R.B.3    3 A / V   W O M A N   & A V I E W N O V E M B E R    2 0 0 6

1 SERIAL NO. IM  448199

CHANNEL BY CHANNEL -- 2006 (COMBINED TOTALS):

That's nice, isn't it. Three drop-outs to report: BBCi, Radio 1 and the frightening QuizCall. Want to see that lot as a graph? Go on then...

It's a pleasing comparison between the ten strongest channels over the last couple of years. Witness B4's predominance in Aug '05 and Mar '06. The lines are nice and violent, suggesting the seasonal changes you might reasonably expect. B2 recovered from its early 2006 slump, and C4 is trying the same.

Ready for another graph? Ok:

Yes, kids. It's a straight fight between the five principle networks. The BBC is having a very nice big dipper ride. ITV has taken a nosedive. Four is reaping the harvest of Film4, and Five is just ticking along and minding its own business.

So after all that, it's probably time to do the channel by channel analysis for the year:

001 BBC One (4th, 37pts; 3rd BBC TV channel)
Like last year, B1 had a slow start, recovering from its Christmas hangover. A visit from the Doctor perked things up, putting the channel at the top of the June run's chart. Three months later and the channel failed to score at all: a dramatic shift of fortunes. The only saving grace of the late Summer schedule was the preposterous camp of How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?: a one-off run of televisual gold that, for some snobbish reason, I didn't give any points to. Now, on the run-up to Christmas, B1 is full of stuff to keep us amused: the stunning Planet Earth, the adequate if not wonderful Robin Hood, and the dependably entertaining Strictly... Last year, B1 stumbled on the light-ents programmer's stone, and has not looked back.

002 BBC Two (2nd, 63pts; 2nd BBC TV channel)
B2 had a great run last year, but began this year in a dreadful state. There was simply sod-all on it of any interest. Fortunately, come the Summer it picked itself up, shook itself off, and thanks to the likes of Arrested Development, Extras, and the Simon Amstell show that is Never Mind the Buzzcocks, the channel is now back on the top of the leaderboard. Through a course of painstaking selective breeding, BBC2's "pedigree comedy" is proving to be pretty good on the whole. True, there's some duff panel and sketch shows, but there's also the stuff mentioned above. The question for the future though is Will the channel be able to maintain this comic cashpoint through 2007?

