Cloud as

“... furthering the BBC's commitment to make its content as widely available as possible to our audiences wherever they are.”

(Acknowledgement: Photo of Feeld's preserved head from Muli Koppel's Flickr account.)

Cape Wrath goes under, in the proud tradition of The Ghost Squad and Making Waves

Disappointing news that Channel 4 won’t be commissioning a second series of Cape Wrath. Produced by Ecosse Films, it was also broadcast across the Atlantic by the US Showtime network under the name Meadowlands.

I’ve mentioned the drama before on AiB. But I was obviously in the minority, as Channel 4 have confirmed that due to disappointing ratings, the Brogan family and their twisted safe haven won’t be coming back for a second series. While 1.6m people watched the opening episode (10.4% share of the total audience that night), only 845,000 (4.9% share) tuned in to watch on the fourth week.

A C4 spokesman said ...

“Cape Wrath was a high concept, experimental drama which attracted a fantastic cast. The storylines worked as a one off series and Channel 4 has several new series in development with our commitment to drama series remaining as strong as ever.”

It’s a recurring disappointment. One of last year’s Channel 4 dramas also bombed when The Ghost Squad wasn’t recommissioned. (Though at least they completed the series, unlike ITV that dropped Making Waves mid series, never transmitting the second half of the series, though I’ve just noticed that it was released on DVD.)

IT Crowd hits the spot?

On Friday night, the IT Crowd came out of their closet (in more ways than one) and brought humour and mirth to Channel 4.

Looks like while the first series introduced us to the not-a-million-miles-away-from-reality support team in their basement fluorescent-lit lair, the second series will move on to explore the havoc they can wreak on the outside world. (Must have got a bigger budget to allow them to film outside their studio sets!)

Incidentally, the series has transferred to the US, where it is being piloted and recast.

Only one of the original characters—Moss, played by Richard Ayoade—has been kept.

So did you enjoy it? Were the jokes about disability and homosexuality funny, or did you prefer when the characters (and their victims) were kept in their cage?

iPlayer Beta experiences

I popped across to the BBC iPlayer webpage last Thursday night, and discovered that the “soft launch” of iPlayer Beta had itself been soft launched a few hours ahead of the published Friday morning kick off. And about 24 hours later, the invitation email arrived with a username and password to access the iPlayer Beta website.

You need to know that iPlayer comes in two halves. There’s the (1) programme guide website. Clicking on the download link for a particular programme triggers the (2) PC client that actually downloads the requested programme (using a peer-to-peer scheme) and manages the DRM licences through Windows Media Player. (Channel 4’s VoD combines both these elements into their single Java client application.)

The issue of platform neutrality is one that is being addressed by the BBC and being monitored by the BBC Trust (see the results of the recent on-demand consultation). The Beeb are exploiting alternative cross-platform DRM solutions with Real Media, Adobe, Apple and perhaps others, while the Trust will audit progress every six months. I've lost the link, but there were rumours about Microsoft building a new DRM solution that would work across Apple/Linux/Windows operating systems as well as portable music/video devices. (Feel free to leave a comment with more info.)

Given the difficultly in categorising seven days of content across more than a handful of television channels, the programme browser user interface is pretty usable and could be a lot worse. However, there are areas ripe for improvement, including

• adding the ability to search across the entire seven days of programmes on a particular channel (rather than only being able to filter by channel on a single day);
• improving the page load performance (there can be a 1 second delay between clicking on a navigation button and the page schedule refreshing).

And be aware that there are classes of programme that won’t be appearing anytime soon for download, given the lack of digital download rights. So no films, no sport (hurrah!), no Welsh language (until 2008) and currently no UK news (given the lack of rights for some of the content). But be assured that Northern Ireland Questions from BBC Parliament make it onto the download list! So for anyone with poor or no digital terrestrial (Freeview) coverage, it’s not a bad way to catch up with some of the programmes you’re missing on BBC3/4.

Initial installation of the Windows client seemed to go well, and I managed to download a couple of programmes. However, when I tried to watch the downloaded shows, I got a licence error. A reboot of the PC made matters worse, bringing up repeated “Delivery Manager Service” Windows application errors indicating a problem with the kserver.exe Kontiki software. (It’s the part that shares your downloaded shows with other downloading users when your PC is online.)

