Tag: BBC
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The BBC, Thermageddon, and a Giant Snake
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Andrew Orlowski
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Listeners to BBC World Service’s Science in Action program got a nasty surprise last week. In the midst of a discussion about the large snake fossil, a scientist dropped this bombshell: “The Planet has heated and cooled repeatedly throughout its history. What we’re doing is the rate at which we’re heating the planet is many…
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The BBC’s Tragic Twitterers
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Andrew Orlowski
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Here’s a conundrum. Top Media People want to come out of the shadows and get “closer to their listeners” – it’s what the Web 2.0 people urge them to do. BBC people in particular are obsessed with being seen to be bossy or “out-of-touch” – especially since three out of four license payers have a…
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Top-slicing the Beeb: Clueless execs get busy
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Andrew Orlowski
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Some quangos, like jellyfish, seem to be able to reproduce asexually. It’s what they live to do. What this means is that without any contact, parthenogenesis occurs and they simply spawn off a little version of themselves, which may grow as large as its parent. Britain’s uber-regulator Ofcom, I learned this week, definitely falls into…
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Earth to Ofcom: They’re our airwaves. Give us them back
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Andrew Orlowski
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Sometimes Ofcom, Britain’s media and telecomms uber-regulator, likes to agonise in public whether Britain needs a media and telecomms uber-regulator. It must feel like a stag night in SE1, as the executives fly in expensive blue-sky wonks and consultants, and Ofcom gets quite giddy with itself at the prospect of a world without Ofcom. Then…
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DAB: A very British failure
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Andrew Orlowski
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Emergency talks to save digital radio are taking place in Manchester today, the FT reports. Unloved, unviable, and often unlistenable, DAB is a technology the public clearly doesn’t want; so it comes as no surprise to learn that coercion will be used to persuading the public to get on board. With DAB, we’re expected to…
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Teachers: Feel my Truthiness – Jimbo
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Andrew Orlowski
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Yes, it’s that time of year when children eagerly gather round a kindly old man with a beard. He makes great promises to them, if only they just work hard enough. But they just get a load of obscenities back. Only it’s not Santa. Wikipedia’s Maximum Leader and peripatetic salesman Jimmy Wales breezed into London…