003 ITV 1 (12th, 12pts; 3rd ITV channel)
2006 has been the year the world woke up to the fact that ITV is shit. Charles Allen was directed towards an open window, and after a viscious bottle-fight twixt Branson and Murdoch, the network decided that the best thing to do would be to poach the BBC's boss for stupid amounts of money: the sort of money that ITV no longer makes. As "the face of shit TV", Jade Goody, said on Eight Out of Ten Cats, if they can afford to pay Grade that much, why not instead use that money to make better programmes? Goody understands this and she is commonly accepted to be the stupidist person on the planet. ITV, however, still bang into the wall in the misbelief that quality television comes of paying the son of an ITV mogul umptybillion pence for chewing on a cigar and being Jewish. Curiously, just up the road is a channel called the BBC who give their boss (when they have one) sod-all in media management terms, preferring instead to put their telly-tax tokens into family drama and stealth-reithian light entertainment that consistently trounces the independent leviathan. The demise of the ITV began at the turn of the '90s with the last franchise tussle. It's character was surgically removed with the Granada/Carlton merger. The ONdigital saga dealt a near-mortal wound. And crippled to leg-braces, ITV signed away its life in the renegotiated advertising arrangements of the other year: a volumous acceptance of its reduced position in the commercial market. The result of that shaky X on human-skin parchment has been that ITV's ad revenue is going down by the week, and can never go up again until the third coming. Even Michael Grade will have a job on doing the Lazarus trick with that. ITV has been neutered from the off, then, by its new advertising rates. But it can claw something back by putting together something people might actually want to watch. The question, of course, is what might that actually consist of? Grade has already said he wants to put the ITN back into the heart of ITV's programming, but a slightly better news service does not a successful channel make. It's a very good thing, but it is not a money-spinner. A money-spinner would more likely be having blockbuster films on uninterrupted by Big Ben, but that now seems less likely (not least cos such films cost not only money but time: the multiplex mode of sale means the channel would be lumbered with lots of shit films for showing in the small hours: hours it currently uses for cheap moneyspinning devices like The Mint. Buying big films has hidden costs, and ITV needs all the airtime it can get because airtime means adverts).  In the past, when the BBC has had the upper hand, the solution has been to copy. And this has usually failed. The ITV need to look back to their old successes. They need to return to family comedy and big-set gameshows. They have Ant & Dec and ...Millionaire, but both are wearing thin. And the British taste for comedy has so dramatically changed that I cannot see a sketch show succeeding on a Saturday night. The gameshow route is viable. As I said last year: something big, perhaps with Chatsworth involvement. Think Gladiators meets Treasure Hunt but with less padding and more suspense. As for the Ds: drama and documentary: ITV has shit its pot full there. By crying wolf with so many dreadful one-off dramas and all those painful shock-docs, I can't see a way out for the channel in those domains. It would be hard work and determination to climb back out of those holes. Unless they could find something really epic to tackle; perhaps as a series, a la Robin Hood. Something fun, with broad appeal. Like the Sharpes were, but less earnest even than that. To think that the ITV gave us the old Robin Hood series. But then the channel still had teeth. But then the channel was actually umpteen different channels pooling their resources into one über-channel. Thatcher put paid to that, and the state of the ITV today is just another one of her wretched legacies. The path back is laden with traps, and buxom D-lists eating worms is not going to be enough. Here's the recipe: They DO need a telethon like I'm a Celebrity, but they could probably do with a new format. A Celeb version of The Mole would be VERY good as it would be a telethon AND a gameshow, and would ignite a huge on-line following. We all know that phone-in games are cheap and evil, but whilever they can get away with it, the midnight hours should remain filled with such games as they are a ready source of cash. And the channel need to find some decent dramas and decent docs. They also need to work on their family gameshows and light entertainment. There are paths there to take but they need serious investment. The BBC struggled to get back into things after their over-reliance on Edmonds. It took them ten years. It might take the ITV just as long. And that will prove expensive and potentially disastrous for the once great channel.

004 Channel 4 (9th, 24pts; 2nd 4TV channel)
My fears for C4 reached new heights this year, and the channel has failed throughout the year to really inspire me. Even its limited recovery has been more down to some decent films than anything else. They spent a fortune on The Simpsons only to find that it wasn't as good as it had been on B2. And it's presumably down to that outlay that the great South Park has fallen off our screens, despite still being made. C4 have also spent a fortune on live-action imports like Lost and Desperate Housewives, both of which have been immensely popular, and neither of which have been watched by me. Presumably the expense of these series is more than offset by the ads they sell, but they seem pretty pricey for what they are. Of course, C4 still runs its annual fundraiser: Big Brother, which this year passed me by in a very comprehensive fashion, and seemed to last for about seven years. C4's documentaries have taken a decidedly Five bent and now seem obsessed with freaks and sex and occasionally both at the same time. There is the occasional quite interesting doc, usually with Tony Robinson in it, but it is not really enough. C4's '80s teeth seem to have been well and truly removed by Thatcher's revenge; I assume that it is the need to please advertisers that has led to the channel being so dull, and not just poor programming. Friday nights have long since lost their way: Charlotte Church and Russell Brand do not need their own shows, and Eight Out of Ten Cats should really have been the last panelgame ever made, but wasn't. The loss of cricket hasn't helped C4 any, either. But the channel still has its secret weapon and will maintain it whilever Murdoch keeps his hands off ITN. I speak of course of the glorious C4N: THE television news.

005 five (7th, 28pts; 1st Five channel)
C5 improved by a place this year, though not really of its own ability. The channel has clung on mainly through House, though occasional visits by Tim Marlow have helped it along some. Next Easter, the channel will be ten years old, and by way of a pre-emptive birthday present to itself, C5 spawned two babies this year: Five Life and Five US. Why they did this is not entirely clear. Well, no. Why they did this was to increase their surface area and with it their ad revenue. And I'm sure somebody out there has watched one or both of the channels, which are full of the usual multi-channel shit of '80s US imports, goad-shows and home-shopping toss. Oh, and the obligatory phone-in gameothons. Such programming has also been padding out the motherchannel's schedule. But amongst all this dross, there is a definite faint hint of a suggestion that as C4 raids C5's documentary bank, C5 is returning the favour and finding out some half interesting docs, albeit not far up the pop-Egyptology / gay Nazi branchline. I've always felt that C5 was hard done to. Its programming has never been very far away from I1 or C4, but because the channel is new and fairly indistinct, no-one pays it any attention. I hoped it would grow to be a misanthropic rebel as a result, but so-far it hasn't. There is yet time.