A month or two ago, I’d installed Channel 4’s VoD client, and a quick scan of the iPlayer Messageboard suggests that there’s some sort of clash between the two installations. Uninstalling the BBC iPlayer software, then uninstalling Channel 4’s VoD, and then running the kclean.exe utility that you can pick up on the net to completely the Kontiki software. Oh, and just to be sure, a quick scan through the registry to remove any remaining references to kontiki. (Be confident you know what you’re doing before following my example.)

A reboot and reinstallation of the iPlayer client, and it all worked well. Phew.

Downloading some shows seem to be very slooooooow. Given the peer-to-peer nature of the downloading, it’s maybe not surprising that the less popular shows have fewer sites to download from, and it takes a bit longer. But Northern Ireland Questions took a lot longer than a West Wing episode to capture!

Overall it’s a good service. But remember it is Beta, and the bugs will need to be ironed out before the less technically savvy are encouraged to install the software. And unlike Channel 4’s VoD service, the BBC’s iPlayer catch-up service is free (well, covered by out licence fees).

If you’re not put off, you can leave your email address at the iPlayer Beta homepage, and you’ll get an invitation as they ramp up the numbers on the platform. (Note sure what the current delay is between applying and receiving an invitation with your username/password.)

A quick note on peer-to-peer (P2P). If you downloaded all the shows from a central server (like the current BBC Radio Listen-Again service, you end up with a network bottleneck as all the traffic converges on the broadcaster’s content servers. So the alternative is to download the shows you want from other people around the UK who have already downloaded them, picking up little sections of the programme from lots of people. From the BBC iPlayer help page on P2P ...

“The way P2P works means that while you download a programme or are simply online, you may also be helping upload parts of a programme file to other BBC iPlayer members. This can happen even if you’re not using BBC iPlayer and only stops if your computer isn’t online, if none of the programmes in your library are needed by other users on the network, or if all programmes have been deleted from your Library. As soon as you start to use your computer again, any uploads to others will stop. ... Some ISPs apply download and upload limits and may charge you if these are exceeded. Check with your ISP if you want to know more about limits and possible charges.”

Putting a lifetime of mugs back in the cupboard ... public art

How many cups of tea (or coffee) will you drink in your lifetime? How many chickens will you eat? How many rolls of toilet paper will you flush away? How many baths will you take? I’ll come back to those questions in a minute.

Public Art is much in the news at the moment. There’s lots of it about in Belfast. (I missed the external cathedral spire going up on Monday, though the bottom part inside the cathedral is still to be finished.)

One of Banksy’s artworks (graffiti) was removed from a wall in London, causing consternation from many people who actually liked it.

And it’s been a busy week for Trafalgar Square. Monday’s night’s Coconut Orchestra world record attempt verged on being public art. Certainly a large scale performance piece.

But very early on Tuesday morning, it was the venue for another transitory installation. As part of the promotion for tonight’s The Human Footprint show (9pm), Channel 4 got up early and set out 74,802 mugs in Trafalgar Square, and filled them with tea. It’s a lot of cuppas.

Having got press photographers and news crews around to witness the scene, they needed to clear up. So starting at 3pm, with a team of 20, how long do you think it took them?

Giving away thousands of mugs might have been possible—we all like a freebie—but they’d only borrowed the mugs from the manufacturer, so they had to empty the tea out, give the mugs a quick rinse, put them back onto wooden palettes, load them onto the back of a lorry and pay for the breakages.

Now dripping wet mugs sitting on cardboard trays, with the trays stacked up on top of each other are a disaster waiting to happen. The cardboard sags, and the stack of mugs leans precariously, and has to wrapped in cling film to give it some stability when the fork lift puts it onto the lorry!

The heritage staff who look after Trafalgar Square (and blow a whistle if you try and climb up onto the monuments) commented that it had taken a lot, lot longer to clear up than they’d promised.

Sometime between 10pm and 11pm they finally left the site! The show airs tonight at 9pm on Channel 4. Looks interesting. (Oh, and the answers: approximately 74,802 cups of tea, 12,000 chickens, 4,000 loo rolls, 7,163 baths.)

