If the reports that the BBC will close down 6 Music are true, it is a great shame. Of course, this could be seen coming. The BBC has been utterly weak in almost every respect for the past few years, and it is difficult to escape the notion that it is too big, with too many outlets. Of course, when effectively forced to cut back, it will opt to close down the high quality products, rather than those that are merely popular.

6 Music is the only mainstream radio station where you can regularly hear genuinely experimental and alternative music on a regular basis. It is the only station that confounds expectations and delights in challenging the listener.

The Freak Zone is a jewel in 6 Music’s crown, dedicated to playing esoteric music from today and undiscovered gems from the past. For sure, it is a challenging listen at times — but that is the very point.

Similarly, Jarvis Cocker’s Sunday Service is truly unique. One of the most eclectic playlists I have ever heard is mixed with ponderings on, for instance, the sad beauty of abandoned Christmas trees.

I have effused before about Adam and Joe, which I think was genuinely the best programme on radio. These are just three of the must-listen radio programmes that 6 Music has brought us.

6 Music should have broadened its horizons

There is simply no commercial alternative. In short, it is precisely the sort of thing that the BBC should be doing.

In fact, I have in the past been critical of 6 Music for not being adventurous enough in the past. The BBC does, after all, already have three other major music radio stations, each of which is dedicated to playing different strands of mainstream music. There is, of course, nothing wrong with that. But this should have provided 6 Music with the opportunity to explore the outer reaches of music more freely.

Instead, 6 Music has ended up being slightly unsure of its role. It has come to attain a dual identity. One is that of a genuinely exploratory musical agenda, for discerning listeners who are passionate about the music they already love, and are itching to discover new music.

The other is that of a mere weakened popular music station with a vague indie bent. This aspect made it like a transition station for listeners who have moved on from Radio 1 but can’t yet bring themselves to listen to Radio 2. Hence the travesty of George Lamb. There are plenty of commercial alternatives for these people to turn to. This is an audience that doesn’t need to be catered for by the BBC.

Instead of trying to gain listeners with gimmicky attempts to cater for the masses, 6 Music should have set its sights higher by increasing its quality. It could be transformed into a station that is genuinely dedicated to music that you won’t find on other radio stations.

And there is no need to stop at music. It could encompass culture as a whole. Why shouldn’t such a station also champion alternative comedy, experimental drama and the like? It could be like a well funded version of Resonance FM.

Instead, the BBC appears to have taken the coward’s option. Instead of setting its sights towards enhancing the station so that it becomes a great hub for alternative and experimental culture, it has weakly chosen to throw in the towel. Instead of realising the potential of 6 Music and promoting it properly, the BBC has left it in a corner to gather cobwebs and eventually die.

The BBC’s disregard for experimental culture

This would be palatable if it weren’t for the fact that experimental music has been increasingly marginalised on the BBC’s other radio stations over the past decade as well. As if the passing of John Peel wasn’t enough of a blow to adventurous music on the BBC, the corporation appears to be determined to dismantle every last piece of its experimental music programming.

A decade ago Radio 1’s evening schedule was brimming with experimental music. But the station’s few remaining programmes dedicated to experimental music have all been shunted to shorter, graveyard time slots. To take just one example, Rob da Bank’s programme is on at the truly insulting 5-7am on a Saturday. Meanwhile, Mary Anne Hobbs’s Breezeblock is on at 2-4am on Thursday morning.

New experimental music has all but disappeared from Radio 3 as well. Since Mixing It was removed from the schedules, all that has remained is Late Junction, which has itself been marginalised in recent years.

In short, the BBC is doing less of the sort of programming it should be making, and replacing it with the sort of thing that ought to be left to its commercial rivals.

Absolute to the rescue?

The Times suggested that Absolute Radio may be interested in buying 6 Music should the BBC decide to close it down. It seems to me as though Clive Dickens was merely making a point about the inefficient way the BBC has run 6 Music.

But the idea that Absolute might acquire 6 Music and keep it alive is an interesting prospect. I have find myself being increasingly impressed with Absolute. I am sure that it has taken inspiration from 6 Music as it tries to re-build itself without the Virgin brand behind it.

Like 6 Music, Absolute thinks of itself as a home for good music (although in practice it just trots out middle-of-the-road dad rock). It mixes this with the use of comedians like Dave Gorman, Frank Skinner and Iain Lee as presenters.

This is the exact model that 6 Music has used throughout its existence. The station was launched by Phill Jupitus, who presented the 6 Music breakfast show for several years. Since then, 6 Music has been home to several comedians.

I find it doubtful that a radio station like 6 Music would flourish as a commercial operation. But if anyone can pull it off, it is Absolute. It would be fabulous.

The BBC has failed to convincingly promote digital radio. The lack of publicity is the real reason why 6 Music has so few listeners. Fewer than 10% of Radio 1 listeners are listening on a digital platform. When 6 Music is only available on digital platforms, it is no wonder it appears to perform so poorly. Only one in five people in the UK have even heard of the station. Hence Adam Buxton’s joke that it is “the secret station”.

Yet, over 54% of Absolute Radio’s listeners (approximately 31 minutes in) outside of London now listen on digital. The BBC, with all its supposed marketing might, has failed to generate anything like this sort of result, despite having shedloads of cash dedicated to the exercise.

The BBC is now weak and ineffective. It has failed digital radio, and it is now failing to commit to the very adventurous programming it is supposed to be dedicated to.

The country lurches back into its usual routine this week. But with the new year comes changes, and a vital part of everyone’s daily life — the radio — will seem very different.

My parents are concerned about what will happen to Radio 2 after the departure of Terry Wogan from breakfast. They were not happy to hear that his replacement will be Chris Evans. My parents originally stopped listening to Radio 1 when Chris Evans took over the Radio 1 breakfast show. (Quite how they tolerated Steve Wright before this is beyond me though.)

I get the feeling that they will stick with Radio 2. Chris Evans is a very different broadcaster to what he was ten or fifteen years ago and has apparently pleased most people with his performances on Radio 2 so far.

While Terry Wogan’s last show was the one that caught all the headlines, the end of two other radio programmes will be far more disruptive to my routine. I was not a listener of Terry Wogan’s, though I don’t suppose I am really part of his target audience.

The end of Adam and Joe

Much bigger news in my world has been the end of Adam and Joe’s programme on BBC 6 Music. They are raising the drawbridge at the Big British Castle for an indefinite period while Joe Cornish focuses on his new career as a film director.

This programme has been a core part of my week for the past two years. It is also unusual because due to its Saturday morning time slot, it has been the only thing that has managed to get me to wake up at a decent hour on a Saturday.

Adam and Joe have an excellent knack of doing a type of humour which is silly but not stupid — a balance that very few manage to strike. This made it ideal listening for the start of the weekend. It was perhaps something to gently lift you out of a mild hangover. The accompanying podcast was also excellent for lifting spirits during your journey into work.

Their gentle humour was mixed with sharp observations on popular culture. Increasingly, towards the end of the programme’s run, listener contributions were a larger part of the programme. Combined with the programme’s elite listening force Black Squadron and the STEPHEN! phenomenon, there was quite a tight-knit community feel to the show.

This was no doubt helped by the fact that it was on BBC 6 Music, jokingly referred to by Adam Buxton as “the secret station”. Even though it was the most popular programme on the station by quite a long way, due to its location in the outer reaches of select DAB sets, Adam and Joe’s was a cosy and understated programme. It is difficult to imagine Adam and Joe’s programme working so well on another, larger radio station.

Adam and Joe’s replacement will be Danny Wallace, who is not quite in the same league. It will leave a huge gap in my Saturday mornings. What else can I listen to? Saturday Live on Radio 4? Sorry, not for me. Jonathan Ross on Radio 2? Possibly. Or will I return to my old ‘default’ radio station, Radio 5 Live, for Danny Baker and Fighting Talk?

Changes at Radio 5 Live

Speaking of Radio 5 Live, that is the source of the other big change to my radio routine. Richard Bacon has vacated the late-night slot to take over from Simon Mayo, who is moving to replace Chris Evans on Drivetime at Radio 2.

I was a fan of Richard Bacon during his first stint on 5 Live in the weekend late-night slot, and he continued to delight when he returned to the station to do weeknights. Given his background, he is surprisingly good at dealing with big issues as well as light-hearted stuff.

He is also unafraid to use humour. It could be so embarrassing (and some would probably say it is), but I think it works well. The interesting bit after 12:30am was entertaining and brave. I can’t think of many other presenters who would get away with completely doing away with news for half an hour every day on Radio 5 Live.

I am greatly regretful that I never managed to get my hands on one of those badges. It was nevertheless an honour and a privilege to listen.

Richard Bacon’s irreverence is what makes him good as a broadcaster, but it’s difficult to see how he can leverage this in his new mid-afternoon slot, one of the most important in 5 Live’s schedule. Most disappointingly, it will be on during the daytime, meaning that I won’t be able to listen to it.

The replacement in the late night slot will be former Daily Sport editor Tony Livesey. I will reserve judgement until I hear the programme. I gather he is actually quite good. But if I don’t take to it, I might take the unusual step of switching to a commercial radio station during weeknights to listen to Iain Lee on Absolute Radio.

Richard Bacon’s move is part of a wider shake-up at Radio 5 Live, which also sees Gabby Logan getting a daily slot. With the day going from the Nicky Campbell Speak You’re Branes hour to Victoria Derbyshire to Gabby Logan, it’s not difficult to see why some people have started to nickname the station Radio 5 Lite.

It’s not quite the quality station I loved just a few years ago. Just now Radio 5 Live seems utterly bereft of ideas, aside from attempting to stealthily change it into a 24/7 Mark Kermode station. At least Up All Night is still good.

If I was being uncharitable, I might suggest that the presenters that remain at the station are the ones who are prepared to make the move to Salford when the station relocates there next year. The logic behind moving a radio station that covers news (most of which happens in London) to Manchester is still beyond me, I have to admit.

On the bright side…

It’s not all bad news on the radio front. In addition to his new daytime Radio 5 Live slot, Richard Bacon has a Saturday afternoon programme on 6 Music. He promises to take some of the jollity of his late night 5 Live show to 6 Music. But who listens to radio at that time? Not me.

I might make space in my Sunday afternoons for 6 Music though. Jarvis Cocker will have a new programme alongside the already-excellent Freak Zone.

But weekend mornings will still be a problem. And I’ll need a new comedy podcast to replace Adam and Joe. Does anyone have any suggestions? (Not Collings and Herrin — I tried it, and it was crap.)

Continuing my look at 20 Warp albums from Warp’s 20 years. For other articles in this series, please see the table of contents to the right. Albums are presented in randomised order.

Broadcast — The Noise Made by People

This was the first Warp album I ever bought, and it remains a favourite of mine to this day. Broadcast’s music is heavily steeped in 1960s influence, and comparisons with Stereolab are commonplace (and not inaccurate). But they sound anything but derivative.

The Noise Made by People has a dark and slightly creepy aesthetic. Most of the album creeps along at a rather slow pace. Then there are Trish Keenan’s almost robotic vocals. The music itself — largely based on 1960s-style electronic instruments — could almost be transmitted directly from that decade, complete with unsettling background noise.

Put together, this all gives the music a rather otherworldly vibe. It is as though you are listening to a ghostly music that has been trapped in the airwaves since the 1960s and has only just escaped.

Funnily enough, the real life story of the recording of this album is similar to the picture I have just described. It is said that Broadcast struggled with the recording of the album, and it took three years to make. Perhaps this is another reason why it sounds clinical, though it’s all the more captivating for it.

Since The Noise Made by People, Broadcast have reduced in size to become just the core duo of Trish Keenan and James Cargill. In turn, the music has become less dense and more raw, and has lost the otherworldly qualities of their earlier material. Although Broadcast is still a good band, I feel that they were definitely at their peak with this album.

This video for ‘Come On Let’s Go’ captures the aesthetic of the album really well:

Tortoise — Standards

Many feel that Tortoise were at their strongest in the 1990s. I did not discover them until 2001, so maybe I am biased in that sense. But I think that the band was at the height of its creative powers with Standards.

Quite simply, it was one of the most unique-sounding albums I had ever heard and remains one of my favourite listens to this day. The effortless fusion of punchy rock, cutting-edge electronic music, multi-layered drumming and jazz makes this an extraordinarily bold album that captivates you from start to finish.

If ever there was an album that was definitively not just ‘going through the motions’, it is surely Standards — despite its title. This record documents Tortoise standing on the very edge of what is possible with rock music. I find it impossible to become bored of this album. There is so much going on in so many layers.

Each instrument would be fascinating to listen to on its own (this was proved when the rhythm section of Tortoise released an album of drums and little else called Bumps). Each band member is doing his own thing. And yet, everything here makes a perfect fit.

Nothing Tortoise have produced since then has come close to reaching the standard of Standards. But then again, few albums by any bad do.

This is the video for the attention-grabbing album opener, ‘Seneca’:

Seefeel – Succour

I only discovered this album a few years ago — probably over a decade after it was originally released. But I am glad I opted to buy it. The music is from the place where ambient, shoegaze, indie and techno all converge. The allure of Seefeel comes from its mixture of ambient-style drones and textures, techno-influenced minimalist drums and guitars, and the dreamy, processed vocals of singer Sarah Peacock.

Although superficially it feels like a pure techno / IDM album, the use of guitars and live drums was unusual for a Warp release at that time. This is what led Steve Beckett to recently single it out as “the first sacreligious move”.

Musically, Succour is a fabulous success. But if you thought this was the evidence that guitars could happily sit in a techno environment, think again. Apparently due to Mark Clifford’s efforts to push the band in a more electronic direction, the old artistic differences emerged and the band only lasted a few years after the release of Succour.

In a way, I feel as though I have missed out by not experiencing this music when it was first released. It must have been so incredibly exciting, at the cutting edge, when it was released. It would be interesting to hear what this band would come up with today.