006 ITV 2 (16th, 5pts; 4th ITV channel)
I2 is a repeats and imports channel that specialises in soapy stuff and the fluffier end of I1. As a consequence, I don't get a lot out of it. But they do have the odd half-decent action flick or whatever. They do what they do well, but no better than C5 really. Think all the worst things on I1, magnified. Brr.

007 BBC Three (5th, 31pts; 4th BBC TV channel)
B3... B3... well it's doubled its points haul this year. Or to be precise, it's got the same number of points as last year, but that averages out as double because our survey was over half as many weeks. There is, as is demonstrated by the points, some good stuff on B3. But a lot of it is kept well hidden within a huge steaming pile of repeats of stuff nobody has any interest in watching. B3 is pitched at a specific demographic. What that means is that it is pitched at a stereotype: in this case 30-something middle-class lager-bingers who are solely interested in sex, kebabs and advanced child-care. I fail to fit into all those categories with the possible exception of class. But I find Family Guy very very funny. Unfortunately for me, B3 finds it very very funny to hide Family Guy in late night small-print slots, and move it about in the schedule as much as possible, occasionally putting it back an hour for yet another episode of the omnipresent Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps. Last week there were at least 16 slots worth of Two Pints... A scheduling decision your critic finds inexplicable. Could be worse, of course. There are far worse things in the B3 sea than Two Pints. I won't give them the dignity of a name check. Which brings us, in one way or another, to Torchwood. Like everything on B3 (except the best programme, Family Guy), it is repeated ad infinitum. This multiplex form of scheduling does nothing to make you want to watch it. It is not an event like Doctor Who. When you know something is repeated in a similar slot on the same channel day after day, you are more inclined to think "well I'll wait till tomorrow". And when you've done that five times, you've missed it. Which is quite easy to do. The exact same principle plagues Listen Again on BBC Radio, only more so, because listening to radio can so often be quite outside your normal routine. Anyway... Torchwood is still not really very good. It's just freewheeling along with some stock plots and no clear sense of shape. A bit like its channel.

008 (still curiously unassigned)

009 BBC Four (1st, 82pts; 1st BBC TV channel)
You may recall that this time last year I was being generally worried about B4. It's a worry I've persisted with, though I really don't have much evidence to fuel it. But B4 is such an important channel with such small viewing figures that it's quite sensible to worry about it. Still, the channel began the year with a dramatic domination over its nearest rival: a 20pt clear lead. B4 is at its best when playing the role of BBC Gold. The Poliakof season and the repeats of Our Friends in the North, I Claudius, Tinker Tailor..., Day of the Triffids and The Avengers have been the glittery jewels that have studded B4 this year. Hammocking them has been very little new programming of any real interest. But I'm not going to complain about that. B4 has done its job this year, and though I might have certain quibbles (no Kneale retrospective as of yet; wonder if they'll ever revive After Dark...) I can't legitimately grumble much.

010 ITV 3 (6th, 30pts; 1st ITV channel)
This year, I3 overtook I1 in the chart to become best ITV channel. I3 is essentially Granada Gold, being a repository for ITV's dramatic archive. Still no Armchair Theatre retrospective as of yet, but we have had more Tales of the Unexpected than we could've wished for, and Rumpole of the Bailey cycles perpetually. This, and other much loved set-pieces from the days when ITV spent money on "quality drama" make up a pleasant little channel. It's not quite B4, but the potential is there. And this year, I3 moved up a place thanks to its selections. Fairly crap '80s dramas are not quite enough though, and it would be nice if the channel dug a little deeper.

011 Sky 3 (-)
I keep an eye on the Sky 3 listings in case they decide to show something good. But so far they haven't really. They've made moves in that direction: Futurama, and Long Way Round spring to mind. But it hardly seems worth bothering. In this respect, Sky 3 is the gatekeeper to those digital channels we've not quite grown to accept as part of the furniture.

