1 November 2023
[herzog] This Cultural Life – Werner Herzog… Wonderful radio interview with Werner Herzog on the BBC’s This Cultural Life.
26 October 2023
[tv] The BBC’s Late Night Horror Was Alleged to Be So Terrifying That It Was Destroyed … Atlas Obscura takes a look at a lost BBC horror drama. ‘Two episodes do, however, appear to indulge in some gore. One is “William and Mary,” a darkly comic episode about a brain kept alive in a jar, based on a story by Roald Dahl. The other, as luck would have it, is “The Corpse Can’t Play,” the episode that surfaced in the 1980s, only to disappear again. Whether fear or outrage or dark forces (or indifference) played a role, Late Night Horror was not picked up for additional episodes after its first run. It was shown again in 1970, after which the network’s rights to repeat the series expired. It is believed that the tapes were erased sometime after this broadcast.’
10 October 2023
[dna] The Gift … I really recommend this BBC Radio podcast about what happens when home DNA tests gives their users big surprises.
19 April 2021
[bbc] Photo essay: Life at BBC Broadcasting House during the coronavirus pandemic … Haunting photos of life at the BBC during Covid.
29 December 2014
[bbc] The BBC? It’s biased against tall women … amusing examination of recent complaints to the BBC … ‘There were the accusations of bias. These included claims that the BBC was being anti-Ukip, pro-Ukip, pro-Israel, anti-Israel, pro-climate change, too Left-wing, too Right-wing, pro-No vote in the Scottish referendum, pro-Thatcher, anti-Thatcher, anti-men, anti-women, pro-gay, pro-Royal, pro-Darwinism, anti-Formula 1, and anti-Staffordshire bull terriers.’
30 August 2013
[bbc] How Biased Is The BBC? … Apparently it’s not biased in the ways you might think… ‘Conservative politicians were featured more than 50% more often than Labour ones (24 vs 15) across the two time periods on the BBC News at Six. So the evidence is clear that BBC does not lean to the left it actually provides more space for Conservative voices.’
6 November 2012
[crime] Light Entertainment: Our Paedophile Culture … Compelling, long-read from Andrew O’Hagan on Jimmy Savile, the BBC and British Culture …
Savile went to work in light entertainment and thrived there: of course he did, because those places were custom-built for men who wanted to dandle dreaming kids on their knees. If you grew up during ‘the golden era of British television’, the 1970s, when light entertainment was tapping deep into the national unconscious, particularly the more perverted parts, you got used to grown-up men like Rod Hull clowning around on stage with a girl like Lena Zavaroni. You got used to Hughie Green holding the little girl’s hand and asking her if she wanted an ice-cream. Far from wanting an ice-cream, the little girl was starving herself to death while helpfully glazing over for the camera and throwing out her hands and singing ‘Mama, He’s Making Eyes at Me’. She was 13.
There’s something creepy about British light entertainment and there always has been. Joe Orton meets the Marquis de Sade at the end of the pier, with a few Union Jacks fluttering in the stink and a mother-in-law tied in bunting to a ducking-stool. Those of us who grew up on it liked its oddness without quite understanding how creepy it was. I mean, Benny Hill? And then we wake up one day, in 2012, and wonder why so many of them turned out to be deviants and weirdos. Our papers explode in outrage and we put on our Crucible expressions before setting off to the graveyard to take down the celebrity graves and break them up for landfill. Of course. Graffiti the plaques and take down the statues, because the joy of execration must match the original sin, when we made heroes out of these damaged and damaging ‘entertainers’. We suddenly wish them to have been normal, when all we ever ask of our celebrities is that they be much more fucked up than we are. And what do we do now? Do we burn the commemorative programmes, scratch their names from the national memory?
28 October 2012
[bbc] BREAKING NEWS: BBC 2 declares War on BBC 1 … ‘Fierce hand to hand fighting at BBC Television Centre escalated into a mortar battle in the early hours, as BBC 1 responded with heavy rounds of rocket fire, killing four Newsnight producers and prompting an application for voluntary redundancy from a fifth. Blue helmeted health and safety officials tried to separate the fighters, but were unable to produce the correct paperwork, and were asked to leave at gunpoint by privatised security staff.’