Incredibly, Seefeel have recently re-formed. Initially this was for a one-off gig as part of the Warp20 celebrations. But there are now hints that Seefeel have also been in the studio. I can’t wait to hear any results that might come out of this.

Chris Morris — Blue Jam

Chris Morris, as one of Britain’s most influential satirists, probably needs little introduction. But few may immediately associate him with Warp Records. But Warp has been the outlet for a lot of his material, including the CD releases of the radio series On the Hour and his Bafta-winning short film My Wrongs #8245-8249 & 117 among other bits and pieces. Warp Films is also backing his current project, Four Lions.

But his first CD on Warp was a compilation of sketches from his experimental radio programme, Blue Jam (which was later turned into the television series Jam). This was a dark comedy, equal parts disturbing and funny. Unusually, the sketches were surrounded by a constant backdrop of ambient music (much of which was originally released on Warp) from the likes of Aphex Twin. Perhaps even more unusually, the show was originally broadcast on Radio 1. It inhabited a late-night slot which fitted with the programme’s surreal, woozy and nightmarish style.

The series contained a mixture of music and comedy; of the surreal and the disturbing; of sketches and monologues. Most of it was a world away from his previous material, though from time to time Morris would drop in one of his infamous interviews. Here, he flummoxes posthumous Diana biographer Andrew Morton.

Part one of this article was published yesterday

Further evidence that Iain Macwhirter is struggling to see beyond the model of the media comes from the fact that the blogs he cites as “very good and intelligent” are both offerings from the media. Paul Krugman’s blog is funded by the New York Times while Robert Peston’s is run by the BBC.

Interestingly, the one he criticises — aside from Iain Dale and Guido Fawkes — is by established journalist Alex Massie, whose blog is hosted by The Spectator. (Incidentally, Alex Massie’s evisceration of Iain Macwhirter’s original article is well worth a read.) There is still no sign that Mr Macwhirter will deign to read the output of someone who isn’t sharing his ivory tower.

He also makes the point about bloggers being geeks, citing the fact that a lot of it relies on the dark art of SEO. He says that “there is a science to blogging”. This may be so, certainly for the larger blogs out there. But let’s be clear about this — you don’t need to know SEO to blog. You just have to write. The barriers to entry are incredibly low. I started blogging when I was at school and it was years before I even learnt what SEO was, never mind begin to implement the techniques. It didn’t stop me from blogging. You can learn as you go along. Or you can choose not to, if you wish.

Whatever, it is a hell of a lot more accessible than the media. How do I go about getting a column in a newspaper? The short answer is that I can’t. Want to be a blogger? Sign up to Wordpress.com or Blogger and you’ve already made it.

Where Iain Macwhirter is probably closest to being right is in his point about personal attacks on the blogosphere. It is true that there is rather too much of this. But it usually comes from the same four or five bloggers, and I don’t read any of them.

Sometimes people (including, I confess, me) bemoan the fact that there is still no Scottish Guido Fawkes. But in a way we should be relieved that this brash and divisive model is not replicated in the Scottish political scene.

The Scottish blogosphere is actually a fairly pleasant place, as has been noted by IoC. Will Patterson, in his letter to The Herald, pointed out that you can read about the great blogging that goes on every week on Scottish Roundup.

I like to think that the Roundup has helped foster a friendly atmosphere in the Scottish blogosphere. We do, of course, have our differences. But that is what you expect in a debate. By and large, we are a respectful and friendly bunch. Despite our political differences, I think there is a clear Scottish political blogging community. A fair bunch of us will be attending a meet-up later today. And it always amazes me that even those with the strongest political views can put their differences aside and give rival viewpoints a fair airing when they are invited to edit the Scottish Roundup. Stephen Glenn is a typical example of this.

There is, of course, the phenomenon of the Cybernats, which is a problem. But it’s not a problem with blogging. The truly swivel-eyed will never find a decent platform for themselves on the blogosphere. That is because it is too easy to ignore a bad blogger — you simply don’t read the blog.

Where Cybernattery is a problem is in comments. As I have pointed out a number of times before, the nature of comments is very different to the nature of blogging. I suspect Iain Macwhirter’s impression of blogging comes mainly from the comments to his own pieces, which is a shame because they are no doubt awful. He says, “This has now become institutionalised in the form of the blog, which is an extension of this kind of citizen journalism.” But it is a major mistake to assume that bloggers and commenters are the same people, or even vaguely close relatives.

As Macwhirter himself points out, bloggers want to be read. But as I have noted, it is easy to ignore a blogger by simply not reading. So the truly awful commenters would never succeed as bloggers because they simply will not get read and won’t make any impact.

That is precisely why websites like The Herald, Scotsman.com, Comment is free, the BBC’s Have Your Say, Digg and YouTube suffer from having terrible comments. Because these are huge websites, commenters know they are guaranteed an audience. Unlike a blogger, they don’t have to build an audience by producing quality content. They already have the spotlight they crave so that they can spout out their nonsense. Bloggers produce a higher-quality product because they need to come up with the goods or people will not read. Commenters believe they will have people reading anyway.

That is not, of course, a criticism of all comments. Small and medium-sized blogs generally have great comment sections, and I am lucky to be able to count this blog among the medium-sized blogs that generally have thriving and friendly comments sections. It is the big media sites that attract bad commenters like files on a poop.

To tie all the loose ends together, the point — as everyone agrees — is that the media landscape is changing. Kezia Dugdale has a good overview of what’s going on.

A recent piece in the Sunday Herald suggested that my blogs get the sort of readership that a local newspaper can expect. That was news to me, and it rather sums up just how different the world of the media is becoming. While the blogosphere grows and grows, the likes of The Scotsman and The Herald are struggling to scrape together enough coppers to fund next week’s editions.

This makes the way the media approaches the web all-important. Johnston Press’s decision to rip the perfectly adequate Scotsman.com to shreds and implement their own shaky template has effectively put a nail in their own coffin. Traffic has halved since they took over. The Herald’s web presence has always been dire, and signs for the future are not good.

Given this state of affairs, the relationship between blogging and the media will become ever-more important. Everyone in this arena is still feeling their way around in an uncertain new world, and everyone will make mistakes along the way. The media could be helped significantly if their most high-profile commentators had a modicum of awareness of what the real strengths of blogging actually are.

There was much hand-wringing among bloggers a couple of weeks ago in the wake of an article about blogging written by Iain Macwhirter. I didn’t take much notice of it at the time. After all, it is not exactly surprising that an established media figure would take a swipe at blogging. And if there is one thing less surprising than that, it is the reaction of bloggers to such a piece. I’ve seen it too many times to get very worked up about the whole thing.

Bloggers raised their eyebrows over Iain Macwhirter’s decision to resort to lines such as, “Bloggers don’t write, they ejaculate.” The controversy deepened when he decided to launch into ad hominem attacks on a couple of prominent bloggers.

But it seems as though I was wise (albeit accidentally) to sit back and spectate (though I acknowledge the irony in the fact that I have now taken the bait). Because it turns out that Iain Macwhirter was pulling a stunt of sorts. It was all a demonstration of how the structure of the blogosphere encourages personal attacks and controversialism. It turns out that Will P was sort of right in his hunch (or hope) that it was all a joke. I have to say, well played Mr Macwhirter. The experiment certainly worked.

So let us strip away the personal attacks and the controversial language, taking as read that Iain Macwhirter doesn’t really mean it. It is worth considering his points.

The original article was prompted by the controversy surrounding emails sent between Damian McBride and Derek Draper. To me it seems odd to launch into a critique of blogging on the back of this. Damian McBride is not a blogger. He is (was) a political aide.

Derek Draper was a blogger, but only for a period of about four months. He has a great deal more experience working for Labour, as he has done on and off for the best part of twenty years. Labour List has been widely derided as a ham-fisted attempt to contrive the shape of Labour’s presence on the blogosphere. It was a failure because it came across as inauthentic and insincere — a top-down approach to a bottom-down medium.

Quite why the focus should be on the fact that this dirty work was done for a blog beats me. McBride and Draper are figures of the political establishment. Their behaviour doesn’t reflect badly on blogging. It reflects badly on politics.

In fairness, though, Iain Macwhirter is also critical of Guido Fawkes and Iain Dale. I am often frustrated with the way the media often focuses on these two blogs whenever it examines blogging. I’m not a particular fan of either blog, and I do not regularly read them.

It is no surprise that the media focuses on them though. They are probably the two blogs that adhere most closely to the model built by the media: hungry for scoops, greedy for a scalp, anxious to have more readers, tempted to sensationalise, trading on gossip.

Iain Dale can probably be comfortably described as a member of the political establishment. Paul Staines too, though probably to a lesser extent. He is also unashamed to admit that he models his blog on tabloid values.

This is all fine and well. It has its place, even if it is not personally my cup of tea. But it is a bit irritating that the media constantly focuses on these big blogs written by those with political connections. If I want to read a sensationalist view from inside the Westminster bubble, I can pick up any tabloid — or, indeed, broadsheet — newspaper. The unique selling point of blogging is not to be found in the likes of Iain Dale and Guido Fawkes.

The true beauty of blogging is the fact that it gives the little person a say, and provides a platform for niche interests. You don’t need to shift hundreds of thousands of copies or generate hundreds of thousands of uniques for your content to matter. You can be writing to a dozen people and it will add something to the world. The economics of newspapers meant that this couldn’t happen in the past.

Failing to understand this is the mistake Iain Macwhirter makes when he assesses the blogosphere. The value doesn’t just come from big numbers, and the brash approach that this necessitates. Most of the aspects of blogging that Mr Macwhirter bemoans are actually just failings of of big blogs. Even then, big blogs are close to being like mainstream media outlets. Nowadays there is less of a clear dividing line between the media and the citizens. It is more like a continuum.

As such, the failings of big blogs are actually quite similar to the failings of major media outlets. He says “nothing on the web can be longer than a couple of hundred words”, which is a bit strange because most posts on this blog are around 1,000 words long and I don’t have many problems with that. Check out two of the best blogs in Scotland, J Arthur Macnumpty and Ideas of Civilisation. There is not a 200 word long post to be found.

It is the broadcast media that has merrily ushered in the era of the soundbite — out of fear that viewers or listeners will switch off. Bloggers have a relative freedom to gas on for as long as they want. While television stations stake their entire existence on having massive audience figures, bloggers (with the exception of a very lucky few) will not go out of business if people stop visiting. We do it for the love of it, not because we have to make our living out of it. As Yousuf points out:

The vast majority of bloggers, and 100% of Scottish bloggers, do so as a hobby and not as a primary source of income. This means that increased readership is pleasant and ego-boosting but not necessary for survival so we can write what we wish to. If anything it is the mainstream press who are beholden to being cheap and sensationalist.

Mr Macwhirter goes on to say that “immediacy is everything on the blog, and it is a medium which positively discourages reflection and any kind of serious thought.” But it is the mainstream media that cultivated the 24 hour news culture as much as thirty years ago. Moreover, unlike a 24 hour news channel, a blogger doesn’t have to keep on churning out content 24 hours a day.

As readers of this blog are no doubt aware, I am perfectly content to surface every couple of weeks, write a couple of in-depth posts and disappear for a bit again. Many other bloggers are like this. That’s because, unlike the mainstream media, bloggers don’t have an obligation to react immediately. We are quite comfortable with reflection, because in this medium you can do it at whichever pace you want. If only the media had that freedom.

He continues: “Blogging is all about traffic and and achieving critical mass.” As if the media would be able to continue if it didn’t have any traffic. On the contrary, it is bloggers who can can afford to have fewer eyeballs. If people stop buying newspapers, the newspaper goes out of business. If people stop reading blogs… nothing happens.

Blogging is not just about numbers. To believe that it is would be simply to project the motivations of the media onto blogging. The value that people get out of blogging is much more subtle than that.

Part two of this article will be published tomorrow

A few years ago I wrote about the Buddha Machine, a charming little plastic box that emits ethereal music. It is an interesting object, mostly because the nine loops that it can play are so other-worldly and, despite their brevity, infinitely fascinating. Which is just as well, because they will repeat endlessly. Well, until you switch it off or the batteries run out.

It was dubbed the anti-iPod, because despite the fact that it bears a similarity in design and concept to the famous Apple gadget, it in fact rejects the entire ethos of the slick iPod. The Buddha Machine reminds many of medium wave radios for the poor, crackly sound quality that comes out of its large circular speaker. And instead of boasting several gigabytes of storage space to put on whatever music you want, you are stuck with the nine loops. Essentially, it is what the iPod would be like if it was cheap and made in China. Instead of, er, expensive and made in China.

My post about the Buddha Machine became a bit of a landmark for this blog, as I ended up speaking about it on Radio Scotland. On the radio with me was a local Buddhist, who was understandably rather bemused about being asked about what she (politely) saw as a cheap piece of tat.

Ostensibly it is a piece of pure tat. It looks like the sort of thing that might plop through your letterbox a few weeks after you collect your twelfth Weetabix token. But there is something oddly engaging about the Buddha Machine.

It is an interesting statement about the position the entertainment industry finds itself in. This is an age when physical music formats seem more and more redundant. But contrary to this trend, the Buddha Machine — the ultimate physical format — has become a cult fetish object for music and gadget geeks.

Plus, you cannot help but be captivated by the music, which you can imagine being transmitted from outer space, or a hitherto undiscovered dimension. Or perhaps an anonymous exotic location on the other side of the world. Mind you, that last one is kind of true. The music, like the box, is made in China. You see, the Buddha Machine is the brainchild of the Beijing-based electronic music duo FM3.

Since then, FM3 have set to work on that difficult second Buddha Machine. I never suspected they would try to repeat the feat. Could it possibly recreate the magic of the original?

It is true that, unless you are new to the Buddha Machine, there is not much so mystery about the second iteration. To an extent, once you’ve seen one Buddha Machine, you’ve seen them all.

But there is enough that is new about the Buddha Machine II to justify the purchase. Of course, there are nine new loops. The music is as fascinating as ever, even if these new selections don’t quite seem to match the other-worldly qualities of the original loops. While the first Buddha Machine was based more on electronic sounds, a lot of the new music is more guitar-based — though it is still firmly of the ambient persuasion.