012 UKTV History (-)
UK History is a graveyard for old BBC documentaries, often crudely edited to wedge in adverts. It's useful as an archive of programmes you may have missed or wish to be reminded of. But it's not really a channel in its own right. Not really.

013 More4 (14th, 7pts; 3rd 4TV channel)
More4 never really did address its nagging problem of content. Save a few decent matinees, More4 is a repeat station for C4's more adult content; by which I mean grown-up rather than sexual. Late afternoons are consumed by the likes of A Place in the Sun and Deal or No Deal. I'm not going to talk about Deal or No Deal. That would be ridiculous. In the evening there's an attempt at something a little more cerebral, with The Daily Show and an assortment of old Dispatches or similar. But there's a lack of very obvious original programming. The only new thing I think I watched, all year, was Death of a President, and even that was a bit rubbish. M4 could be so much better. At the moment it has the shape of a bin. But at least it gave us a repeat run of the great GBH.

014 E4 (15th, 6pts; 4th 4TV channel)
Want to know how E4's Friends tally compares with B3's Two Pints tally? Well I shall tell you: 28 episodes of Friends this week, compared with the 16 you will recall for Two Pints. That's 14 hours worth. E4 has lots of rubbish like that, and its points here are mainly built up from films. E4 is just a repeats channel for C4's youth programming. The only time it's really any good is in the mornings, when the channel turns into a music video station. That's alright is that, but three years ago they had Noble & Silver. Ho hum.

015 abc1 (-)
abc1 (that's a number one at the end) is essentially a lot of duff US sitcoms. Even Moonlighting's finished now. They do an odd thing at abc1... they place the ads immediately after the opening titles of a show. It's very curious and a novel gimmick. But it doesn't make the channel any better.

016 QVC (exempt)
Still Queen of the shopping channels.

018 The Hits (exempt)
Of the two video channels, this is the most consistent. If you want to see some music videos, here's the place you can rely on. It does it and it does it well. The only problem is all the crap it sticks over the top: logos and texts and stuff. And now a "gimp" who does what you text him to. Other than that it is a good little channel.

019 UKTV Bright Ideas (-)
DIY makeover shows are the staple of this channel. I'm not really its audience. It doesn't exactly do exactly what it says on the tin, but that's only cos it's called Bright Ideas rather than DIY.

020 ftn (-)
ftn's biggest success comes through broadcasting Living TV and Bravo repeats. The most obvious example of this is Most Haunted, which I have seen a few times. I have to say that it is a bit rubbish, but I expect it's better with a few friends and a cellar of wine. From Bravo it gets some mildly interesting gameshows that once upon a time would've gone to C5. But increasingly it's mediums, psychics and other such cranks.

021 TMF (-)
TMF (The Music Factory) would be so much better if it stuck to playing music videos. Alas it also shows MTV cast-offs like Cribs. These are dull and invariably come in blocks. Please just stick to showing vids, TMF.

022 Ideal World (exempt)
Ideal World is the other shopping channel. It's pretty much a carbon copy of QVC, but with a slightly different range of tat.

023 Bid TV (exempt)
TV auction house. Why?

024 Price-Drop TV (exempt)
Visually indistinguishable from Bid TV, except this time the price goes down, somehow. Peter Simon is reduced to presenting one of these now. The women always seem to wear pinstriped trouser-suits and the men are always exceptionally tanned. Would you buy something from these people? Then you are a fool.

028 ITV 4 (10th, 17pts; 2nd ITV channel)
The first channel on this list to have changed its channel number since last year. It's also moved up the chart and overtaken its mother station. I4 is a curious amalgum of I2 and I3. There's US imports, and repeats of stuff like Space 1999. The pitch is a bit nicher than the plain dramas of I3 and the cheap tat of I2, hence the likes of the C4-worthy spaghetti western season Once Upon a Time... . It seems to be aiming at a sort of cult audience, and consequently there's some good stuff gets shown. I4 also has a good logo and I hope it does well with it. The channel is still placed at a bit of a disadvantage by the Radio Times because there's no room for it on the main listings page. Eventually I can see the listings moving to a page per network, but maybe not for a couple more years. Anyway, I4 puts out some interesting (and good) films which provide it with most of its points. But it also gave us a repeat of the great A Very British Coup. I4 could yet be the best ITV channel, but I3 would give it a tough fight.

