Digital TV Blog

BT give live footy away for free - again

BT has announced it will offer Scottish football fans more Clydesdale Premier League games on matchday than any other TV service, as part of its BT Vision packages.

At Scotland’s national stadium Hampden Park yesterday, BT Vision announced an exclusive deal with the SPL to show 28 on-demand games in addition to the 60 live games already available to BT Vision customers. The games will be broadcast from the start of the new season and will be available from 10pm on matchday.

BT Vision includes Freeview, a digital video recorder and TV replay as standard, and customer can choose up to four viewing packs depending on their subscription. These are Kids, Music, Standard Sports and Picture Box, the film service from BT.

As well as the additional SPL games, customers who choose the Standard Sports pack alongside Setanta Sports 1, which is available with BT Vision for £9.99 per month, will be able to watch 242 of the 380 Barclays Premier League matches each season.

Dan Marks, Chief Executive of BT Vision said at the launch “This is a fantastic deal for the armchair fans who follow all 12 teams competing in the Clydesdale Bank Premier League… Our exclusive contract with the SPL demonstrates BT Vision’s determination to be the TV service that Scottish fans choose if they want to see their favourite sport and teams at a time and price that suits them.”

BT Vision is available with BT Total Broadband, which offers up to 8Mbps download speeds from £4.95 per month for the first three months and £15.99 thereafter.

BT give live footy away for free

BT is offering customers free access to Setanta Sports 1 when they sign up for one of its BT Vision packages, in an attempt to win back ground from its competitors in the battle for the broadband market.

Customers will be given Setanta free when they take out a BT Vision bronze, silver or gold package starting at £14 a month – half the cost of Sky’s equivalent. Each package includes the Freeview channels, a digital video recorder and TV Replay, and customers can opt into a number of viewing packs, depending on which package they chooser. These include Kids, Music, Standard Sport and Picture Box, BT Vision’s movie service.

With the addition of Setanta Sports 1, customers can tune into 46 live Barclays Premier League matches, as well as live action from the Scottish Premier League and every round of the FA Cup. Football fans will also have access to ‘near-live’ footage of 242 Premier League matches. The world’s major sporting tournaments will also be broadcast, including the home nations World Cup qualifiers, live US PGA Tour Golf and World Championship Boxing.

Scottish football fans are also in for a treat, as BT Vision announced yesterday that it had signed a deal with Setanta to show 28 on-demand games in addition to the 60 live matches already available to subscribers.

Analysts say that customers are more wary of signing up to pay-TV subscription packages in the light of the current credit crunch. In a press release, BT Vision said “we offer customers the chance to save money by giving them the choice of when they pay and what they pay for.”

In a challenge to rivals Sky and Virgin Media, BT Vision’s Chief Executive Dan Marks said “Our compelling offer… proves you don’t have to pay sky-high prices to watch top-flight football, and our packages offer so much more value than [rival] TV packages on Sky or Virgin… We now have more to watch than any other on-demand TV service in the country”.

First there was Dave, then there was…

Richard Madeley and Judy Finnigan are to co-present a chat show on a new multi-channel digital service named Watch.

Watch, unfortunately nothing to do with the educational BBC programme in which Digital TV blog editor once appeared aged 5 years old, is one of several UKTV channels to be launched as part of a major rebranding initiative. Other channels to be affected by the change include UKTV Gold which will become known as Gold, and focus more on comedy, and UKTV Crime which will be known as Alibi. It is likely that UKTV will be dropped from channel titles altogether, but still be used for publicity purposes.

This follows on from the success of last year, when UKTV G2 was renamed Dave. Ratings soared even though the schedule remained pretty similar, with repeats of classic BBC shows such as Top Gear and Have I got News for You. UKTV Chief Executive David Abraham said the channel was named Watch because it does “what it says on the tin.”

It is still not certain what form Richard and Judy’s new show will take, after the pair’s contract with Channel 4 runs out at the end of this year. The Book Club will still remain, and although phone-in competitions have not been ruled out, it is unlikely that premium rate lines will be used.

UKTV says the programme will be “more grown-up and unplugged” than the married couple’s tea-time chat show. There is a possibility that the pair’s daughter Chloe Madeley may feature, as well as various “entertainment acts.”

UKTV producers want to ditch the “snobbish” assumption that all digital channels just show repeats, with 20% of Watch’s schedule dedicated to new and original shows, set to rise to 50% in the near future. The rest of the schedule will air BBC favourites such as Torchwood, Doctor Who and Messiah.

Well, sort of.