21 February 2012
[history] BBC Transcript To Be Used In Wake Of Nuclear Attack … ‘Meanwhile, stay tuned to this wavelength, stay calm and stay in your own homes. Remember there is nothing to be gained by trying to get away.’
12 December 2009
[curtis] Dubai 1975 … Adam Curtis digs up some intriguing footage of Dubai in 1975 from the BBC Archive … ‘It is a glimpse of Dubai just before it started to become the strange fantasy world it is today. It has a great creepy British under-secretary for foreign affairs, plus very good tartan fashions.’
23 November 2009
[bbc] Melvyn Bragg history show In Our Time to go online in BBC Archive … ‘The show, which chronicles the history of ideas, is among the first BBC programmes to have its complete archive made accessible online…’
26 October 2009
[media] Hmm… remember this? … great blog post highlighting the hypocrisy of the tabloid press over Griffin, the BNP and the BBC.
24 July 2009
[curtis] It Felt Like a Kiss – The Film … Adam Curtis’ new experimental film is available to view for a short time exclusively from his blog … ‘When a nation is powerful it tells the world confident stories about the future. The stories can be enchanting or frightening. But they make sense of the world. But when that power begins to ebb… the stories fall apart…’
25 June 2009
[moon] The Moon Landings … The BBC Archive looks back at the Apollo Moon Landings … ‘This BBC Archive collection tells the story of the Apollo moon missions, how they got off the ground and why the missions came to an abrupt end. Through over 40 years of radio and TV broadcasts, we meet some of the men who made that incredible journey and the reporters who brought their stories into our homes.’
22 June 2009
[tv] Adam Curtis’ Blog … the BBC documentary maker behind The Power of Nightmares and The Way of All Flesh starts blogging … ‘This is a website expressing my personal views – through a selection of opinionated observations and arguments. I’ll be including stories I like, ideas I find fascinating, work in progress and a selection of material from the BBC archives.’
3 June 2009
[tv] An explanation of the Main Puzzle from the First Episode of the Adventure Game … childhood nostalgia overload :) … ‘Ping-Pong Balls!’ [via more(ish) : meg’s scrapbook]
28 November 2008
[blogs] A List of all BBC Blogs … surprisingly small list of blogs for such a large media operation.
10 November 2008
7 August 2008
[twitter] Nigel’s BBC Schedule Twitterbots … ‘What’s On Now’ Twitter Pages for every BBC Channel / Network.
8 June 2008
[comics] Neil Gaiman to write an episode of Dr Who? … Rich Johnson: ‘The rumour running around my BBC sources that Neil Gaiman being approached to write a [Dr Who] episode for 2010. That would be this Neil Gaiman, comic author, fantasy novelist, screenwriter, poet and writer of the Duran Duran Biography 1985.’
2 June 2008
[bbc] The BBC’s “Green Book” … amusing historic BBC Production Guidelines from the 1940’s and 50’s … ‘Jokes like ‘enough to make a Maltese Cross’ are of doubtful value.’ [thanks Phil]
15 May 2008
[news] The Day There Was No News … ‘Nobody Died.’
26 February 2008
[tv] Watchification — a sister blog to Speechification – curating the best TV from the BBC’s iPlayer, YouTube and other sources.
28 January 2008
[funny] Fuck Planet Earth — funny spoof of BBC’s Planet Earth series on YouTube. [via Sore Eyes]
8 November 2007
[blogs] BBC Internet Blog — a blog for the managers of Future Media at the BBC to discuss the Corporation’s internet output – contains some posts from Ashley Highfield. ‘…I think we have been slow to embrace blogs as a way of discussing our strategy and direction. This often leads to the debate happening elsewhere, based often on only half the information, and without our being able fully to join in the debate. We’ve not done ourselves any favours, and we want to use this blog to re-engage with our friends and critics.’