029 Film4 (3rd, 44pts; 1st 4TV channel)
Another channel to have its number redesignated this year, despite having only joined us in the Summer. It replaced Men & Motors: a channel that suffered from not being listed in the RT. F4 has given us many many good films and is deserving of its place in the chart. It's only problem is its multiplex schedule, which leads to repetition and also leads, as outlined previously, to missed films: oh I can't be bothered to watch that tonight... after all, it'll be on again. Well it probably will. F4 films understandably come in lumps, and each lump usually has one or two films of interest. It will be interesting to see how the momentum is kept up as we go along. It's nearly 2007, and Mulholland Drive has still not reached our aerials. Surely soon.

030 E4+1 (exempt)
Another redesignated channel. The +1 idea is a good one, but I'm not sure if it's ethical really. It seems a bit greedy to be taking up two channels with it, convenient as it can be (and it can be very convenient once you realise it's there). Interestingly, M4+1 was lost to F4 this year, and then in a hilarity of ethics, QuizCall fell to F4+1. Most fascinating.

031 ITV Play (-)
QuizCall has spawned many imitators since its appearance on our screens last year. And many questions in parliament. Anyway, ITV, desperate for cash, decided that it should have its own idiot-mugger. And here it is. Usually, the games are set in the Rovers Return. Christa Akroyd still has the rights to the Woolpack pub quiz and will not give them up.

032 Film 4+1 (-)
Launched this month, in the place where QuizCall ended its days.

035 Five US (20th, 1pt; 2nd Five channel)
This time last year, Men & Motors had this number. They were eaten by Film4, and moved to numbers new. Now Five US arrives to charm us with American imports. None of them look very good, and the 1pt here was from a Woody Allen film. C5 has a few of them, so maybe Five US will be able to entertain us in that regard. And presumably House will make it here eventually. But not yet. Early days though. The channel's only been going since October.

036 Five Life (-)
Started alongside Five US, this channel is full of all the crap that they couldn't squeeze into the C5 daytime schedule; and a bit of home-shopping and phone-in "quizzery" to make up the numbers. It's a channel that shows no potential for anything interesting. Unless you find Trisha interesting.

037 Smile TV (-)
Last year, 037 would've got you QuizCall. I've not seen STV cos it's on in the middle of the night and I have better things to do, but apparently it's QuizCall but with less clothes.

070 CBBC (-)
071 Cbeebies (-)
I can't say I watch these a lot, cos I don't. I'd watch them more if they had more archive stuff on. The only archive I ever saw was an old Postman Pat which was spoilt by an oversized Cbeebies logo that contrasted badly with the "foggy day" and rendered the action even less visible than it should've been. Shame. I like that one.

075 CITV (-)
Replacing ITN's 24hr service, CITV is dominated by comp-gen cartoons, though increasingly I've come across more interesting stop-motion efforts. And I'm sure the likes of Mopatop and the great My Parents Are Aliens get involved somewhere along the schedules. I should probably use this opportunity to discuss the issues of advertising in children's TV. The issue is certainly live and critical. At the end of the day, ITV needs all the ads it can sell, and any parent that gives in to pester power deserves the knife-weilding sociopath they will end up with. These views are not really in vogue at the moment, but I don't see any serious problems on the horizon. Kids' channels are very very popular, and whilever there's ads of any sort, I can't see CITV falling just yet.

080 BBC News 24 (exempt)
N24 is the best rolling news on Freeview. But that doesn't make it really especially good. It's a struggle for any TV station to keep up rolling news in any sensible fashion. But you all know that. You've all seen N24.

081 BBC Parliament (18th, 2pts; 5th BBC Television channel)
This time last year, ITV News was here. Now, at long last, BBC Parliament escapes its tiny screen and goes Broadsheet. Select committees remain the best bits of BP but tend to clash with prime-time Saturday evening viewing. Suez made for a spot of archive-raiding but it wasn't quite up there with the Election re-runs of the past. Still, BP is a good little channel and well worth the occasional browse, especially now it's a proper channel.

082 Sky News (exempt)
083 Sky Sports News (exempt)
I'm afraid I've never grazed on either of these for longer than a few minutes.