This just in from the guys at Setanta Sports - the following pre-season friendlies and qualifiers have been announced, including the dates for the Vodacom Challenge mini-tournament games between title holders Orlando Pirates, Kaizer Cheifs and Manchester United. Please note that one of the dates is tob be confirmed, and that all fixtures are, naturally, subject to change.

Sat 12/7 Tranmere v Liverpool 15:00 LFC TV

Thu 17/7 EB / Streymur v Man City (Faroe Islands) UEFA Cup 19:00 Setanta Sports 1

Fri 18/7 Southampton v Celtic 19:45 Celtic TV

Sat 19/7 Kaizer Chiefs v Man United 14:30 Setanta Sports 1

Sat 19/7 Barnet v Arsenal 15:00 Arsenal TV

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Personal Services Required gets personal

RDF Media, the TV production company that sparked a row after falsely portraying the Queen as storming out of a photo shoot with Annie Leibovitz when, in fact, she had been walking in, has again been accused of misrepresenting the truth. Participants in the Channel 4 reality show Personal Services Required claimed that the production company made them look “ridiculous.”

The show films families seeking to employ a housekeeper, and follows them through the recruitment process. Headhunters Gabriella and Danny Grasso claim that when looking for a housekeeper, they were wrongly depicted as offering someone a job below the minimum wage. They are worried that the slur will have a negative impact on their business and are considering suing for libel.

“For us this was a serious process, but RDF belittled us and tried to make us look ridiculous on television,” said Danny Grasso. “They’ve given us unfair representation and made us look like people who are exploiting other people for entertainment. Had I known about them and their reputation, I wouldn’t have agreed to it.”

Well, the whole BBC/Queen/photoshoot/apology fiasco was pretty big news last year Danny, and Wife Swap is one of Channel 4’s biggest pulls. RDF Media are also responsible for shows such as Location Location Location, Rock School, and Shipwrecked. You might have heard of them. You might want to check them out.

The Grassos were approached by RDF, when they posted an advert for a housekeeper on the website Gumtree. They initially declined the offer because they were living in Dubai at the time, but later accepted when RDF offered to fly the couple and their 13-year-old daughter back to Britain first-class. Three housekeepers were interviewed and filmed at the couple’s five-bedroom home near Flitwick, Bedfordshire, having been chosen by the production company, supposedly on the basis of their suitability and experience.

37-year-old Danny Grasso said: “We were told the housekeepers would be qualified and vetted, so it would be a service to us. But when they sent in the first one it was clear they had chosen people who were ‘entertaining’.”

The couple ended up employing Wendy-Anne Passmore, but at the end of last week’s programme she said she doubted whether she was being paid even the minimum wage, at £250 a week. However Danny insists this is a ludicrous claim. “We were offering separate living accommodation and food with all utility bills paid; there’s no way that’s below the minimum wage.”

However, RDF maintains the episode gave “a fair and accurate representation of what happened”. Another applicant for the position of housekeeper called the couple “chavvy Lottery winners” to the camera. The last RDF fiasco, which showed the Queen apparently storming out of a photo shoot, prompted the BBC and ITV to stop commissioning productions from the company for a limited period. It also led to the dismissal of RDF’s creative director Stephen Lambert and the controller of BBC1 Peter Fincham.

Surge in Digital sales well in advance of switchover

Of the 60 million or so TV sets in the UK, roughly 70 per cent of them now receive digital TV via Freeview, Sky, or Virgin Media, according to new figures from Ofcom.

Ofcom’s digital progress report for the first quarter of 2008 shows that take up of digitally-linked sets had soared by around 7m to 40.5m over the past 12 months as households focused on converting secondary and tertiary television sets to digital. This correlates with the large spike in sales of Freeview-enabled iDTV sets and set-top boxes over the 2007 Christmas period.

This in mind, the report also suggested that the total number of households which had converted their main television sets to digital in the first three months of 2008 was also up slightly on the previous quarter from 86.5% to 87.2%.

Other key trends for the first quarter of 2008 include the fact that nearly 14m homes had converted secondary sets to digital terrestrial by the first quarter of 2008, bringing the total number of DTT sets to over 23m.

Factors influencing the sharp rise are thought to be the greater choice and availability of digital TV options in the UK, and the approaching switchover – the analogue signal at the Selkirk transmitter is set to be shut down on the 6th of November.

Voice of an Angel reprises chat show role

The third series of the Charlotte Church Show got off to a cracking start last night as 2.2 million viewers tuned in for another fest of cheeky Welshness from the expectant mum. Last night’s show, whose guests included Catherine Tate and David Mitchell, was watched by 2.2 million viewers and attracted a 12% share between 10pm and 10.45pm, according to unofficial overnight statistics.