My personal favourite loop of Buddha Machine II is #3, ‘Piano’. It is a decisive but quizzical riff that, in a fairer world, could be the Windows startup sound.

Overall, Buddha Machine II feels like a more mature version of the original. Although the designs of the two machines are very similar, there are some subtle changes. The first Buddha Machine came in a variety of bright, almost childlike colours. The new version comes in deeper, more adult hues: burgundy, brown or — my choice — grey. Even the “summer edition” comes in a curious teal-like colour.

Buddha Machine II also comes with a new feature — a knob that allows you to control the pitch at which the loops play. At first, this new addition feels like a failure. Controlling it while the Buddha Machine is switched on produces a rather unpleasant, disorientating effect. It sounds like a malfunctioning tape player — a noise that made me feel sick when I was a child.

But a more careful use of the new control brings more pleasure. It unlocks infinite worlds hidden inside this tiny box. Instead of just the nine loops, for each one you now have a choice of a slow and low-pitched version, or a fast and high-pitched version — and everything in between. Each loop is now massively variable. Exploring different speeds of each loop reveals new elements, elicits new emotions and brings new experiences.

This will bring a new dimension to the past time of Buddha boxing. This is where two or more people experiment with a number of Buddha Machines, allowing the drones to weave themselves among one another. On first listen to such an experiment, the loops may seem to match up poorly. But it ends up being a fascinating ambient creation, like some massive imagined Brian Eno installation.

You can try it for yourself with the Buddha Machine Wall, a web page that lets you experiment using the original nine loops. FM3 themselves invite you to play with three loops from Buddha Machine II.

The Buddha Machine has come on a long way since its original release four years ago, having spawned a number of other projects. Robert Henke remixed the Buddha Machine to create the album Layering Buddha. FM3 themselves encourage such remixing by offering MP3s of the loops to download for free, available under a Creative Commons license.

And despite originally being the anti-iPod, you can now buy an iPhone app that apes the original Buddha Machine. Of course, it doesn’t quite have the same charm as the real thing, but there is nonetheless something novel about these wonderful sounds coming out of your phone.

All-in-all, this unassuming little box packs a lot of punch. It is roughly the price of a CD album. But as an object, you will get far more pleasure out of a Buddha Machine.

• Official Buddha Machine website
• FM3 website
• A great blog post about the Buddha Machine by The New Yorker’s Sasha Frere-Jones

Scottish politics became exciting and sexy yesterday. Sexy as politics goes anyway. The excitement is over the fact that the SNP have failed to persuade the Scottish Parliament to back its budget. Cue lots of finger pointing.

It’s the sort of thing that makes members of the public disdainful of politicians. I chose to listen to Radio Scotland for a short while following the budget vote. The first set of text messages to be read out, around 15 minutes after the vote had taken place, was practically an encyclopaedia of lazy Scottish political commentary. All the old chestnuts were wheeled out. One person blamed proportional representation. Another suggested getting rid of the Scottish Parliament altogether. A few more had decided never to vote for the Greens again.

But I can’t find it in me to blame the Greens for this one at all. Not remotely. Maybe I am allowing the fact that I am hugely in favour of their insulation scheme cloud my judgement. It is, after all, the only vaguely sensible thing I can remember hearing pass through a politician’s lips in years. That’s something to get passionate about.

But in seriousness, I struggle to see how the Greens can possibly be blamed for this. Their policy has been well-established. It was put on the table months ago. And it seems like a very sensible policy at that. The Greens’ proposal took up just £100 million of a £33 billion budget — just a third of a percent. It’s amazing to think that the SNP were unable to properly accommodate the Greens’ demands until literally the last minute. It’s even more incredible when you consider that the SNP are supposed to be broadly in favour of the scheme!

This all seems like sheer carelessness on the SNP’s part. Going by Patrick Harvie’s media appearances, his chief concern was not the fact that the SNP were unwilling to stump up the full £100 million. In this supposedly consensual Parliament, politicians should expect to make compromises. It may well be that the Greens would have taken what John Swinney put on the table were the Greens treated with a modicum of respect, with negotiations conducted properly. But the Green co-convener seemed quite livid at the apparently haphazard way the SNP conducted the discussions.

If half of what Patrick Harvie says about last-minute phone calls and faxes being delivered halfway through John Swinney’s speech is true, it makes the SNP look like an organisational basket case. Given that negotiations have been going on for weeks — months, even — it seems awfully careless for the SNP to sleep in like this. It’s hardly the slick operation that skilfully won the 2007 election.

It’s no surprise that the Greens should feel insulted. It looks like they were totally taken for granted — fobbed off with a half-baked scheme, and communicated to practically in grunts. The SNP must have calculated that they could get away with taking the Greens for granted. They might have got away with it when Robin Harper was in charge. Yesterday the Greens stood up for themselves, and rightly so.

It wouldn’t surprise me now if the new budget goes through unanimously, as Jeff suggests it might. I interpret the events of yesterday as a warning to SNP not to be too arrogant and that they can’t take the Parliament for granted. But politicians will surely know that they can’t take this game too far.

It won’t be popular with the public if we end up without a budget and — worse — having to trudge out to vote for this shower again. I’m sure every politician in Holyrood knows that. Nor, surely, can the parties really afford all the campaigning that would be involved. So they will be prepared to avoid that outcome. In the aftermath of yesterday’s events, all of the parties appear to be more willing to play ball.

That’s the risk the Greens now face though. Either Labour or the Lib Dems — or both — might like to make some political capital out of this by making some compromises so that they can go around the place saying they saved Scotland’s public spending. In that case, the SNP really would be able to take the Greens’ votes for granted.

In that case, the Greens will look like they have made a major strategic error here. But I still think they did the right thing yesterday. The Greens may not have been very pragmatic, but their principled stance is exactly what we need more of in politics.

Years ago, this blog had a little button on it. Where today you see little logos for Amnesty International and No2ID, there used to be a button that said “I believe in the BBC”. It was to back this campaign, which was one of the things that got me hooked on blogging. I couldn’t believe how much of a stitch-up the Hutton Report seemed, and I wanted to stand up for what was the best broadcaster in the UK.

Some time during the intervening five years I removed the button from my blog. I had decided that I actually don’t really believe in the BBC. Of course, over time I have become more and more disillusioned with the mainstream media in general, and my opinion of the BBC has fallen south along with the rest of the mainstream media.

But I have found myself becoming particularly frustrated with the BBC’s apparent fear of its own shadow. It is pretty clear that this neurotic period of the BBC’s history began with the Hutton Report, and has been more recently exacerbated by a never-ending stream of overblown tabloid-generated nowtrage.

Of course, the lame tabloid stone-throwing is practically as old as the BBC itself. The difference is that after the Hutton Report, the BBC has appeared to actually believe that the tabloids have a point. What we needed after Hutton was a BBC that stood its ground and believed in its principles. Instead, it has become a blundering, self-loathing embarrassment; a stumbling colossus.

Nowadays, if a tabloid kicks up a bit of a fuss over, say, a bit of post-watershed swearing, the BBC doesn’t roll its eyes and ignore it like the majority of its viewers and listeners do. Instead, it trumps the tabloids, immediately making it the top story in all of its bulletins.

BBC News journalists then begin conducting fierce two-ways with BBC managers, and viewers are treated to a bizarre self-flagellation session lasting several days. The BBC sternly questions the BBC about its own outrageous conduct. After several days or even weeks have passed it quietly snaps out of it — only for another scandal to come along and the whole cycle begins again.

Take the television fakery scandals that engulfed the BBC a couple of years ago. Somehow, the fact that Blue Peter changed the name of a cat became the most shocking thing ever and threatened the very future of the BBC. I knew that because the BBC itself kept on saying so.

The fact that the commercial broadcasters had spent the previous few years building an entire genre of programming — the late night phone-in quiz programme — that was dedicated to deviously extracting cash from its viewers got swept under the carpet. Everybody was too busy watching the BBC break down in what you might call a Cookie crumble.

It was right that the BBC made changes following the scandals. But the difference in approach between the commercial broadcasters and the BBC was huge. Premium rate competitions were quick to make a return on commercial channels, with a bit more small print. But on the BBC, to this day the world “competition” is practically a swear word. Pre-recorded radio programmes are littered with apologies and warnings about the fact. The BBC’s paranoid fear of another scandal is getting in the way of its programming.

Then there is the Jonathan Ross and Russell Brandwagon, when the BBC inexplicably allowed a rather rude phone call dominate the news agenda for several days. While the economy was actually collapsing, the BBC almost willed itself on to implosion. When a bold BBC should have been responsibly reporting important news (which there was plenty of), instead the nervy BBC we’ve got occupied itself by poking its navel.

I found the BBC’s reaction quite seriously worrying. Even though the phone calls were a bit over the line, the reaction was completely out of proportion. And it has the potential to set a worrying trend, for the reasons Charlie Brooker pointed out.

The BBC is surely supposed to be there to do things that commercial broadcasters are either unable or unwilling to do. By definition, this means making challenging programming — programming that might not meet with popular approval. And in comedy in particular, that means pushing the boundaries.

The BBC’s decision to wave the white flag over the Russell Brand hoo-ha was basically a conscious decision to undermine the principles by which the BBC is supposed to exist. It follows that if the BBC believes it shouldn’t make distinctive comedy programming, why should it make distinctive programming at all?

The result is that we now have a BBC which is paralysed by a fear of criticism. It has become too self-conscious, and when the spotlight is on it nervously stumbles around. It’s not exactly the BBC we’re all supposed to be proud of.

The latest scandal to hit the BBC, over the DEC’s Gaza appeal broadcast, exhibits the BBC’s fear well. Knowing that the Israel–Palestine issue is so thorny, particularly given the right wing’s frequent criticism of the BBC’s coverage, it was caught like a rabbit in the headlights.

The first of the justifications given by Mark Thompson for choosing not to broadcast the appeal is that aid might not be delivered properly. That would be fair enough. It would be strange, though, if the BBC knew better about this than the DEC, a group comprising of thirteen charities dedicated to delivering aid properly.

The other (“more fundamental”) justification was the fear that the BBC might be seen to be impartial. It’s interesting to note that Mark Thompson never says that broadcasting the appeal actually would undermine the BBC’s impartiality. He is just concerned about the perception.

The BBC is perfectly entitled to decline to broadcast a DEC appeal. But the fact that it has allowed its fear of the public’s reaction to get in the way is worrying. It is yet another sign that the BBC is no longer prepared to be the bold public service broadcaster it’s supposed to be. And, of course, it brought a fresh round of awkward interviews between BBC journalists and BBC bosses.

It all makes for uncomfortable viewing and listening. It is clear that just now the BBC has very little belief in itself. So how should license fee payers be expected to believe in it?

One of the Radiophonic Workshop’s most famous composers, Delia Derbyshire, left in the early 1970s partly in dismay at the increasing popularity of synthesisers. Disillusioned with the state of electronic music, she soon stopped composing music altogether, only returning to the scene briefly for a couple of years just before her death in 2001.

In recent times, Delia Derbyshire has probably attracted more attention than any other Radiophonic Workshop composer. But during her life it can’t have felt like that. One story often told is that of her application to work as an engineer at Decca, only to be rejected because Decca did not employ women in their studios.

Meanwhile, she received no official credit for realising perhaps the most famous piece of electronic music in the world, the Doctor Who theme tune. It was her job to convert Ron Grainer’s ideas into an electronic composition, and the result stunned Grainer so much that he insisted that Derbyshire share the credit. The BBC wouldn’t allow it.

But while recognition of her talent largely deserted her during her life, today people are well aware of her important contributions to the development of electronic music. There is a near obsessive clamour for any Delia Derbyshire material that can be unearthed.

Earlier this year a library record called Electrosonic was reissued on CD. Along with Li De la Russe (the pseudonym sometimes used by Delia Derbyshire outside of her BBC work), music on the record was also composed Nikki St. George (fellow Radiophonic Workshop composer Brian Hodgson) and Don Harper — not that you’d know it from most references to the album that I have come across. All retailers are listing it as being by Delia Derbyshire. Quibble aside though, there are some real gems on this album, with my favourite track being the delightfully eccentric ‘The Wizard’s Laboratory’.

Tantalisingly, it was revealed this year that 267 tapes from Delia Derbyshire’s attic have been unearthed. There is a promise to “make the archive available to everyone who wants to hear it”.

Appetites have been whetted by the publication on the BBC website of some of the unearthed recordings. Among them is a spellbinding piece of music that sounds quite like a contemporary experimental techno track. Orbital’s Paul Hartnoll noted, “That could be coming out next week on Warp Records.” Amazing for a recording that is almost certainly around forty years old. Nonetheless, Delia Derbyshire comes across as dismissive on the recording itself, saying, “forget about this — it’s for interest only.”

Meanwhile, a couple of CDs of music from Doctor Who were re-released this year. Delia Derbyshire, of course, provided the theme tune(s), though little in the way of effects or incidental music. Most of that was provided by Brian Hodgson, whose works make up the bulk of Doctor Who at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop: Volume 1: The Early Years 1963-1969. For the most part, this disc is less musical, though no less enjoyable for it.

On Volume 2: New Beginnings 1970-1980, the centrepiece is the series of music created by Malcolm Clarke on the “Delaware” synthesiser in which he specialised. This was the first time the Radiophonic Workshop “officially” created music for the series. The result is quite extraordinary — a set of stabbing, piercing, esoteric electronics that sound like the output of someone working in an extra dimension. It’s all the more amazing considering how weedy the Delaware version of the Doctor Who theme sounds.

The sleevenotes describe it as “undoubtedly some of the most uncompromising electronic music ever to feature in mainstream popular entertainment.” It is certainly hard to imagine today’s Doctor Who featuring such adventurous music.

The album is completed by the inclusion of Peter Howell’s 1980 version of the Doctor Who theme — a nod to a new era that is more fully examined in volumes 3 and 4 (not yet re-released). Of all the tweaks and alternate versions of the legendary theme, Howell’s is probably the most successful with the exception of Delia Derbyshire’s original.

