Big Brother

It is already blatantly obvious that Big Brother is going to be absolutely shite this year - even before half the contestants have even entered the house (there will obviously be men on the show). The problem is all the children on the show, who are all so neurotic they are unbearable to watch for more than ten minutes. Try to count the amount of sentences they utter without the use of the first person pronoun.
The second thing is that it is all children - about eight of them are under 21, so most of the tension that comes from the age differences will be gone by the third week, when the older ones will have been voted out.
All that, and the producers (who have hit more headlines in the Netherlands for commissioning a reality voting show for who gets access to a kidney for a transplant) will be doing everything in their power to engineer another headline-grabbing controversy.

Also, I would like to know what grounds Ladbroke's have for making Laura (Welsh nanny, I'm told) the favourite to win?

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Last.fm experiment.

This is a new feature from the crowd over at Last.fm - a playlist thats embeddable in blogs etc - so here's my first test of it.

Sky Sports News, not Sky Sports news

I found myself telling someone the other that Freeview is actually quite good nowadays, which is a far cry from my (justified) initial view that it was shite. It had only about 15 different TV channels, and about half of them were news, or sports. Now there is a wide variety of stations, helped no end by the Channel 4 stable of channels.

I still have a bug to bear - Sky Sports News. Now, for me, the idea of a rolling news channel dedicated to sports would be quite enjoyable to switch over to for a half an hour or so at a time. Except that's not what it is - it is simply a rolling infomercial for Sky Sports - the chief breadwinner for Rupert Murdoch. If a sport isn't broadcast on SS, it barely warrants a mention (except, of course, football - The Champions League being the only competition they don't have a stranghold over, although that's no doubt changing). Take as a prime example, the Six Nations, which the Beeb has exclusive rights for, only the England results were spoken about in any significant detail, and that France won the competition outright. They have hardly even acknowledged that the World Snooker Championships has been on for the last two weeks.
Now considering that a 24 hour advert for a format that Freeview don't show, attracting custom to the direct competition, couldn't their bosses tell the SS broadcasters to shape up, and provied details on the full range of the sporting spectrum?

Technorati Tags: SkySports, BBC Freeview, RupertMurdoch, Rugby, Football, SixNations, ChampionsLeague, Snooker

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A landmark day for feminism

And so, Match of the Day has got its first woman commentator, Jacqui Oatley. And the world alights with equality. Not much of a hoo-haa was made really, just Gary Lineker making a sly aside in his cost-the-BBC-the-FA-Cup-coverage manner. Which was justified, she was only alright - no Mícheál Ó Muircheartaigh or Jim Ross and that's for dang!

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The recording industry is intent on isolating music buyers

News broke on Tuesday that the High Court in London has ruled that CD-wow was in breach of European Laws regarding import and sales... To you and me that means the only place to legitimately get CDs for a reasonable price is now illegitimate. It makes you not want to even bother trying to abide by anti-piracy laws.
When Oasis' latest album came out, I remember doing a quick price check for comparison. Most outlets (online and off...) were offering the new release at around £12. HMV was the scummiest, offering a disgraceful £16 (I can't remember the exact price - it may have been 15.95, but definately the far side of £15) for a single CD. CD-wow had it for £8.99, as they do for all their new releases.
iTunes has recently announced the triumphant decision that if you are willing to pay an extra 25% for your songs, (which are already nearly 15% more expensive in the UK than in Europe) you get the benefit of being the actual owner if the file - which can be used any which way you please. Of course, the recording industry has served an injunction against allofmp3.com from trading for daring to have a more efficient business model. Rather than charge by song, it charges by the amount of data - for the average consumer this means that a regular three-and-a-half minute song costs roughly 12-14 pence - with the artist and the record company still getting royalties.
But since the record industry is intent on enslaving the record-buying public into paying extortionate fees for a piece of plastic that costs roughly £3 to produce, or a unit of computer data that is probably immeasurably minute in fiscal value. And the reward for this loyalty?? Maximo Park and My Chemical Romance.

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