087 Community (-)
This isn't Mrs Hendershaw from number 32 reading poetry in a shed. Which is a shame. Alas, kids, those days are gone. Except on webcasts, where she does an interesting thing with her thimbles. No, this is documentaries for people who for some reason are watching the telly at 6 in the morning. I suppose that's fair enough.

088 Teachers' TV (-)
I hoped for great things from this. Well not great things but quite good things considering. Schools & colleges highlights etc. Whenever I turn it on though I get a couple of people in a studio, or maybe a very dull S&C castoff. It's now moved from nights to mornings. I'm not sure if anyone actually watches.

100-104 Teletext (exempt)
I've always had a problem with Teletext ever since its inception. It's like calling a TV station "Television". It's not right. You're listening to "The Radio". No. It's evil and shouldn't've been allowed. I also don't like the way it rebelled against the page-number conventions set up by Ceefax and Oracle. But it did give us some entertaining music pages and proto-Millionaire quiz format Bamboozle. For years, the digital version of teletext lagged behind. It wasn't even gettable from ITV (or maybe that was my dodgy old box). But now it's finally sorted itself out and works almost as well as BBCi (slower and more prone to crashing, but compared to how it was...). Bamboozle is now the full 12 questions, though there's still no picture of Bamber, which still says a lot about the medium. It may have a nicer font and whatnot, but that takes up valuable bandwidth. Content may be about equal now, but digital teletext is still unstable and not as good as its analogue ancestor.

105 BBC i (teletext element) (exempt)
The term BBCi covers a multitude of fish. This channel carries the textual element, which older members may prefer to call Ceefax. The great leap forward here was the arrival of page numbers the other year. Since then, no great change. There's still a bit of variation in the content of the digital and analogue services, but the digital does the job very well. The green button still doesn't clear "Press Red" on 301/2, but you can't have everything. There's still no sign of an animated "please wait", which means that page-to-page progress still seems painful slow. Meanwhile, crusty old Ceefax still plods on in the real world.

(106 You Play Games (exempt))
Is now dead and gone.

300 4TV Interactive (-)
Seemingly only dusted off for Big Brother purposes.

301/2 BBC i (full screen elements)
Formerly 701/2 and for a brief period 801/2, these are the lines down which we get those choices of viewing. We've been getting a few more concerts alately, thanks to the "Electric Proms" but content is still not sufficiently publicised. You should always keep a look out, cos there's often stuff in there on the sly. Mostly though it's Grandstand stuff, and still the best uses are for Snooker and Glastonbury, when it gives us a choice of tables or stages. Occasionally they cobble together elaborate video games. This is still an inexpert art, and needs refining, but it can also be fun. Meanwhile, The Ashes scorecard has been dripping through for our enlightenment.
303 BBC i (little screens for N24 and BP) (exempt)
305 BBC Parliament (old format continuity)

700 BBC Radio 1 (-)
The death of John Peel removed from the airwaves the one R1 show I used to listen to. The biggest problem the replacements have is that they aren't presented by Peel, but almost as big is that they're genred. I quite like the odd bit of hip-hop but I couldn't eat a whole show of it. Etc. The natural successor to Peel from a musical perspective is Steve Lamacq, though his frontiers are less expansive and he looks kind of scary. In the last few months, late night R1 went through another redraw which only alienated me even more.

701 BBC 1xtra (-)
That's a 1 again. Not a clear font, this. 1, l, l, 1. The 1 is more seriffed. A bit like 1xtra. I'm afraid I've not tuned in yet. I've passed through, but that's all.

702 BBC Radio 2 (17th, 3pts; 4th BBC Radio station)
R2 has now passed through its reinvention and settled down to quiet 30-something domesticity. Lamarr still does a good enough turn, and Radcliffe cobbles together a passable graveyard shift (albeit with the occasional duff track or six). R2 is not something I'd say was great, and I'd not shout its greatness from the rooftops. Or even from a quiet street. Cos it's not great. It's ok at what it does, and most of what it does isn't my sort of thing. Sometimes there is a meeting of minds. These things happen. Could do better for me, but perhaps less so for others.

