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(click here for the ration book rules) (red text = new items; + = new points to existing items) (pale text = repeated items unseen; murky text = taped items) |
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| WEEK FOUR Just in time for the graphs, BBC4 and I share some common ground (9pts of common ground in a single night). This is something of a relief. Radio 4's good run the same weekend was more circumstantial than indicative of greatness on its part. In other news, I finally started watching Firefly: as predicted, it's Blake's 7 raiding Deadwood's props cupboard. Looks quite alright, though. Anyway, I've no time to sit here and blather on about such things; I've got graphs to make. I'll have them up before the week's gone too soggy. Until then, here's a randomly chosen string of unicode characters to keep you company: œ Ž Õ Ï ■ ç ƒ ¼ ÿ ├ ♥ ☻ WEEK THREE To make amends for last weekend, BBC4 is treating me to a whole evening of excitement tonight. I look forward to it. You are no doubt relieved that my distraction of late has prevented me from commenting on the poaching of BBC1's controller, Jay Hunt, by Channel 4. But I'm going to comment upon it now. Quite what C4 is thinking is beyond me. What is this curious allure Jay Hunt exudes? She showed an utter lack of imagination at BBC Daytime and completely fucked up C5 before being snapped up by BBC1 where her tenure coincided with the mutilation of Strictly... and the rather vicious axing of Last of the Summer Wine. I think we can all agree that the comfortable cardigan of Wine had long since gone baggy and ripe for throwing away, but Hunt's method of euthanasia was far from the painless cocktail of a Swiss hospice and more like a thorough clubbing with a rough brick. Perhaps it was this lack of respect for old people that won over the board of C4; I mean, kicking old people's what C4 is about, right? I wonder which of the usual set of controllers BBC1 will poach in response. WEEK TWO I am unhappy. I should not be unhappy. I intended to be full of joy today. I intended to beam about green shoots of recovery at BBC4: about Herb Alpert being dug up from the archives, and about how this Sunday, at last, at long long last, BBC4 showed The Black Stuff (see my Carpet Liner Listings). This is undoubtedly a great thing: BBC4 doing what it should do again (see last week's comments for more examples). I would be celebrating but for one crucial detail: I forgot it was on and went to the pub instead. "Never fear", I thought to myself, "it'll be on the iPlayer; I know they used to not put old stuff on the iPlayer but that was long ago; they seem to have resolved those curious issues nowadays". Alas, in the case of The Black Stuff, they haven't resolved those curious issues. The iPlayer failed me. At last, at long long last, BBC4 does something I've been wanting it to do for years; something that would restore my confidence in the channel; and I went and fucking missed it. And so it is that I am unhappy. I blame the iPlayer, and the lack of decent programming on TV over the summer, but I know, deep down, that the biggest error was my own. I go and cry for a moment, and then trawl the net for an on-line copy... WEEK ONE There's stuff on BBC4 at the moment. Stuff about architecture. Dunno if it's just because it's not being presented by Jonathan Meades, but for some reason I've not yet tried to watch any. Perhaps I will come to it eventually. Depends what I can find on the iPlayer, I suppose. It's true that BBC4's demise in these tables is as much to do with my own apathy as it is the channel's lack of content. Indeed, this week they repeated a rugby match from the late 1970s. If I cared even the slightest shred about rugby I would be wetting myself with excitement at this. Ah well. In the meantime, BBC2 provides the arts output with a live feed of Italian TV's real-time production of Rigoletto. Alas, real-time means splitting the acts up in an irritating way, including a lunch-time session for Act 2 and a midnight trip to Act 3. Perhaps as well then that the woman is so mobile. Our end of transmission was introduced by Katie Derham (described on the iPlayer's cast-list as "Key Talent"), seemingly being groomed as the new Kirsty Wark. Newsreaders seem to get everywhere these days. I suppose it's no different to Michael Aspel... Other things I didn't watch this week: the death of Big Brother (surely that happened years ago) and This is England '86, both on C4. Didn't watch the latter on the assumption that I'd be heavily disappointed by it. When Henry Winkler was 37 he cried salt tears because there were no more sharks left to jump. Forsyth's 82! |
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2010 - JULY-SEPTEMBER
Sorry
it's taken me so long to publish this. The year is more hectic for me
than usual.
Figure 3.1 - TV, Radio and Film, week
by week
 Overall TV Radio Film Radio
continues to out-play TV with only the occasional exceptions.
TV's best week came at the very end of the season, when BBC4 finally
started putting on stuff I wanted to watch. The run of form at the
start of the season was courtesy of Dollhouse;
that in the middle was in part the work of Shooting Stars. Radio had a bit of a
lull in the height of summer when Bragg, Kermode and Mayo were all on
holiday. The worst week of the run came at w/c 24th July when the post-Dollhouse lull kicked in with a
steel toe-cap. The best week overall was the last week: the summer
unmistakably over and everyone now back from their holidays.