Also re-released this year were old compilations The Radiophonic Workshop and BBC Radiophonic Music, the legendary “pink album”.

But among my favourite Radiophonic Workshop-related treats released this year were two CDs comprised of music by John Baker. His brother, the broadcaster Richard Anthony Baker, owned several reels of tapes containing rare John Baker music going back as far as the 1960s. Fearing that these historical tapes would otherwise have been consigned to the dustbin, Richard Baker passed the tapes on so that they could be painstakingly restored. The two volumes of The John Baker Tapes were released on Trunk Records this year.

John Baker was in fact trained as a jazz musician, but ended up in the BBC Radiophonic Workshop as a result of his interest in tape effects. In the words of Radiophonic Workshop archivist Mark Ayres, he could “make musique concrète swing”. A couple of common themes to his music is the twanging sound of a ruler being transformed into some exotic kind of guitar, and inventive uses of glass bottles.

Working there from 1963 until 1974, John Baker became one of the Workshop’s most prolific composers. But in addition to his work for the BBC, he earned about three times as much making music for commercials and suchlike. All the while he was using complex tape manipulation techniques, the main avenue of electronic music exploration prior to the widespread availability of the synthesiser.

The workload began to take its toll, and John Baker became dependent on alcohol. The BBC persevered with him for a few years, but he was eventually dismissed in 1974, partly because his music had also become weirder and less popular. Like Delia Derbyshire, he made very little music after leaving the Radiophonic Workshop.

Volume 1 of The John Baker Tapes focuses on his work for the Radiophonic Workshop, while volume 2 contains his other work. In addition to his delightful music, there are some wonderful behind-the-scenes gems. You hear John Baker describing the process behind how he made two of his pieces. Volume 2 is peppered with strange electronic experiments that were done at home, along with some wonderful recordings of his jazz piano playing.

The disc concludes with his obituary as broadcast by Richard Anthony Baker on BBC Radio 5 Live’s Brief Lives. More touching, though, is the obituary he wrote for the sleevenotes, which you can also read online. The CDs also come with rare photographs of John Baker and notes for each track. The CDs are both exquisitely packaged, with a beautiful 1960s-influenced design.

One CD I’m waiting to get my hands on is Oramics, a collection of music by the pioneering co-founder of the Radiophonic Workshop, Daphne Oram. I can hardly wait to hear it.

Radiophonic Workshop resources

• Wikipedia (of course)
• BBC News Magazine: Four sound effects that made TV history — watch Dick Mills and Mark Ayres reminisce and re-create famous Radiophonic Workshop sound effects!
• The History of the Radiophonic Workshop
• Delia Derbyshire: An audiological chronography
• The Mark Ayres Doctor Who pages

I also got a lot of the information contained in these two posts from an edition of the Stuart Maconie’s Freak Zone podcast, ‘FreakZone: 26/10/08 The Radiophonic Workshop Special’. It’s not available from the BBC any more, but if you can find it elsewhere I highly recommend it.

Regular readers may know that I have an interest in electronic music. 2008 has been a bit of a treat for fans of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. This year marked 50 years since the establishment of the hugely influential sound effects and music department of the BBC. That, combined with a coincidental discovery of new tapes, has brought a feast of Radiophonic Workshop-related CD releases during the year.

I love the work of the composers of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. For anyone with even a passing interest in electronic music, some of these CDs are an absolute must. Over the years, the Radiophonic Workshop produced some of the world’s most famous electronic music.

It is probably most famous for providing music to Doctor Who. The Radiophonic Workshop was, however, originally set up to meet the growing demand for music and effects to be used in experimental plays and “radiophonic poems” on the Third Programme for which suitable library music could not always be found.

But eventually, the Radiophonic Workshop’s music and effects were in fact used by programmes in every single department of the BBC, meaning that few people in Britain can have been untouched by this magical music. Low-budget education programmes made particularly frequent use of the Workshop’s output. An early exposure to experimental electronic music inspired many to become electronic musicians themselves.

Of course, almost all music produced today is electronic in some form. What we take for granted was largely pioneered by a rather unexotic bunch working away painstakingly in a Maida Vale studio. Initially, the equipment they worked on was old and unreliable even by contemporary standards, having been recovered from the BBC’s “redundancy plant”.

At first no-one could work at the Radiophonic Workshop for longer than six months, as the BBC had a fear that prolonged exposure to electronic music could cause mental illness! Meanwhile, the time-consuming musique concrète techniques largely employed in the 1960s would have many of today’s musicians, who practically have electronic music on tap, running for the hills. Brian Hodgson says he once stayed up for three successive days and nights in order to meet his deadline.

“Radiophonic” music was made possible by the increasing availability of tape recorders which allowed inquiring minds to manipulate sounds in interesting ways. The majority of early electronic music was made by cutting and splicing tapes, changing their speed in order to create the right notes and sounds. Delia Derbyshire always carried with her a book of logarithms so that she could make the calculations required to do her work.

One CD released this year, BBC Radiophonic Workshop — A Retrospective, provides an excellent overview of the output of the Workshop over its forty year life. It showcases the extraordinary diversity of the Radiophonic Workshop. It ranges from a comedy belch produced in 1959 for The Goon Show, to the 1997 theme tune for Michael Palin’s Full Circle, via local radio station jingles and news stings.

The double disc compilation is arranged in chronological order, allowing the listener to track the development of electronic music-making techniques over time. The earlier tracks are, oddly enough, the ones that have stood the test of time much better.

The introduction of the synthesiser may have enabled composers to create electronic music much more easily and quickly. But it also brought with it a set of identikit sounds that were mostly devoid of the charm of the earlier compositions. In my personal view, even though the mastery of the composers remains fairly high throughout, the quality of the sound diminishes as the CD goes on, particularly from the mid-1980s onwards.

By that time, Radiophonic Workshop was struggling to set itself apart. While in the 1960s and 1970s the Workshop had unrivalled access to excellent electronic music making equipment, the 1980s brought about the more widespread availability of such equipment, along with a quality that today sounds rather naff. Soon enough the Radiophonic Workshop found itself being undercut by freelance musicians.

With the BBC’s cost-cutting era under John Birt well under way, the Radiophonic Workshop struggled to justify its existence. It was finally wound up in 1997, just short of its fortieth birthday, by which time just one composer, Elizabeth Parker, was working for it.

Although it is easy to let romance get the better of you, listening to the CD makes me think that the Radiophonic Workshop had ceased to be relevant by then. Fifty years ago, electronic music was a largely unexplored area, ripe for experimentation. By the 1990s, any musician could make music from his home that sounded just as good as what the Radiophonic Workshop could produce.

Nonetheless, there are some real gems to be found on this album. Maddalena Fagandini’s ‘Interval Signal’ is hypnotic and magical. Along with Delia Derbyshire’s ‘Dance from “Noah”‘, it sounds decades ahead of its time. Meanwhile, Peter Howell’s ‘Greenwich Chorus’ sounds so fantastic that it reportedly jammed the BBC’s switchboards when it was broadcast.

This excellent retrospective CD was just one of many Radiophonic wonders that we were brought this year. My next post will look at some of the other Radiophonic Workshop-related gems that have been unearthed.

The top story on the BBC News website is currently this on the furore surrounding Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross as Gordon Brown wades his sorry way in. I am sorry, but I really do struggle to believe that this is the most important story around at the moment.

In fact, once you put the pieces together, the whole thing looks as though the BBC has been completely stitched up. The phone calls may have been ill-advised, all the more so due to the fact that it was pre-recorded and yet was still broadcast.

But there are too many things about this that just don’t add up for me. I haven’t heard the clip, but having read the transcript it seems very much as though Jonathan Ross was easily the more offensive of the pair. So why is most of the criticism going the way of Russell Brand?

Then there is the time line of events. The story only entered the news agenda a full week and a half after the phone calls were made, and one whole week after they were broadcast. For something supposedly so shocking, people sure took a long time to realise it.

Alarm bells should automatically be ringing when you see that the paper that has stoked up this little fire is the contemptible Mail on Sunday. This has all the hallmarks of a despicable tabloid rag using any excuse to lay into the BBC.

Last Wednesday the Mail on Sunday phoned up Andrew Sachs’s agent, Meg Pool, for a comment. That was the first she — and, incidentally, Andrew Sachs himself — had ever heard of the phone calls. But, probably sniffing the opportunity to get lots of publicity, she began to kick up a fuss.

All the while, the amount of complaints the BBC had received by this time was a grand total of… two. And they were about Jonathan Ross’s swearing, not the nature of the phone calls. Post-Mail on Sunday foot-stomping, the figure stands at 10,000 and rising. It looks to me as though this story is all about the public’s love of a good old bandwagon.

And what does Andrew Sachs say? “[T]he producer called me on my mobile to ask whether they could play the recording in question out.” So the BBC sought permission before broadcasting it. And: “I think Jonathan [Ross] is in enough trouble as it is. I don’t want to add to that.”

That is how it should be. Of course Andrew Sachs should get an apology from both Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross. It looks like he has got it (or in the case of Brand, will get it). Beyond that, the rest of this story stinks of a tabloid rag spying the opportunity to criticise the BBC for the most tenuous reason.

Update: I see that Will Patterson agrees with me.

I’ve had a busy week. I’ve not blogged here for a week so I’ll ease into this. No heavy politics stuff. Here goes. Do you listen to the Adam and Joe radio show on BBC 6 Music? If not, you should.

Why? Well, this programme has single-handedly made me do two things I would probably never otherwise do. For one, it has got me listening to 6 Music. But perhaps more significantly, it has made me wake up early on Saturdays. And Saturday morning radio is normally a complete entertainment void and intellectual desert, so it was such a relief to discover that Adam and Joe had got a radio gig at that time around a year ago.

It has always confused me why this pair of funny chaps aren’t just all over the place. About a decade ago they had a late night Channel 4 programme with all kinds of japes and tomfoolery like Quizzlestick and miscellaneous spoofs involving Star Wars figurines.

After that, not much of note happened on the Adam and Joe front for ages. But last year they broke into the Big British Castle and managed to get a radio show. And it’s hilarious! Here’s a clip from the radio show introducing the world to juvenilia superhero ‘STEPHEN!’

The programme is perfect for the Saturday morning vibe. It is a pleasing mix of easy chit-chat, silly voices, amusing observations on pop culture and juvenile toilet humour (all plus points for me). And because the pair have known each other since school, the chemistry is awesome.

If you’re not awake on time on Saturday morning (and I am usually not), the podcast is a great way to catch all the laughs. Over the past year, it has become my favourite podcast. Only yesterday I was on the train laughing like a drain, only to discover when I recovered that the ticket inspector was waiting for me.

The highlight of the show is Song Wars, where Adam and Joe both enter songs on a particular topic for the listeners to vote on. It’s quite incredible, because normally the comedy song genre has a bad whiff around it and is to be avoided. But Adam and Joe avoid all the pitfalls to regularly produce amusing songs that are often silly* and witty in equal measure. Read below the fold so that I can pester you to listen to some of them.

Click for more »

It’s loathsome and it comes around once every four years. No, I’m not talking about the Olympics. I’m on about American politics.

A lot of people get themselves really jazzed with American politics. I mean, I get it — the President of the USA is an important person, so it’s good to keep up with events. But some people actually seem to enjoy it. Are they sadists?

For the past two weeks my favourite radio programme Up All Night has been hijacked by these American politicos talking enormous amounts of horsey-poo. Dr Karl’s excellent science podcast was this week unbearably difficult to listen to because presenter Rhod Sharp was sitting there in Denver surrounded by lots of people cheering. (To add insult to injury, the podcast was less than half the length it normally is.)

The thing about these party conventions in America is that they always seem so detached from reality. I know this is not an original comparison, but it really is like pantomime. A politician can say the most banal, boring thing with a clumsy delivery, but the crowd will still cheer and applaud like crazy. Bring up the enemy and they boo and hiss. And at the end of the day you will still be no clearer about what anyone will actually do if they are elected.

And speaking of the applause, and the cheering and the whooping. What is with it? I wandered into a room that had the Democratic Convention on the television last week. All that was happening was some kind of upbeat music was playing, and the people were cheering and whooping and dancing. I must have been in the room for three or four minutes. I left before anyone actually uttered a single word. I mean, what is this? The world’s biggest laughter therapy class?

When I see stuff like that, it just makes me think everyone that is sitting in that room is delusional. John McCain is never just John McCain. He is always, always, “The Next President Of The United States Of America, John McCain”. What makes them so sure? That is just cocky. I would kind of get it if it was obvious he was going to win, but even then it is like tempting fate. When Neil Kinnock tried it here in 1992 he got hammered. So why does this stuff sit well in the USA? Perhaps it is one of those things where they think, “If I say it often enough it will become true.”

Maybe I’m old-fashioned, but I think politics should be about the issues. At least in Britain the parties pretend to talk about policies during their conferences. In America, party conventions just put too much emphasis on the razzmatazz. It’s all about the glitz and the glamour. Then there is the emotive nature of it all. Most of it seems to be about tugging on the heart-strings, and they’re not very subtle about it. It’s just too saccharine for me.

I am certainly glad I don’t live in America so that I have to actually face to prospect of having to pay attention to all of this nonsense. If you ask me, it is no surprise that turnout in the USA is so low. I would hardly be overjoyed by the prospect of choosing between the White Elephants Party and the Ridiculous Asses Party.

It is true that politicians can be quite off-putting here in Britain as well. But at least they put me off because of what they say. American politicians put me off because of what they do and how they present themselves.

What gets me is the fact that they think I would be impressed with any of the sort of silly things they do at conventions. It’s like when they get a group of people to stand behind the speaker. I think it’s meant to look like he’s so popular that he’s always got scores of people standing around him. In actual fact it looks like the speaker is facing the wrong way without realising it.