14 September 2007
[comics] The Unsung Hero behind Spider-Man — Jonathan Ross on meeting Steve Ditko … ”I’m in New York, standing outside the office of my greatest hero. I know he’s inside because I called ahead and spoke to the great man. Now in his 80s, he was polite but firm. “Don’t come by,” he said. “I’m too busy. I don’t have anything to say to you. But thank you.” I have decided, perhaps unwisely and rudely, to ignore him. I need to know! So there I stand, on the final days of shooting my love-letter to and investigation into the strange life and work of the great Steve Ditko. And my hero has told me not to knock. But I owe it to comic fans the world over who want to hear, at last, from Ditko himself. I owe it the BBC, who have kindly allowed me to take a crew over to New York to see this thing through. Perhaps most importantly, I owe it to my 14-year-old self. So, of course, I knock … ‘
10 September 2007
[comics] Charlie Brooker on BBC4’s Comics Britannia … ‘British kid’s comics have finally been swallowed up by this hideously plastic modern age in which almost any creative work is described as “content” – and demographically-targeted content at that. When I read about Dandy Xtreme, I feel like Victor Meldrew, sighing while a robot prepares his dinner. And I never used to read the Dandy anyway. As a child of the 1970s, I grew up on Whizzer And Chips, and the rest of the IPC/Fleetway comics stable…’
28 August 2007
[comics] BBC Four’s Comics Britannia Season — website covering BBC Four’s upcoming season on comics. Forbidden Planet’s blog has all the details.
31 July 2007
[macs] Running the BBC’s iPlayer on a Mac using Parallels … ‘After finding out the BBC’s iPlayer only worked on Windows XP I wondered if you could run it on a Mac using Parallels or perhaps under Windows Vista (which iPlayer also doesn’t support) using VMware or some other virtualization product…’
23 July 2007
[blogs] Secret Blog of a TV Controller (aged 33 and 3/4) — funny fake blog of a TV Exec … ‘Thommo is stomping about issuing disgruntled threats to everyone left, right and centre; Fincham is curled up in his office weeping. Human Resources people are barging – unannounced – into offices and throwing office stationery around; even the kind Indian gent in the papershop in White City has a fucking scowl on his face whenever I pop by.’
21 July 2007
[tv] Want to save Teletext? Don’t press the red button — The Guardian on the Slow Decline of Teletext … ‘Ceefax has been clinging onto life since 2001, repeatedly flatlining and then sitting up in bed shouting “No, I’m feeling better!” However, this time the decline does seem terminal, as indicated by the decreasing frequency of page updates. During last week’s Wimbledon, for instance, score updates were lagging nearly a set behind the live action…’
19 July 2007
[bbc] BBC iPlayer launch: The first 14 days — some predictions about what might happen after the BBC’s long-awaited iPlayer is released … ‘The Daily Express front page “Now Poles Steal Our TV” reports on how ‘hackers’ in Poland have managed to bypass the BBC’s GeoIP system and have downloaded and installed the iPlayer software on a computer in Gdansk.’
13 July 2007
[radio] Speechification … ‘A blog of Radio 4. Not about Radio 4 but of it. We point to the bits we like, the bits you might have missed, the bits that someone might have sneakily recorded.’
9 June 2007
[tv] Diamond Geezer Reviews the BBC’s iPlayer: ‘I have caught up with the Doctor Who Confidential I missed while I was on the train coming back from Dungeness, and a couple of programmes I only realised were worth watching after I’d read the review in the following day’s paper. iPlayer can really change your viewing habits.’