Figure 3.2 - Broadcast TV versus On-Line TV
 Broadcast TV Broadcast TV (excluding Film) On-Line TV My use of the internet was particularly marked during the televisual tedium of the summer. A South Park binge makes the bulk of the first spike but the remaining block is, save a spot of YouTubing, the iPlayer's doing. TV became so rubbish that I couldn't be bothered to tend to it for tiny half-hour slithers, so consolidated all my viewing into iPlayer-fueled chunks. It's the future of television, kiddies. On-line viewing made up 30% of all television points this season. Figure 3.3 - Broadcast Radio versus On-Line Radio
 Total Radio Broadcast Radio On-Line Radio There are only really two radio programmes I get via the computer: In Our Time and Kermode & Mayo's Film Reviews. Here can clearly be seen the period during which both were off-air. Figure 3.4 - Network by network, week
by week
 BBC TV ITV TV 4TV 5TV BBC Radio By
showing Ghost Busters, Channel
5 managed to clock 2pts at the start of this run. Whatever Richard
Desmond does to C5, he can't make it worse. ITV had a few patches of
interest here and there, mainly on account of what proved to be a
rather forgettable Football World Cup.
Film4 had a couple of strong weeks at the start of September to keep
4TV at the top of the independents chart, but it is unsurprisingly
dwarfed by the BBC. 4TV did take more points than BBCTV in w/c 4th
September: a decent enough achievement. BBCTV made 106 points this
season, but BBC Radio went 36 better.
Figure 3.5 - Digital vs Analogue, week
by week
 Digital
Digital excl. Film4
Analogue
Analogue continues to urinate upon digital regards the amount of points being generated. Film4 was scarcely evident until the start of September, which may be considered a positive of sorts but does the digital tally no good at all. However, it should be noted that the above includes radio. A fairer contest removes both film and radio from the statistics: Figure 3.6 - Digital TV vs Analogue TV
(excluding film), week
by week
 Digital On-Line TV Analogue The analogue supremacy is no longer so clear, with digital taking a handful of victorious weeks in the contest. However, only two of those weeks are of any statistical significance: Virgin1's repeats of Shooting Stars conspiring with Formula One and the Reading Festival to give the first big spike, and BBC4 getting its act together at the very last minute. I've added the on-line situation in the form of the disgusting blue line. The on-line line makes no discrimination between the source channel of any content being scored (if a programme is seen on the iPlayer, for instance, it is on the iPlayer (on-line) and not on BBC2 (analogue) or BBC4 (digital)). My use of on-line television is, of course, somewhat arbitrary, but the presence indicates, to an extent, points which were lost from both antenna-transmitted media to the telephone line. Figure 3.7 - Analogue channels week by
week
 BBC1 BBC2 ITV1 Channel 4 five Despite losing a number of points to the iPlayer this season, BBC2 has done typically well for itself, although BBC1 has been keen to demonstrate its own abilities and was able to match B2's best weekly score (a mere 6pts). B1's two largest spikes were courtesy of the World Cup and Formula One. With the exception of the ITV's World Cup coverage, the independents only made points from their film output, as demonstrated with obnoxious clarity in the next graphs:
Thanks
to the World Cup and Dollhouse, ITV comes out positive
for TV points minus Film points; a feat to be celebrated, even if it
only managed it by a margin of 1pt. 4TV and 5TV, however, failed to
clock any TV programming. Unsurprisingly, Film4 leads on film output.
Figure 3.10 - Average performance of
each weekday
 Overall TV Radio Film The "what day was I out" graph says that I was out on Thursdays but that I had my radio with me. Television's best day is Monday, with the best films being shown on Saturday (the best day to stay in). Radio's best day is television's worst. Ok. Another summer pissed over, let us examine the standings:
It's been a pretty wretched summer really: the worst average total since 2006 (which only studied five weeks at the depth of summer). It's 163 points down on last year (although film scoring has changed since then) and 40pts below the average score we've got for the summer run since we started the ration book. Radio 5 regained the lead from Radio 4, with 4LW having the upper hand over 4FM on account of the cricket. iPlayer continues to accrue points at the expense of the originator channels, and is the biggest riser in this run. R4 falls the furthest having set itself up for such a descent by taking advantage of R5's sports coverage last time around. B2 reclaims its place as best TV channel (the biggest riser in the field) displacing B1 (the biggest TV faller) with the help of stuff like Shooting Stars, Grandma's House, University Challenge and The Normans. Film4 and ITV4 trade places as the best two independent broadcasters on the airwaves, thanks to the end of Dollhouse, while YouTube remains the best independent on-line provider. Perhaps the most important development as far as we've come to be concerned is the return to points of BBC4. Hopefully this may become a genuine return to form rather than just a couple of good programmes on a Sunday night. In other developments, the doomed Channel One (formerly t/a Virgin 1) returns to our chart with Shooting Stars repeats and there's new entries of note in the form of on-line content from the BBC Sport website and from the BBC's Democracy Live project (essentially an extension of BBC Parliament). And so we enter the run-up to Christmas, and I'll be watching Firefly along the way, which should hopefully be pretty good. I'll try to write longer and better reviews if TV and radio try a bit harder too. I've been a bit crap this year, and I can only apologise so much. I still have this week's scorecard to put up. It'll be here next weekend if not before. Until then, happy viewing... |
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