When Michelle Obama started speaking at the Democratic Convention, all of these placards suddenly appeared from within the audience. It looked like there were hundreds of them. “MICHELLE”, they said. Why was that? Were they worried she was going to forget her name? Why don’t they make her check the inside of her underpants like the rest of us have to?

I only include the video to prove the point about the placards. Don’t watch the whole video — it only encourages them. Incidentally, the first word is not even uttered until 1:19.

Well after the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony was deemed to be impressive (apparently), it was hard to escape the self-pitying among Brits. “You just know ours will be rubbish compared to this.”

Well it transpires that London 2012 will be okay after all. Just a day after it emerged that fireworks were faked for the television audience, it has been revealed that a pretty singer was actually miming. Apparently the girl who actually did sing munted a bit was not as flawless.

This is great news for the Brits! Because if there is one thing our media excels at (except for ridiculous hyperbole and a breathtaking disregard for privacy) it is fakery. All we need to do now is put Ant and Dec in charge of the fireworks and Liz Kershaw in charge of the music. Shoehorn in a premium rate phone-in competition somewhere and it will be brilliant.

This post includes some stuff that I might have written about in yesterday’s post if it wasn’t getting late. Plus, I had gone on and on for 1,000 words already which is quite enough for one post.

Chris Applegate said on Twitter:

One thing more tedious than the Olympics is people droning about how tedious the Olympics is. Turn your TV off and go out, you fucking bores

That is a sound principle and one that I agree with in general. The problem with the Olympics is that you can turn off the TV and go out all you want, but unless the place you go out to is an uninhabitable cave, the Olympics are impossible to avoid. Things like Big Brother or even US Presidential elections don’t get this bad.

Shane Richmond gets to the bottom of the problem with the Olympics:

What irritates me is that the media believes that we all subscribe to this fickle frenzy. So the Olympics breaks out of the sport pages and bulletins where it belongs and takes over the actual news too. I appreciate that the Games coincide neatly with silly season but is it really news that the opening ceremony (a) happened and (b) was spectacular? Both things were exactly what was supposed to happen, which probably makes them the precise of opposite of news.

What really gets me depressed is the fact that while this expensive shindig was going on in Beijing, two European countries were on the brink of war. And yet what was the top story in the news? This fucking stupid Stalinist fancy dress party. BBC News 24 had the two stories in split screen! I mean for fuck’s sake! Talk about priorities.

Several months ago I changed my default radio station to the BBC World Service precisely so that I could avoid the stupid “news” stories served up by Radio 5 Live and the other domestic stations. Yet the World Service has been banging on about the Olympics non-stop, 24/7, for the past three months — and that was before the games had even started! I am sick of it.

You see, my real problem with the Olympics is that it is a giant political event masquerading as sport. If it was sport I would probably quite like it. But it’s not sport at all. You can even see this in the BBC’s presentation of the opening ceremony. Who took charge of the broadcast? Sport journalists? Hell no, it was Huw Edwards and Carrie Gracie, two BBC News stalwarts. For me, that just says it all.

The only reason the Olympics opening ceremony should be a legitimate news story is to highlight how much money is wasted by governments on this pathetic political exercise. Do I care that 2008 drummers had fancy drums that lit up? Do I fuck!

Hello.

I’ve been wondering a bit about the way technology news is still ghettoised. I don’t mean news about the latest rubbish web 2.0 start-up with a ridiculous name. I mean quite important stuff. Security problems and the like.

Take what happened last week. A patch to fix a major flaw in the DNS was released. It is pretty important stuff. But the only mentions of it have been ghettoised in the darkest recesses of the technology sections, cordoned off in yellow and black tape with “warning: geeks only” written on it.

I don’t watch the television much these days, so I might be wrong. But I saw no mention of it on the news. I heard no mention of it on the radio. You certainly don’t hear people talking about it on the streets or in pubs.

You might think, “So what? Security update for X, Y and Z are released every day. You can’t have the news reporting it every day.” But something extra happened with that security update that was released last week: it crippled many users’ computers. Including my parents’ computer.

It is just as well I was still able to use my computer to try and find out what the problem was and how to workaround it. It turned out that ZoneAlarm threw a hissy-fit after Windows XP had updated and prevented users from accessing the internet.

In fairness, the BBC reported this on their website — but that’s not very useful if you’ve got no internet. Perhaps there are still people scratching their head about why they’ve not been able to access the internet for the past week.

The problem is twofold. One, the mainstream media seems quite averse to any technology story unless it’s to do with [say this like a caveman] “GOOGLE” or “APPLE”. Or “GOOGLE”. Simply, if you want to find out anything meaningful about technology you have to really know where to look for it.

And this brings me on to the second part of the problem. The people who don’t know where to look for information are also the most vulnerable users. There are people who, for whatever reason, can’t be motivated to take proactive measures to prevent themselves from the various security issues that inevitably arise when you use the internet.

I have a friend who bought a new computer a few weeks ago. The other day he complained to me that his new computer has already got spyware on it. The thing is that it’s not difficult to protect yourself really.

I’m not really a computer expert in the slightest, but I know the basics of how to protect myself — essentially keep all your software updated with the latest patches and don’t click any dodgy links. I don’t think it’s really a difficult concept. And — touch wood — these basics have worked for me. Since I got my own computer early last year I’ve never had anything worse than a tracking cookie on my computer (as far as I know — I just know that this is an invitation for my computer to explode under the weight of pop-ups tomorrow…).

But even simple measures like these that anyone can take are difficult to get through to some people. So many people still treat computers with awe. It is sometimes easy to forget how foreign computers are to many people.

I remember a couple of years ago when there was a really bad signalling failure on the train line into Edinburgh. Basically every train was cancelled. An old lady pointed to the automated departure monitor and asked why it said a list of trains towards the bottom of the screen were still listed as being on time.

This is what she said in protest (as though it would make her more likely to get on a train to Edinburgh): “I thought computers were wonderful things that never ever went wrong.” But even my basic knowledge of how computers work told me exactly why the trains were still listed as being ‘on time’ — because they hadn’t even departed from their start station, so hadn’t passed any sensors and weren’t technically late at all. The computer was none the wiser for obvious reasons.

This can be put down to the old issue that people in their thirties and younger have been using computers for almost all of their lives and understand what a computer is good for and what it isn’t. Youngsters who have lived with computers all their lives understand how a computer works, but for many people older than that computers just work by magic.

The thing is, that divide between young and old is not so clear cut as I used to think. I was listening to iPM yesterday and there was an interview with Clive Sinclair. He pointed out that back in the 1980s computer users really understood computers because they had to in order to get them to work. Today’s youngsters growing up with computers generally don’t understand computers at all.

So we come back to my friend who is the same age as me and has a problem with spyware. I have had a few conversations with him where I have tried to persuade him to use Firefox. For him, the internet is the internet and he doesn’t understand how one browser can be better than another. Even though I have told him about all the superior features and better security that a browser like Firefox or Opera can provide, he persists on using Internet Exploder version bum point poo.

Many people, through ignorance, don’t take the simple measures to keep themselves safe on the internet. I’ve had a look at the stats for this website to see what bad browsers visitors to this site are using.

In the past month, an amazing 20% of visitors used Internet Explorer 6. This is a web browser that was originally released seven years ago and last updated four years ago. It is notorious for its security problems. The more up-to-date Internet Explorer 7 was released almost two years ago.

You would expect Firefox users to be smarter, right? Not always. In the past month, 243 Firefox users that visited this website were using a version of the browser that is considered unsafe (which I defined as 2.0.0.14 and below). This included 19 people using 1.5.0.12, 11 using 1.0.7 and 8 using 1.5.0.3. Most amazingly, 4 visitors were using Firefox 0.9.1, a browser that has been out of date for four years. I dread to think what kind of security problems these users have been getting themselves in.

It got me wondering. If this many people are using dodgy browsers, how many people are still trying in vain to unsubscribe from spam emails? How many don’t know that even viewing an image in an email alerts a spammer that your email address is active? You could go on.

I don’t mean all this in a preachy kind of way. I completely understand why it is difficult for people to keep up to date with all the security issues that arise. I just find it really frustrating that simple awareness issues are not, well, made aware to people.

Things don’t get much more ubiquitous than the internet. It is impossible to imagine that someone growing up today will not be a regular internet user in some form or another. And there are real dangers on the internet that aren’t to do with [say this like a caveman] “PEDOPHILS” and “CYBER BULLIES”. But the media reports on made-up dangers like “KNIVES” and “YOOFS” and “KNIVES” as though we are on the verge of bladeageddon.

Yesterday I was listening to Digital Planet. They had a chap called Stefan Frei on reporting that around 60% of all internet users are using an out-of-date browser. He had a really smart way of thinking about software security. You should think of software as being perishable, just in the same way as foodstuffs. You wouldn’t eat a mouldy slice of bread, so why would you use a browser with a huge security hole in it?

It’s a really smart analogy that should be spread far and wide. It’s just frustrating that the place I heard it was on Digital Planet, which is probably listened to mainly by people who already know that they should be updating their browsers.

Radio 5 Live has a new controller, Adrian van Klaveren. This is of interest to me because pretty much whenever I listen to the radio it is Radio 5 Live.

No doubt he will want to make his presence felt and will be making changes soon enough. So it’s a good opportunity to have a look at where 5 Live has gone wrong and where it remains as good as ever. Scott’s post on the same topic last week is also worth a look.

I discovered Radio 5 Live in early 2001 when I began to outgrow the local music stations. The brash presenters and samey music began to grate to the extreme, and there was nothing for me to listen to. Scanning around the radio looking for something to listen to overnight, I discovered the amazing Up All Night and stuck with 5 Live permanently.

Before I start blasting right in, I should point out one thing that is so important that I will say it in bold red letters. Don’t touch Up All Night!

I can’t understand why the best programme on radio is shoved away at the arse end of the day. The programme is a fine mixture of laid-back but intelligent analysis of the day’s events and a number of excellent regular features.

Pods and Blogs, Dr Karl’s science phone-in, the etymology phone-in, Cash Peters (worth it just for all the awesome banter) and more are all practically must-listen material. Even stuff I am not usually interested in — world football, films, even Bollywood news — is perfectly enjoyable on Up All Night.

The advantage of Up All Night is that it was there on the first night of 5 Live and has been on for the best part of a decade and a half. Over the years, it has gathered up great features like a glittery tumble weed, experimenting now and again with new ideas and ways of approaching the slot. For instance, I remember the days when the hugely successful, 90 minute long world football phone-in was just a small five or ten minute slot about Brazilian football. It has evolved beautifully.

It’s difficult to imagine any of the other programmes on 5 Live, apart from perhaps Simon Mayo, managing this. I can understand why you can’t have a 90 minute long slot about Brazilian football in the middle of the day. The fact that news is happening all the time means that the daytime shows have to be more flexible. But that isn’t an excuse for them to be utter shit.

When I began listening to 5 Live I was really happy at first. I couldn’t stand Nicky Campbell, but given that I was still at school back in those days he was really easy to avoid. When he moved to breakfast I had to start looking yet again for a new station to listen to, at least between 6am and 9am.

I remember his first show on the breakfast slot. Ego-boy Campbell thought the whole show was his and kept on talking over his co-host. The frosty relationship between Nicky Campbell, Victoria Derbyshire and Fi Glover made for really embarrassing broadcasting and unbearable listening.

I have avoided the breakfast slot like the plague ever since. Inexplicably, the awful Nicky Campbell is still in the breakfast slot, still making a total arse of himself.

The rot began to spread over to the other slots. Once the excellent Fi Glover fled the station, allegedly unable to take Campbell’s bravado any longer, the morning phone-in slot went to Victoria Derbyshire. Derby-shite more like!

The decision was seemingly at attempt for the station to shed its “Radio Bloke” reputation. The fact that every single one of her stand-ins has done a much better job than Derbyshire ever could says it all. John Pienaar, Phil Williams and especially Matthew Bannister were a joy to listen to in the morning. But Victoria Derbyshire is just awful.

She so often sounds completely out of her depth. It is particularly cringe-worthy when she has to deal with a sensitive topic. It sounds like she read in a book somewhere that staying silent a lot is a good way to deal with a sensitive situation. But obviously you can’t just stay quiet on the radio. You have to say something as well. And she says the most banal things. “…It must be awful…,” she says trying to fake a quiver in her voice. No shit Sherlock.

A recent interview with Kenny Richey was one of the worst examples. Lots of silences and lots of “it must have been so difficult” interspersed with strange probing questions about the crimes of his fellow inmates, as if that had anything to do with it.

The very premise of the show doesn’t help. It is the stereotypical “Speak Your Brains” phone-in for knuckle-heads. It’s not much different to this video. There is a poll out today saying that no-one speaks for thick white working-class people.

The people who answered that poll can’t have listened to Victoria Derbyshire. And the irony of unemployed people complaining about immigrants getting so many benefits. At that time of the morning, you can safely hazard a guess that many of the callers are on the dole, and are also thick as pigshit. If this is what a BBC phone-in is like, I shudder to imagine what a station like TalkSport or LBC would be saying.

Thankfully, the rest of the day on 5 Live is okay. Simon Mayo is really good. I was never so keen in the past, but given that so many of 5 Live’s other great presenters have jumped ship he is like a shining beacon. Drive has changed little and remains as good and bad as it always has been. If anything, it has improved since Anita Anand became one of the presenters.

Sport on 5 is not my thing, but it will be there until 5 Live shuts up shop, so there’s no point complaining about it. I don’t mind Richard Bacon as much as some people, but when you look at the roll call of the slot’s previous few presenters — Anita Anand, Matthew Bannister, Fi Glover — you can’t help but think we have gone down a rung.

Weekends are just one long disaster zone, with sirens wailing and smoke pouring out of the windows. Is Homer Simpson at the controls? I don’t mind the sport. That’s part of 5 Live so you have to live with it. Besides, they do Formula 1 as well so I can’t complain.

But what about all of the programmes around it? Saturday morning was one slot I was always iffy about. Even when the quite excellent Adrian Chiles was presenting that slot, the programme was inexplicably dull. It seemed to be aimed at boring sport fans who fancied themselves as amateur Stattos.