Trust, Channel 4 and Swizz Call

There’s been a lot about trust in the news recently. Can voters trust the politicians they elect? Can the intelligence that led “the West” into Iraq be trusted. And can the results of TV and radio phone-ins be trusted?

Like most other channels, Channel 4 (Richard and Judy) have been muddied by the revelations about voting inaccuracies and pre-recorded shows encouraging the public to phone in to influence the content that have been the talk of the industry over the last couple of weeks.

Interestingly, Channel 4 have now commissioned a show called Swizz Call as part of their late night Comedy Lab strand Media Guardian report that it’s

“... a satirical comedy based at a spoof quiz TV channel ... Swizz Call - a play on the name of Quiz Call, the TV station Channel 4 owned before it was offloaded to iTouch in November, and which is not involved in the current phone scandal.”

Channel 4 add that

“four up and coming comedians play host to a spoof quiz channel in a sketch show that offers the chance to contestants to win bizarre prizes if they can answer their ridiculous questions.”

Maybe with a touch of irony they’ll run a premium rate phone-in during the show to influence which ending will be broadcast!!!

Big Brother, Carphone Warehouse and does it question us all?

Put a diverse set of people together in work and some will hit it off, some will get on each other’s nerves, some will talk behind their backs, some will even become quite insulting to each other faces. And that’s in a professional “work” environment.

Put people in an enclosed space and make it difficult for them to have personal space, and you’ll amplify the disquiet that’s there in normal society.

Put celebrities in that enclosed space ... and you’d be forgiven for thinking that they should know better than let their guard drop in the pressure cooker of the Celebrity Big Brother house. But it strings out for so long that they let their guards down ...

This is the first series of BB/CBB that I haven’t seen any of. And yet again, it’s creating a stir in the not-so-tabloid press (the Berliner, compact and Daily Telegraph-sized “quality” papers) ...

Point 1. Not having seen the footage, I don’t feel qualified to offer a comment on whether there is actual racist behaviour or not. But there’s certainly clear reports of an unease in the house, and the minority group affected is the Indian actress and model, Shilpa Shetty.

Racism can be partially defined as:

• Aggression or discriminatory behaviour towards members of a certain race or races.
• Aggression or discriminatory behaviour based upon differences in ethnicity.
• Ethnically or culturally discriminatory behaviour exhibited by members of the racial, ethnic, or cultural group dominant within a society.

On her way into the CBB house, she commented:

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

I hope she manages to achieve that objective.

Point 2. The cynical part of me wonders if Charles Dunstone and the marketing department at Carphone Warehouse reckoned that a decision to suspend their sponsorship of CBB now would generate more favourable free publicity than paying out good money for the bumper ads they place around the CBB show each night.

Free publicity for being seen to set a moral standard. Sounds like the Corporate Social Responsibility policy kicking in with a commercial incentive. The BBC are carrying the story tonight, and CPW’s name and comments will be all over the papers tomorrow.

Point 3. Let’s hope that in the furore we don’t lose the silver cloud: exposing the fact that racism and discrimination is bigger than just being confined to a house on an Elstree film set in Leavesden.

Some of the people who have emailed into Ofcom and Channel 4 will have said the same things as the celebrity housemates. Some of the reporters writing up the story in newspapers will have made inciting comments in the past (including those at the Daily Star who so nearly ran a “Daily Fatwa” page describing “how your favourite paper would look under Muslim law” and including a “Page 3 burqa babes special”).

Closer to home, the sectarian issues in Northern Ireland may be diminishing, but polarisation of housing continues apace right across Belfast. The Chinese community around Ormeau are not the only ethnic minority group in Northern Ireland to get a hard time from the “locals” (or the dominant cultural group as the definition above would phrase it).

And in all our hearts, deep down, aren’t there cultural preferences and engrained reactions that we continue to have to deal with and suppress and alter each day?

“Everyone’s a little bit racist”

... to quote a song title from the puppet musical Avenue Q (read the review and go and see it if you’re near London’s West End - there’s even a Midnight Matinee on Mon 22 January).