703 BBC Radio 3 (11th, 15pts; 2nd BBC Radio station)
R3 was 50 this year, and it's still a good thing. Over there is some classical stuff - very nice, and there's some older stuff, and there's Mixing It, doing their really rather new weirdshit, and there's some jazz, and there's a play, and some interesting noises, and there's Andy Kershaw, the natural successor to Peel from a presentational perspective, giving us a bit of everything. So R3 is very good. I should listen to Kershaw more, I should listen to Mixing It more. I should listen to more of it more. But I don't. Cos I have other things to listen to. But I know it's there, and I wouldn't want it to not be. I'm a little concerned with the new plans that will see less Late Junction, but we shall see.

704 BBC Radio 4 (8th, 24pts; 1st BBC Radio station)
R4, of course, benefits in the ration book by having more rationable programming. Music stations are largely (though not entirely) exempt, but R4 is a spoken word station which makes it the radio equivalent of most telly. But that's a statement of the obvious really. R4 should therefore find it difficult to fail. So it should not feel too complacent in being top station. Most of its comedy is weak, most of its drama unheard. News Quiz improved this year, Just A Minute remained on life-support, I'm Sorry... entertained and Quote..Unquote annoyed. Fifteen-minute slots persist. Today remains emperor of R4, and the Shipping Forecast is the finest emerald in his regalia.

705 BBC Radio 5 Live (13th, 10pts; 3rd BBC Radio station)
R5 is actually my favourite radio station. But much of its programming is exempt from the Ration Book. There are three programmes in particular of note (although I feel I should also mention the excellent Formula 1 coverage). Victoria Derbyshire does the morning talk show, where she has to deal with idiots on the telephone. Simon Mayo does the afternoon magazine show where he interviews celebs, talks politics and sport, and reviews stuff (telly on Monday is rubbish and wrong, but books on Thu is good, and films with Kermode on Friday is brilliant and a must hear/download (best thing on the radio)). And then there is Drive with heavenly doubleact Peter Allen and Jane Garvey. They tell the news and they tell it well, between arguments and biscuits.

706 BBC 5 Live Sports Extra (-)
This channel comes into being whenever two or more major sporting events coincide. It also carries R4 LW during the cricket. It's just an extension on the side of R5, and it does its job perfectly well. I do resent that it gets all the publicity during the Ashes though. They seem to be playing down LW as old and damp. Have you heard DAB?

707 BBC 6 Music (-)
Here's where the digital numbers go a bit skewed. This is R1½... indie-rock for 30-year-olds. Not quite R1, not quite R2, but somewhere in the middle. It does it well, I'm sure. But it's background programming and a digital telly doesn't really suit that, even with BBC Radio's "Press 0" black-screen feature.

708 BBC 7 (19th, 1pt; 5th BBC Radio station)
I've paid less attention to B7 this year, and as a result it's fallen dramatically down the rankings. It's ok as an archival resource. But it's mainly full of crap.

709 BBC Asian Network (-)
I'm sure there's some good stuff on there but it's predominantly talk radio. Some might question its existence or necessity. Others might find it a useful forum. So there we go.

710 BBC World Service Radio (-)
Nice news, contextually. I don't peruse the listings quite as thoroughly as I might, but a lot of it is R4 repeats.

711 The Hits Radio (-)
712 Smash Hits! (-)
713 Kiss (-)
714 Heat (-)
715 Magic (-)
716 Q (-)
A lump of music stations I never listen to.

717 oneword (-)
Listening to books on it is painful because every ten minutes there's adverts. Which wouldn't be so bad if they were proper ads, but they're all trailers for oneword, which wouldn't be so bad if they were proper trailers but they're not. They're two minutes of people saying "oneword... the station for..." etc. Grr. oneword's fine if you can't read, I suppose, but otherwise just read a book.

718 Smooth FM (-)
721 MOJO (-)
722 Kerrang! (-)
More radio stations. Smooth FM used to be called Jazz FM. Not sure which name was worse.

723 talkSPORT (-)
724 3C (-)
725 Premier Radio (-)
Sport phone-ins, country music and god respectively. Again, I'm afraid I've not really listened to any.

728 - (-)
729 "Buy It Now" (-)
Two curiously empty channels that have recently appeared at the back of the spectrum. The latter seems intent on selling music in some way shape or form. Maybe they're top-ups or something.

Well, that, for now, is the lot. I'll be back with the Christmas Box in a couple of weeks, and then in the new year we'll have a reworked Ration Book and a more regular review slot.

Thanks for sharing, and happy viewing.