It hasn’t got much better under the control of Eamonn Holmes. Luckily Adam and Joe are on 6 Music on Saturday mornings these days, otherwise I would still be sleeping through until 1pm avoiding all of the dross.

And just what on earth has happened to Sunday mornings over the past few months? I hope there is a good reason for Julian Worricker’s disappearance, because his replacement Gabby Logan is terrible. Logan is yet another one of those stars that the BBC has poached from another channel at great expense without even knowing what to do with her (see also Johnny Vaughan, Graham Norton, Richard Blackwood). Is she qualified to broadcast about subjects other than sport? It doesn’t sound like it.

Then in the evening there is smooth, calm Stephen Nolan. That was sarcasm there. This loud mouth just approaches every topic from the most controversial and inflammatory angle. His treatment of sensitive subjects has all the tact and subtlety of a bulldozer knocking over a child’s sandcastle. When you factor in the fact that Stephen Nolan is from Northern Ireland, I should think it is a miracle that this audio arsonist is still alive.

To be honest, the only thing that keeps me listening to 5 Live so much is Up All Night — and the fact that all the other radio stations are even worse.

There is an amusing video on YouTube of a couple of people giving a running commentary over BBC News wondering why they haven’t mentioned the earthquake (via Media Monkey).

The people in the video make some amusing comments, although they do exhibit the worst of the victim mentality that a lot of people in this country have. An inch of snow has fallen and it is the end of the bloody world. A train is five minutes late and it is an abomination that would never have happened under British Rail. An earthquake has hit us, woe is me. Etc, etc.

Maybe the guys in the video were being ironic when they kept on shrieking, “There’s been an earthquake! Hellooo? BBC? There’s been an earthquake!” But it wouldn’t surprise me if a lot of people genuinely were enraged when the BBC didn’t cover the only interesting that has happened in their dull little lives. I have heard that Radio 5 Live has had a record number of text messages. That doesn’t surprise me, 5 Live being as it is the country’s premier forum for self-important people with anal passages in place of their mouths, wanting to phone in and describe how the world revolves around them.

Victoria Derbyshire’s programme in the morning was even worse than usual, amazingly enough. The callers I heard all said much the same thing. “My house was shaking! I thought a lorry had crashed into my house!” “I was lying in my bed and I was woken up. At first I thought it was a burglar. Little did I know that it was something even more serious!” YAWN

So parts of England got the shakes. Big deal. The stories about it on the BBC News website are a parade of mediocrity.

“The room just started shaking” Shaking?! How will you ever recover? “The quiet market town at the epicentre of the earthquake recovers”. Yeah, recovers from a few toppled chimneys!

The only casualty from the whole episode appears to be one poor man with a broken pelvis. While I certainly would not like a chimney stack to fall on top of my pelvis, it isn’t exactly September 11 in terms of casualties.

So I am not surprised that BBC News decided not to give it so much coverage. It is worth bearing in mind that after 0100 BBC News 24 ceases to be a UK service. What we get in the UK is essentially a simulcast of BBC World. As such, it reflects a global news agenda.

This is the way it should be really. UK news seldom breaks during the night, and there are few people in the UK watching at that time of night anyway. News channels are notoriously expensive to run anyway. I know certainly that Sky News makes a loss.

It would be difficult for the BBC to justify spending license payers’ money on a near-useless overnight UK service that would be watched by very few people. The BBC has a 24 hour UK news service anyway — it’s called BBC Radio 5 Live. From what I heard of their coverage, they did a pretty good job — as you would expect from the Up All Night crew.

If BBC News 24 / BBC World were to slavishly cover the earthquake like Sky News did, the majority of the BBC’s viewers scattered across the globe would have been equally indignant as the people in the UK complaining about the lack of earthquake coverage. I can just imagine people around the world uploading their commentary onto YouTube. “5 on the Richter scale? I have taken naps through that!”

People across the world look to the BBC as a source of authoritative world news. A piddly wee earthquake in Lincolnshire just doesn’t cut it. If it was an exclusively UK service like Sky News then you would indeed expect them to cover it. But it isn’t, so you wouldn’t (or at least shouldn’t).

I did actually watch a bit of Sky News’s overnight earthquake coverage and it was indeed execrable. In fact, the video I have embedded above highlights the completely different approaches of the two channels and why Sky News falls flat on its face so often.

BBC News might have been late to mention the story, but notably they got it right. They did not spend longer than required on the story, and they got the important details such as the epicentre correct. Meanwhile, Sky News were showing a map with Birmingham and Manchester pinpointed. Why? We don’t know. Sky don’t care about getting it right, as long as they can convey that something is happening — NOW!

In fact, Sky News’s coverage of the earthquake highlights everything that is wrong with 24 hour news. Media Monkey highlights their typically insightful coverage:

Sky News interviewer Faye Barker: “So, what were you doing when the quake shook?” Eyewitness, or should that be earwitness, from Lincolnshire: “I was in bed.” Barker: “Oh… [Pause]. And would you say it felt more like a juggernaut or a freight train going past?” Woman: “Er… a freight train.”

Sky News is also rightly being criticised today for a truly disgusting interview conducted by the diabolical Kay Burley. She was previously famous for her measured response on September 11: “If you’re just joining us, the entire eastern seaboard of the United States has been decimated by a terrorist attack.” This week she asked the wife of recently convicted serial killer Steve Wright the following question:

Do you think if you’d had a better sex life, he wouldn’t have done this?

What a vile question to ask. Not surprisingly, the interviewee burst into tears upon being asked that question. Imagine having that thought running through your head — “If only I had sex with my husband a bit more, those five prostitutes wouldn’t have been murdered.”

Unity, Jennie and Mitch Benn say all that needs to be said.

If BBC News lost respect for its slow response to the earthquake, goodness knows what Sky News must have lost.

I’m taking a brief break from my break because I think I can afford to now.

When I last wrote about the racism issue in F1, it was to bemoan the media’s role in fuelling the fire. If you have been reading for a while you might know of the distaste I have for some of the coverage found in F1 Racing over the past year or so.

I am not the only person to have noticed a decline in the standard of the journalism in F1 Racing. For instance, Clive has spoken about “the abandonment by the magazines of the high ground.” Alvin in the comments here has said he is currently boycotting F1 Racing.

Craig at craigblog has posted at least twice on the subject of cancelling his subscription to F1 Racing. And there are a few people in the comments saying the same thing time and again — “I have been buying F1 Racing for around ten years, but now I have to stop”.

Speaking as someone who is sitting just yards in front of a huge pile of eleven years’ worth of issues of F1 Racing, I have to say I am in the same position. This is not the result of some kind of mass internet campaign against the magazine. But I can’t help but notice for a lot of people that at some point in the past year came a few straws that broke some camels’ backs.

One particularly low point came when the editor Matt Bishop wrote a poisonous piece about Ralf Schumacher. It was little more than an excuse for “The Bish” (as no-one but Mr Bishop himself calls him) to use up four or five pages to explain how he told Ralf Schumacher to “off you fuck!”

Now, Ralf Schumacher was not the most popular driver in the paddock and you would struggle to find many fans of his. But for me, Matt Bishop’s piece was highly unprofessional, particularly for an editor as experienced as him. It was just so childish. “Ooh! Look at me! I told Ralf Schumacher to fuck off!” It’s like a small child saying, “Hahaha! I called the teacher a fanny!”

Last year there was also a heavy dose of unbearable Hamilton hype (or should that be “Lewis hype”, seeing as the whole British media is apparently on first name terms with him?). Then of course there is the fact that it is much more convenient and quicker to get all of the news on the internet rather than waiting every month for a dead tree to pop through the letter box. By the end of last year, it is fair to say that quite a lot of us were bashing The Bish.

And then The Bish left. In retrospect, that is probably why he felt free to write that terrible Ralf Schumacher article. His new job is as an apologist for Lewis Hamilton–no change there then.

But it begged the question–would F1 Racing improve again with someone else at the helm? The first couple of issues sans-Bish did not promise much. But what a pleasant surprise I had when I read this month’s editorial, written by the magazine’s deputy editor Stuart Codling.

I sorely want to quote it in full, but out of respect for the publishers I will summarise it. Mr Codling writes about how the phone was ringing off the hook after the racism story broke as radio producers went on the hunt for “experts” (those are Stuart Codling’s scare quotes, not mine). He writes about this poisonous era of 24 hour radio and television which is making coverage of anything increasingly confrontational and shrill. “Complex issues become a shouty amalgam of ‘Us’ vs Them’.”

He continues, racism does not solely exist in Spain. The aggravation that Lewis Hamilton faced was as a result of his rivalry with Fernando Alonso. As I wrote a couple of weeks back, we all know that the racists would be out in force no matter what country was involved, and British people especially are not in a position to lecture others countries on how their sport fans should behave.

Mr Codling’s next sentence is such a breath of fresh air–it actually felt like a relief to read it.

But who stoked up this grudge that has so publicly become a vehicle for xenophobia and racism? Well, we all did — both writers and readers, supply and demand.

He goes on to bemoan the goading that Alonso received from a British press eager to get an anti-Hamilton comment from the Spaniard. It has to be said, that Alonso’s behaviour in the media has been absolutely faultless, and you seldom hear him commenting on Hamilton in negative terms, and certainly not on anything other than his on-track actions. This is certainly a great deal more than can be said for Lewis Hamilton, who cannot seem to resist constantly making snide comments about Alonso.

Stuart Codling clearly has his head screwed on. He has a sense of morals, unlike most in the media. The way his editorial ends basically sums it up. Hearing that Mr Codling speaks with a modicum of balance, the radio producer ended the call “to find someone ‘better’.”

Three cheers for Stuart Codling. His behaviour was certainly much better than that of Matt Bishop. Mr Bishop had no qualms appearing on Radio 5 Live to say one of the most ridiculously overblown things I have ever heard someone say about Formula 1:

Lewis Hamilton is in the same chapter only as Juan Manuel Fangio, Jim Clark, Ayrton Senna, Michael Schumacher. And that’s it.

This was made after Lewis Hamilton had completed his third race. No-one has a career after three races. Not even Michael Schumacher was Michael Schumacher after his third race. To compare Lewis Hamilton with names like Ayrton Senna after just three races does justice neither to Hamilton’s talent nor Senna’s legacy. If that needs explaining, as it did for one commenter* on this blog, please read this.

So I will not be cancelling my subscription to F1 Racing just yet. Unfortunately, this month’s issue is the last of Stuart Codling’s short tenure at the helm of the magazine as Matt Bishop’s replacement has been hired. For those who are worried about the increasing tabloidisation of F1 Racing it could be bad news. The new editor is Hans Seeberg. Is that the same Hans Seeberg who has recently been deputy editor of Nuts And / Or Zoo Magazine? Oh dear…

*Quite ironic when you look back on that actually. Lawrence says that Hamilton deserves comparisons to Fangio and Senna on the basis of his drive in Fuji. Hamilton was later to be investigated for dangerously bad driving during that grand prix.

A couple of months ago the BBC announced that it had reached an agreement that allowed them to use commercial music on their podcasts. This meant that, at last, the BBC could produce music podcasts. The only problem was that music could only be included in the form of clips a maximum of 30 seconds long.

I don’t know what most people think, but that sets off sirens in my head — music podcasts where the music is cut short. Of course, it is much better than having no music at all, so we should be thankful for this.

The original blog post about it was on the BBC’s interesting Radio Labs blog — take a look at it if you’re interested in the future of radio. There, Chris Kimber made a valiant attempt at explaining how and why the new music podcasts would work.

The interesting thing for me is going to be working out what works well as a podcast as opposed to a linear radio broadcast. Our approach generally is to offer “short form audio snacks”, rather than try to replicate the whole programme experience but with short music clips instead of full tracks. All the research we have done into podcasting suggests that people generally want something special and different from normal broadcast radio programmes, and that short is better than long. Most of our speech podcasts are a maximum of 30 mins long, but with these new music podcasts we are aiming for really short form – about ten minutes is what I’m recommending.

This is just a personal preference (and I know I am in a minority), but I have always preferred long things to short things. I prefer 70 minute long albums, and can just about tolerate a 45 minute long album. But I feel offended and ripped off if an album lasts 35 minutes or shorter.

It’s interesting that most of the BBC’s speech podcasts are 30 minutes long maximum. Two of the four BBC speech podcasts I subscribe to typically last 50 minutes. A ten minute long podcast is not normally my cup of tea — I prefer them to be half an hour to an hour long.

So initially I was sceptical about these new music podcasts. But I went ahead and subscribed to the music podcast that appealed to me most — Stuart Maconie’s Freak Zone. My fears came true the first time I listened to it. I found it an unsatisfying listen.

I think a lot of this may be to do with the style of the programme. Sadly, I am no longer a tweenager, so I don’t know if the format works better for, for instance, the Radio 1 indie podcast. But I imagine it would. An indie tune doesn’t typically evolve much from beginning to end, and a short thirty second burst is probably enough to get a full flavour of the song.

But the Freak Zone is too analytical and beard-strokey to treat music like this (interestingly, the podcast tends to last half an hour rather than the recommended 10 minutes). The show prides itself on playing the weird and wonderful obscurities that you wouldn’t hear elsewhere. As such, the pieces of music are more deserving of a full hearing, as it were.

In the first episode of the podcast I downloaded, a short clip of ‘Autopsy’ by Fairport Convention was played. After that, Stuart Maconie began talking about the song’s time signatures, wonderful arrangement and lyrics. I just thought to myself, “Yeah, not that I heard much of it.”

Nevertheless, I am now a regular listener of the Freak Zone podcast. Even though the music clips aren’t long enough, the speech content is interesting enough.

The podcast is definitely doing its job, at least as far as the BBC’s hopes go.

There’s a buzz of excitement in interactive teams, and the radio stations too, about how this can get our audio content to people who don’t normally listen, or who would much prefer to listen in their own time, on their own portable media device.