30 April 2007
[comics] Forbidden Planet Blog: Steve Ditko documentary on the BBC … ‘Jonathan Ross has a programme coming up on the BBC entitled “In Search of Steve Ditko” […] Contributors include Neil Gaiman, Alan Moore, Mark Millar, Stan Lee, John Romita and Paul Levitz among others…’
13 April 2007
[bbc] spEak You’re bRanes — a blog on the wit and wisdom of the BBC’s Have Your Say Site… On the Falklands (I think!): ‘when jim challaan was pm thay got to know some how that the agies where going to invade the fslklands and thats all he did was send a nuclear submaren out there and let the argentenas know that it was waiting for them but we all knew what happened then maggie did she do the same as jim no she let them invade and she was told the same as jim that thay were abought to invade and look what it cost us’ [via The Daily Chump]
29 September 2006
Alan Yentob wants to know why You Tube matters to you … From YouTube Comments: ‘Ah, great to see my TV licence is paying the wages of people like this. *Borat-length pause* NOT!’ [via plasticbag.org]
18 May 2006
[radio] BBC Radio Streams … nice, simple lists of the BBC’s Radio output for the last week-or-so.
26 April 2006
[bbc] BBC Programme Catalogue — the BBC’s Infax programme information catalogue available on the Internet … ‘Details of 946,614 BBC radio & TV programmes, dating back 75 years.’
24 April 2006
[ukblogs] Park and Write — BBC News article about a blog called Wandering Scribe by a homeless woman living in her car in London … ‘A woman becomes homeless, so she gets into her car and drives. Except she has nowhere to go – so she stays in the car, with all her possessions heaped in the back, sleeping in the front seats, parking in secluded streets. For eight months, no one notices her, because she makes sure she looks respectable, taking showers and even ironing her clothes in public places like hospitals. She has made herself invisible, out of touch from anyone she used to know – and keeping separate from other homeless people. But this is the information age…’
9 March 2006
[comics] Alan Moore interview available on BBC2 Website — basically a “beginners interview” with Alan Moore but worth watching.
[comics] Reminder: Alan Moore Interview on BBC2 Tonight at 7.00pm — According to the Alan Moore Fan Site Jonathan Ross and Iain Sinclair are to make contributions…
3 March 2006
[comics] Alan Moore to be interviewed on the BBC2’s Culture Show next Week — Thursday 9th March at 7:00pm … ‘A rare TV interview with Alan Moore, the unsung genius of British writers, and acclaimed author of the graphic novels V for Vendetta and Watchmen’ [thanks Graybo]
30 December 2005
[games] Mornington Crescent on Wikipedia — contains spoilers for the game … ‘Item #101 of the 2005 University of Chicago Scavenger Hunt was for one player on each team to “participate in an email adaptation of the classic game Mornington Crescent”, using the CTA rail system. Participants were warned, “We shall follow the standard Thurgood-Hamilton conversion algorithm, but banning semi-lateral shunts.”‘ [via Metafilter]
7 December 2005
[blogs] Nick Robinson’s Newslog — apparently the first official Blog on BBC News.
28 November 2005
[bbc] BBC pulls plug on Dalek Lesbian Romp Flick — DVD pulled from eBay … ‘The director of Terry Nation’s estate, Tim Hancock, told the paper: “The reason the Daleks are still the most sinister thing in the universe is because they do not make things like porn. They weren’t ever intended to be sexual creatures. It’s simple, Daleks do not do porn.”‘
14 April 2005
[web] Domesday 1986 — the BBC’s project to mark the 900th aniversary of the original Domesday Book now online. ‘…the BBC published its Domesday Project on a pair of twelve inch laser discs with a laserdisc player and microcomputer.’ [via Yoz]
6 December 2004
[bbc] Tales from the Morgue — an anonymous BBC Management Insider’s Blog likely to cover the staff losses and reorganisation … ‘Walking past TV Centre there was a Union rep handing out leaflets about tomorrows announcements…’
19 August 2004
[comics] 2000AD and British Comics — nicely done website from the BBC Cult. Includes a reprint of Alan Moore’s DR & Quinch Have Fun on Earth (with art from Alan Davis) … ‘My name’s Ernie Quinch, college student. I like guns and starting fights. My psychiatrist says I’m a Pyschotic Deviant. But that doesn’t mean I’m a Bad Person, right?’