That certainly describes me. Prior to downloading the podcast, I had only ever listened to the programme once or twice (back in the days when it was presented by Bruce Dickinson). The timeslot doesn’t suit me well, and it is true that I probably wouldn’t even listen to the full show even if I could download it (and I’ve never listened to it on Listen Again).

Despite my reservations, the digest podcast suits me very well indeed. Just a shame about the short length of the music clips.

A couple of times in the past I have blogged about numbers stations, a slightly creepy phenomenon where coded messages are broadcast over shortwave radio frequencies.

But more recently I have become interested in a similar phenomenon which is almost the reverse of numbers stations. Whereas numbers stations are seemingly utilised by the state for spying activities, broadcast signal intrusion is usually the opposite — members of the public hijacking television and radio broadcasts.

Perhaps the most well known is a pirate who posed as Max Headroom, hijacking two broadcasts in Chicago in 1987. The perplexing thing about it is that the broadcast was so cryptic — if it had a meaning at all, that is — that most people just scratch their heads wondering about the imposter’s motive.

The first successful hijack was short lived. It interrupted the evening news bulletin on WGN. However, only the images came through, and no audio was broadcast. An engineer at the transmitter site was able to re-gain control within 30 seconds.

Reports say that the pirate attempted to hijack several other broadcasts in Chicago, but none of them were successful. But two hours later the imposter successfully interrupted an episode of Doctor Who that was being broadcast on WTTW. No engineer was present at the transmitter, so the pirate broadcast carried on until its end. It lasted only 90 seconds, but it could have been much longer.

If numbers stations didn’t send shivers up your spine, surely this would. Imagine sitting there watching television as normal, only to be faced with this creepy transmission.

The video fascinates me. First of all, as I have mentioned, the motives are unclear. There is a cryptic message about “the greatest world newspaper nerds”. WGN, the first station to be hijacked, stands for World’s Greatest Newspaper. This suggests that WGN was the real target, but with the attempt having misfired the imposter went on to find any old place to broadcast his odd — at points disturbing — message. Even if you reach the conclusion that the message was aimed at WGN, what that message actually was is a complete mystery.

Some speculate that whoever was behind the video was simply drunk or high. I doubt this is the case. The broadcast was clearly pre-meditated. It is obvious that the message was pre-recorded because it went out twice, and there are continuity errors when the shot changes towards the end of the broadcast.

There are also probably at least three people involved in the making of the broadcast. There are at least two actors, and two people would probably be required to rotate the sheet of corrugated metal that’s used as the backdrop (the rotation is not CGI or mechanical because it is inconsistent).

A lot of technical equipment may be involved as well. Immediately after the hijacking, authorities claimed that a transmitter powerful enough to hijack a television broadcast would cost as much as $600,000 to buy, or several thousand dollars to rent. However, it seems as though this was misinformation designed to dissuade copycats.

Nevertheless, it is clearly at least a semi-professional job. Even putting aside the equipment needed to overpower a television broadcast signal, the quality of the recording looks really good for 1987 standards and the distortion in the vocals suggests at least a modicum of expertise. It obviously wasn’t amateur stuff.

Yet, the message and motive is difficult to decipher. YouTube contains another video containing subtitles with a likely transcript of what the imposter dressed as Max Headroom was saying. If you’re interested enough, I’d also skim through the comments which have interesting additional suggestions. (The subtitles in the YouTube video are definitely wrong in parts.)

Over twenty years on, people are still unclear about the intentions behind the pirate broadcast. It was clearly designed to be ambiguous. But it clearly took considerable time and effort to pull it off. No-one has ever come forward to admit to the pirate broadcasts.

Perhaps the person did it just for fun — a precursor to the hacker culture that became more prevalent in the 1990s. Perhaps it was social commentary. After all, the original Max Headroom programmes were set in a future dystopia where the world was run by giant television corporations and freedom fighters utilised exactly this trick of interrupting regular broadcasts.

The theory I favour holds that the person was a former employee of WGN who had been fired — not by his boss, but by an underling (hence the line “be a man”). This was his form of revenge.

There is a brilliant article about the Max Headroom pirating incident at Damn Interesting.

The fake Max Headroom remains at large, but another (less sophisticated) hijack broadcaster was caught. This simple broadcast is less intriguing than the Max Headroom incident in terms of its message, but is interesting because it is a successful hijacking of a satellite transmission.

A person calling himself Captain Midnight hijacked an HBO broadcast with a simple caption complaining about the channel’s price. The caption also contained an ominous threat, seemingly implying that broadcasts on two other channels would also be hijacked.

It transpired that Captain Midnight was John MacDougall, a satellite television dealer who felt that HBO’s then new fangled subscription model was hurting his sales. He was caught when a member of the public overheard him bragging about it.

Less well-known, but perhaps the scariest hijack broadcast of them all, happened in the UK way back in 1977. This seems to be among the very first examples of hijacking a broadcast, and is perhaps the most impressive. Unlike the Max Headroom incident, the motive here was clear, the message was relatively unambiguous and the broadcast was a complete success.

During an ITN news bulletin broadcast on Southern Television, the audio started crackling and the newsreader’s voice was replaced by that of “Vrillon of the Ashtar Galactic Command”. The pictures of the news broadcast continued uninterrupted. But the sound of the news was replaced by an ‘alien’ warning of an imminent global disaster unless humans became peaceful and dismantled their weapons.

Here is a great video — the audio is genuine but the pictures are not. Carry on until the end to hear follow-up news reports on the incident.

Vrillon of the Ashtar Galactic Command Incident from Labyrinth13 on Vimeo.

An impressive feat. The audio is very crackly in moments, but this is a successful hijacking of a broadcast to disseminate a clear message. Like the Max Headroom incident, a lot of planning appeared to go into it, with a series of electronic effects designed to make it sound like an alien broadcast, and samples of Looney Tunes cartoons.

Once again, the imposters have never come forward. However, given the message that put out and the irreverent set-up, it seems likely that it was a group of students who had some technical know-how and access to decent equipment.

It was rather naughty though, and clearly very distressing for some viewers. I suppose I would be too. What I would do is switch the channel to make sure I wasn’t going mad or that aliens actually were talking to me. However, these imposters successfully hijacked five major terrestrial transmitters. This is concerning, because it means that these people could feasibly have hijacked every television channel in one area and then some.

These successful hijacks are really disturbing. Apparently it is easy to hijack an analogue television signal. The only reason we haven’t seen more of it is simply because people haven’t found out about it.

Although there are only a few well-known instances of broadcast intrusion in the western world, they are much more common in less free countries. Falun Gong use the technique in China. And according to Wikipedia they were a regular feature of television in the Soviet Union.

In the mid-1980s one of Poland’s leading astronomers, Jan Hanasz, managed to superimpose captions on top of state television broadcasts. Using basic equipment, he and three others managed to display the logo of the Solidarność labour movement and implored viewers to boycott elections. Some say this action was one of the first cracks in the Iron Curtain.

That is an example of using this technique for good. But imagine if there was a genuine major national emergency. Any rogue elements with enough know-how and resources could easily hijack the emergency transmissions to spread misinformation or generally wreak havoc and cause panic.

A part of me wonders if this is the real reason why governments around the world are in the process of switching off analogue transmissions and engaging in a digital switchover process. Digital broadcast signals are encrypted, making them much more difficult to hijack.

But pranksters are using different methods to hijack digital broadcasts. Some Czech artists are currently standing trial after they tampered with on-site camera equipment to make a computer-generated mushroom cloud appear in a panorama shot during a weather forecast.

As technology improves, more and more broadcasts will be automated. It will be a ripe environment for future pirates.

In my previous post I wondered if Nick Clegg would do much to enthuse me. Well, in my view he’s got off to a good start.

He revealed on the radio that he doesn’t believe in God. What’s more, he seems to have a thoroughly sensible, tolerant approach to the whole religion issue.

What a refreshing thing to hear from a politician. It does often seem as though atheism or even agnosticism is one of the worst things a politician can be associated with among some circles. Tony Blair even seemed to think it was a liability to be the wrong type of Christian. C of E while PM, since resigning he has mysteriously become a Roman Catholic.

Paul Linford, for instance has said that Clegg’s non-belief is “certainly concerning for me as a Christian” (via Bob Piper). Never mind the millions of non-Christians in this country who have never seen a non-Christian PM! I wonder if he ever found Margaret Thatcher’s sex as concerning for him as a male.

In this supposedly tolerant society, I sometimes think we’d sooner see a three-legged Prime Minister than a non-church-goer — never mind a black or openly gay PM. I wonder how many leaders of the major parties historically have publicly stated that they don’t believe in God. I assume Nick Clegg must be among the first. Full credit to him for speaking the truth.

The second thing that has impressed me is the fact that he has enlisted Brian Eno to “reach out beyond the London beltway”. In particular, Eno is to advise the Lib Dems on how to appeal to young people.

This is good in two senses. Firstly, appealing to young people is good. One of the biggest crimes in the country today is to be a yoof, as you can see with the vilification of the hoodie, a convenient item of clothing.

Appealing to young people is a typical politician’s cliché. But this comes across to me as quite a serious attempt. Brian Eno is not some greasy pole-climbing politician looking to get good headlines in the Daily Mail.

The second sense in which is this good is… Brian Eno, man!

Brian Eno is 59, which has led some people to wonder if he is really the right person to appeal to youth. I’m 21, which is pretty young, although I guess I am not like most yoofs. But I think Brian Eno is great. The person who (as legend has it) invented ambient music has got to be awesome, right?

He has created some of the greatest pieces of music of the past thirty or forty years. A lot of young people respect this. I know I certainly do. Okay, there are various U2-related crimes, but that’s a tough gig. I mean, talk about polishing a turd!

Brian Eno should be respected for actually engaging his brain (one). He is the only pop musician I can think of who doesn’t just dribble out ignorance every time he opines about a topic other than music. In a world teeming with preening pricks like Bob Geldof and Bono, Brian Eno is a real breath of fresh air.

And, unlike Bob Geldof’s sojourn with the Conservatives (presumably David Cameron has some really nice biscuits and a good belly-rubbing technique), Eno’s association with the Lib Dems is principled. Remember Eno’s website from a couple of years back, Lib Dem This Time (rather broken-looking now)? Eno is also a long-standing supporter of electoral reform.

One other thing, and it’s related to what I said yesterday. It looks as though Nick Clegg has raised a few eyebrows by saying that he hasn’t heard of ‘Fairytale of New York’ and by citing a non-existent album (‘Changes’ by David Bowie) as his favourite.

It does seem a bit odd. But what if the poor guy just doesn’t like pop music? I have written before that I don’t understand why we expect politicians to know these things. Sure, most people keep tabs on pop music. But we are all different, and we all have different interests. Maybe Clegg’s “gaffes” are just down to the fact that he doesn’t waste time on trivia.

I’m glad I have ruled out becoming a politician in the future. If I did, I would no doubt be asked what my favourite film was. I’d have to answer, “I dunno, I don’t really watch films,” because I don’t really watch films. Then I’d be crucified by a media (and society?) that wants mine to be a mirror image of the median voter’s leisure tastes.

In case you were wondering, I have decided against writing a review of F1’s ‘bigwigs’ — for the sake of my health. I just wrote a big rant about Max Mosley the other day anyway.

My next post was going to look at F1 websites. But this week Ollie White wrote a post about podcasts, so I thought I would move my post on podcasts to this week.

I’m a relative newcomer to podcasts. As a concept, they have grown much more quickly than blogging and I would bet that ‘podcast’ is more of a household word than ‘blog’ already. But they never really grabbed my attention because, for me, they are rather inconvenient to listen to, as I wrote a few months back.

Since I wrote that post, I have transformed into a big fan of podcasts though. This was partly because I replaced my ageing iRiver with a brand spanking new iPod.

I have to say, mega thumbs up to the people at Apple who have made keeping up with podcasts so easy! The iPod takes away so much of the hassle that existed with my old iRiver.

At first I only listened to podcasts on my commute through to university. But soon enough I found myself subscribing to more and more podcasts and not having enough time to listen to them all. Now I am such a podcast addict that I actually set aside some time every day to listen to them by going out for a walk (with the added benefits of exercise and fresh air that this brings).

So, from my mild scepticism in the late summer, I have turned into a full-on podcast addict. And right at the top of the list comes the F1 podcasts that I have gradually discovered. This post will review my favourites. They are listed in alphabetical order, in case you’re wondering.

AT&T Williams Podcast

As far as I know, Williams is one of only two Formula 1 teams who produced podcasts this year. Maybe it’s just me, but I would never have expected Williams to be so hip. They always seemed like a team that is mainly supported by middle-aged men, the kind of people who prefer Fifth Gear to Top Gear.

Maybe this is actually the case, because for me the Williams podcast is the least fulfilling of my regular listens. It is produced by USP Content — the same people who produce the excellent programmes for Radio 5 Live and Renault’s podcast. But the Williams podcast misfires a bit.

So what’s the problem? It’s just a bit too cheesy. It is a bit like a local radio programme. An example regular feature is ‘2007′ (pronounced ‘twenty-oh-seven’) where presenter David Croft talks to Alexander Wurz at 8:07 PM on the Saturday before the race. I don’t know, but that is quite a hollow feature to me. Yeah, neat pun, but it’s a bit meaningless when you’re listening at whatever time you choose. Besides, we don’t even know that the interview was conducted at 8:07 PM and apart from that there was nothing much to the feature.

The interviews, conducted by Tom Clarkson, were normally a bit too fluffy for my liking. I can remember actually cringing at some of the questions. It is probably reasonably entertaining for some fans. But if you’re looking for insight and analysis it is best to look elsewhere.

Worst of all, some kind of glitch towards the end of the season meant that the podcasts weren’t getting delivered (at least to me — and I remember Sidepodcast mentioning a similar problem). The podcasts for Japan, China and Brazil all arrived on my iPod weeks after the season had finished. Does this mean that they were not getting published? To think about all the work that must have gone into producing them, only for them to be inaccessible until they were completely out of date.

All evidence that the Williams podcast existed seems to have been removed from the Williams website, which perhaps suggests that the podcast won’t be making a return next season. A list of old episodes is available on USP Content’s website though, and the iTunes link is here.

Chequered Flag Formula 1

The BBC’s Formula 1 podcast is one of the best for my money. The centrepiece programme is The Chequered Flag, which provides analysis soon after the end of every race. But when you subscribe to the feed you also receive other F1 programmes broadcast on Radio 5 Live including the race preview show and occasional editions of the 606 phone-in.

There is not much else to say apart from the obvious. I already covered Radio 5 Live’s coverage in last week’s post, and the same applies to the podcast. They contain excellent interviews and top-notch analysis. The kind of quality you expect from the BBC. Great stuff.

F1 Rejects

Direct from Australia comes the funniest F1 podcast I have come across.

The website is dedicated to the “heroic failures” of Formula 1 — the people at the back of the grid who regularly put their lives at risk despite the fact that they have no hope of achieving any success. The podcast has a similar vibe, with a kind of attitude towards bad drivers that is a curious mixture of disgust and awe — an attitude that I broadly share.

But while the podcast revels in its celebration / castigation of F1’s rejects, it has plenty to say about the world of F1 in general. If you are looking for a humorous take on the world of F1, look no further. I have only been listening for a couple of episodes, but already F1 Rejects is one of my favourite podcasts.

Formula 1 Blog

On balance, this is probably my favourite Formula 1 podcast. It is American, which is an advantage because it doesn’t fall into the trap that Brits have fallen into by dividing into two camps — pro-Hamilton and anti-Hamilton. Formula 1 Blog is more neutral in this regard — a great dose of reality in this world of Hamilton hype and anti-hype.

But Formula 1 Blog certainly isn’t a neutral podcast, and it prides itself on being a journal of opinion. Negative Camber is a Ferrari fan (no, I don’t understand either) and his sidekick Grace is a McLaren fan. As a result, the banter between them is fantastic to listen to!

Negative Camber is also quite nifty at doing impressions. His impression of Patrick Head’s grumpy expression is hilarious and a couple of weeks back he did an impression of Ross Brawn that had me in stitches on the train. I do worry about his strange obsession with Matt Bishop though. Any discussion of a McLaren press release soon turns into a discussion about Matt Bishop and how he copes with wearing the grey McLaren uniform instead of his normal loud shirts.

The podcast also touches on other motor sports, particularly MotoGP and WRC. But the centrepiece of the podcast is F1.

The podcasts are a tad on the long side — typically lasting almost an hour. The long idents also grate a little bit. They are an entertaining listen the first time round, but after that it takes about two minutes from the start of the podcast until the actual discussion begins. Nevertheless, it is always an entertaining listen.

ING Renault F1 Team Podcast

Note to Williams: this is how you do an F1 team podcast!

The most astonishing thing about the Renault podcast is the fact that important people who probably have a lot on their plate take a great deal of time to appear on the podcast. After every race, Radio 5 Live presenter Holly Samos visits the Renault factory to make the podcast. It is a brilliant way for an F1 team to reach the fans.

Pat Symonds in particular should be applauded for his dedication. It is always worth listening to what he says, and he provides refreshingly honest answers. He has held his hands up and said that Renault produced a bad car this year, and he has been completely open about these faults on the podcast.

The interviews with the drivers are also worth listening to, as they manage to avoid the fluff and cheese of the Williams podcast. It is strange that both podcasts are produced by the same company, USP Content, as the difference in quality could hardly be more stark.

I really do hope that Renault continue the podcast next season. More teams should follow suit, and the Renault template should guide them because it really is top-notch stuff.

Sidepodcast

This was the first F1 podcast I started listening to regularly, and I still loyally follow it.

I am in two minds about Sidepodcast, because I really like it when Christine and ‘me’ have an opinionated discussion, but the more factual and newsy elements of the podcast are not my cup of tea. For instance, a lap-by-lap review of the race sends me to sleep because I already know what happened. After all, I watched the race. However, I can see how it could be useful for those who missed the race.

Sidepodcast should be applauded for its experimental variants on the format. From time to time, for instance, short series are produced. For instance, last week there was a series called ‘Days that Shook the F1 World’ — a short daily podcast, each one focussing on a different pivotal moment in F1 history. Again, for me, these series are not so entertaining because I am personally the type who would rather delve into Wikipedia and books to find out more about such events.

There is a spin-off podcast called F1 Minute. It is a daily, 60 second long podcast rounding up the day’s F1 news in brief. Again, for me, it is not very useful because I usually keep up with news using RSS feeds and I already know most of the stories featured in the podcast. Nevertheless, it must be an excellent resource for those who are unable to keep up with the news as much.

However, I am in awe at the Sidepodcast video podcasts, which are top quality previews of each race. How do they do it?

Sidepodcast should also be congratulated for offering podcasts in the ‘enhanced’ format. These divide podcasts into DVD-style chapters. They also have the capacity to display images as the podcast is playing, which can be quite good if your are sitting around or in the train or something, although rather more off-putting if you’re going for a walk!

All-in-all, the content of Sidepodcast is not all my cup of tea. But in terms of effort, there is no doubt about it. Sidepodcast takes the crown.

That’s it for my review of my favourite F1 podcasts. Does anyone have any other suggestions? I have already mentioned Ollie’s post which contains some other suggestions that I will be trying out in the future, so take a look at that as well.

Today’s post in my series reviewing the 2007 Formula 1 season was going to be about F1’s bigwigs — Max Mosley and the FIA, Bernie Ecclestone and FOM. However, events in this area are continuing and show no sign of stopping yet, so I’ll leave it for later.

Instead, I’ll move on to what I was going to write about next week — the television and radio coverage. Because I live in the UK, this means ITV and BBC Radio 5 Live. But I’ll also have a look at the most important aspect of the television coverage, the FOM-controlled “world feed”.

ITV

It was a bit of a depressing year to watch ITV coverage. In previous years they hopelessly talked up the prospects of Jenson Button’s success but they realised they were flogging a dead horse so let other drivers get a word in edgeways.

Now that a Brit who can actually win regularly has come on the scene, the coverage has become completely myopic. “Britain’s Lewis Hamilton” (© Steve Rider 2007) was impossible to avoid and you would be forgiven for somtimes thinking that he was the only driver competing.

Even interviews with other drivers were littered with questions about Lewis Hamilton. I remember one particularly uncomfortable moment early on in the season during an interview with Robert Kubica. The question — if I recall it correctly — was something along the lines of, “What do you think of Lewis Hamilton? He hasn’t made any rookie mistakes yet.” Tough luck if you wanted to learn anything about Kubica.

I never thought I’d say this, but I think I would rather have Jim Rosenthal back in place of Steve Rider. The way he goes all gooey at the thought of precious Lewy-Lew-Lew is embarrassing to watch.

Next to him stands Mark “‘Ello guv” Blundell. He would make an excellent pet parrot. “Absolutely Steve” is all he ever seems to say. He would agree if Steve Rider said the world is run by lizards.

Ted Kravitz has his fans, but I don’t see it. He is supposed to be a pitlane reporter, but he seems more like the Correspondent for the Statement of the Obvious. “They’re putting some new tyres on… And, is it? Yes! They’re putting some fuel in as well!” Yes, I can see that Ted.

What’s really worrying is the fact that once or twice this year he has got confused between hard and soft tyres. This is despite the fact that James Allen goes over the tyre rules roughly every five minutes. It beggars belief.

As for James Allen himself, I still don’t like him as a commentator and it appears to be the majority opinion wherever you turn. He has had the job since 2001 now though, so I’m not holding my breath for a change.

He has improved a lot though. Compare two videos — one from 2006, one from 2007. The first is Jenson Button’s first win in Hungary. You can see a glimpse of the desperation of ITV’s bias:

Will the floodgates now open for Jenson Button as they did for Nigel Mansell and Damon Hill before him?

Well I think we all know the answer to that now. But the really scary bit comes after that. He sounds like he physically shits himself as Button crosses the line. Does a Button win make him turn into The Incredible Hulk?

I guess he must have been embarrassed when he watched it back, so he knew to moderate his excitement a bit for the next Button, er, I mean Hamilton win. But he got his timing all wrong and it came out as:

Lewis Hamiltoooon………

…

…

……

…

WIIIIIIINS!

The video isn’t the real coverage — it’s a loving recreation made by somebody on Grand Prix 4. You need to fast forward to around 3:35.

There are also the usual grumbles about adverts. I see them as a necessary evil, but it is just as well grands prix are broadcast on the radio as well because otherwise we would miss a lot of important events. I hate it when football fans complain about ITV’s adverts, because at least in football the actual action is never missed!

When Lewis Hamilton’s car ground to a halt in Brazil, ITV was showing adverts. A similar pivotal moment was missed under exactly the same circumstances last year, when Michael Schumacher’s engine blew in Japan.

Of course, ITV and the people who make the decision to go to a break cannot be expected to predict the future. But the presence of adverts will always count as a major black mark against ITV’s coverage of Formula 1.

Credit where it’s due though: Martin Brundle. What an excellent commentator he is. Some see him as biased in favour of certain drivers, but I don’t see it myself. He knows, for instance, when his client David Coulthard is in the wrong and says so (for instance, the incident in Australia springs to mind).

Brundle also knows how to praise Lewis Hamilton without completely crawling up his arse. And — most importantly — he never forgets that there are 21 other drivers racing as well.

In sum, though, I am seriously considering just turning the volume down on the television and listening to Radio 5 Live for commentary. I would miss Martin Brundle though. Mind you, at the rate things are going, Martin Brundle might have his accreditation snatched away by the increasingly totalitarian Max Mosley anyway!

BBC Radio 5 Live

I mentioned above that I am considering listening to Radio 5 Live’s commentary with ITV’s pictures next year. So what has BBC Radio got that ITV hasn’t?

Well, the BBC is free of adverts. However, Formula 1 isn’t the only sport covered by Radio 5 Live, so coverage usually isn’t interrupted. So it doesn’t trump ITV in that respect.

But the commentary is pretty good. David Croft is obviously very passionate about the sport and there is usually some sensible analysis from whoever his co-commentator is (usually Maurice Hamilton). It is not completely immune to Hamilton hype, but it is a whole lot better than ITV.

The BBC also often provides coverage of practice sessions as well on Sports Extra. So if you are at a loose end on a Friday it is often worth switching the radio on and getting the live timing on your computer.

In addition, there are excellent race previews and reviews available as podcasts. The features on these programmes are usually of a much higher standard than the drivel (cookery lessons with Kovalainen and the like) served up by ITV.

I notice that Radio 5 Live’s Formula 1 coverage gets a bit better every year. It has come on leaps and bounds over the past few years and it’s difficult to find fault with their coverage (at least in comparison with ITV).

FOM

This year saw a big improvement in FOM’s television coverage. It finally made the leap to producing the coverage in anamorphic 16:9 format and started filming (but not broadcasting) in HD.

There has also been the usual trickle of new graphics to display more information. One that particularly surprised me was a graphic that showed the temperature of the tyres on Lewis Hamilton’s car during the formation lap! It was only used once, and the needle was fluctuating all over the place which suggests it might not be quite up to scratch. Nevertheless, how does it work?! Amazing stuff from FOM yet again.

Another graphic that I liked plotted a car’s position on a circuit map while a competing driver was in the pits. A great idea, and pretty well executed (if a bit large). But as far as I know it was only used once in the entire season! More please!

I’d also like to hear a bit more team radio. It feels like this varies from race to race, which I don’t really understand. It also depends on the teams opening up their radio communications. Only Renault seems to have the right attitude in this regard, and McLaren and Ferrari are both obviously so paranoid that we only ever get fleeting snatches of conversation.

FOM also took control of the world feed for all but three of the races. This meant that we no longer had to suffer as much of the dire direction that used to be the norm in F1. It’s good to see FOM finally sorting it out, but why do Monaco, Brazil and Japan still have local directors?

The Japanese Grand Prix coverage was particularly atrocious. It normally is. It’s famous for focussing rather heavily on Japanese no-hopers. This year several important incidents were missed by the director — including Alonso’s crash and the collision between Webber and Vettel. Not even a decent replay was shown, even though the footage exists (it is included on this year’s review DVD)!

Aside from these little mishaps though, I’m finding it difficult to fault the FOM coverage this year. It seems to get better every year.

Radio 4 has a new programme about blogs and other internets stuff running for the next couple of months. Despite the fact that it has that horrible ‘i’ prefix which really ought to be banned, iPM is actually an interesting radio experiment.

I’m still not fully sure what iPM is. A spin-off of PM, certainly. This is good news because it means it’s presented by Eddie Mair, who surely has the best comic timing of any newsreader in the country.

Perhaps it is a quasi open source-style version of PM. Although the programme goes out on Saturday afternoon, the iPM blog is in action all week asking listeners about ideas. Early in the week rough notes and a draft running order are published, with what members of the production team are thinking about. Further thoughts are posted all week, with listeners engaging in a discussion with the producers.

Maybe iPM is also a bit like Pods and Blogs, but on Radio 4 and at a more sociable hour. Or maybe it isn’t — perhaps I am just keen on making the comparison because Chris Vallance is involved.

You will notice that Chris Vallance is ‘Mr Blog’ according to Eddie Mair. Apparently he was originally going to be Dr Blog. This would have made Chris Vallance a more legitimate Dr V than I am. He might not be a doctor, but at least he is a real V — I’m neither!

Anyway, bloggers may be familiar with Pods and Blogs partly because it is the home of the audio version of the Britblog Roundup. iPM has a neat feature where smart blogger types talk about their favourite bookmarks. And you can embed them as well. Apparently the BBC is beginning to do more of this sort of thing which is encouraging.

I was asked to give my feedback on the iPM blog a month or so back when it was soft-launched. I’m not exactly sure if I offered much useful help, but I’m happy to have seen that they have implemented a few of my suggestions on the blog.

Best of all, iPM is available in podcast form.