Highlights of this series include a section called “Lady to Ladette”, where Charlotte takes a load of posh girls for a night on the tiles in Cardiff instructing them in matters of dress, drink and dancing. “Obviously I don’t encourage binge drinking…” she wrote less than convincingly in her press release.

Charlotte will also get a chance to show off her talent as she performs various numbers each week.

“I was really worried about having the singing in there,” she said. “I thought that to have a funny, lively, chaotic show and then get all serious and sing at the end would be a bit strange. But actually now I think it’s a really nice end to the show.”

The show begins with a “theme tune” which is performed in a different style each week. In the verse, Charlotte sings about current events and gossip. Tenner says Mark Ronson is involved.

Like last time, Charlotte takes to the streets performing candid camera style pranks, sometimes even going incognito. “It worked so well when we did it during the last series that we’re going to do one each week this time,” Charlotte said in an interview for Channel 4. “So I did one just recently at a wedding. I was talking to the best man during his speech. The bride knew about it, because I’m not about to ruin a bride’s wedding day by secretly filming without permission. But only the bride and the best man knew. It was the groom’s brother who was best man. This guy was brilliant - he did everything I told him to. It was bad. Really bad. But so funny.”

Next week’s guests include violinist Nigel Kennedy, who will be performing with Charlotte, and Katie Price.

The Charlotte Church Show will air on Thursdays at 10pm, Channel 4.

“And you will know my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee…”

Following up on his reputation-making debut, “Reservoir Dogs,” Quentin Tarantino has a field day in this overblown Oscar-winning crime comedy is set in the seedy LA underworld, and in three interweaving storylines, told in a circuitous, fractured manner, follows Los Angeles mobsters, hitmen, petty thieves, and a mysterious glowing briefcase.

The first story kicks off with Vincent Vega (John Travolta) and Jules Winnifield (Samuel L. Jackson), two hitmen working for “big boss” Marsellus Wallace (Ving Rhames). After doing in a Yuppie drug dealer, Travolta as a courtesy takes Marcellus’ towering wife Mia (Uma Thurman) out for a meal at an 1950’s style diner in a bizarre sequence which makes up the biggest set piece of the film. The scene ends in a drugs fest that sees Vega saving Mia’s life. Meanwhile professional boxer Butch (Bruce Willis) has been instructed by Marcellus to take a fall, but didn’t, and is now on the run for his life along with his naive girlfriend Fabienne. The final storyline follows a pair of lovers, ludicrously inexperienced in the world of crime, (Amanda Plummer and Tim Roth) as they plan to hold up a diner.

Like the double and triple-crossing characters that inhabit the bizarre and unpredictable LA underworld, the film’s plot is jerky and non-linear, darting precariously if self-consciously between its various interlocking storylines of people for whom one day is never the same as the next. The films lurches between unscrupulous comedy banter and horrific mass-murder, often combining both at once. Many key events in the film revolve around averting a crisis or getting out of a sticky situation only to end up in an even stickier one, such as when Butch, on the run from Marcellus, goes back to his flat to find his watch, toasts a pop-tart, only to find Vega on his heels. The film is a treat for buffs, constantly making references to pop-culture and Hollywood history.

Screenplay is bold and confident with each character wallowing in his own words. Characters are brought to life by their disctinctive dialogue, from Jules’ Biblical wrath to Mia who learnt to sound like a moll by imitating soap stars. Performances are at times breathtaking, particularly Jackson’s all-absorbing stage presence which sky-rocketed his career. Brilliantly written and wickedly funny, Pulp Fiction is definitely the one to watch this week.

Sunday 13 July 10:20pm - 12:45am BBC2

Two Jags on 2

Former Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott is to front a documentary on the British class system, the BBC has announced. The programme, to be aired on BBC 2 in the autumn, will see him explore the “dreams and aspirations of the richest and poorest” and grapple with issues such as political apathy, middle-class snobbery and the wealth gap in modern Britain.

Prescott will also highlight the prejudice he believes he has suffered as a politician, which he attributes to his working-class roots. A BBC spokesperson said: “He feels he has not been treated, because of his background as fairly as he should have. He is hurt by that and still very defined by his class.”

This includes mockery from Tory MP Nicholas Soames who used to yell to him “waiter!” in the Commons tearoom. Producers say the programme will give “intimate access to John and his wife Pauline”, and that “nothing will be out of bounds”, prompting speculation that Prescott’s affair with secretary Tracey Temple will be discussed on the show.

Mrs Prescott, who has been described by journalists as a “very private woman” actually comes across as quite “feisty.”

In the trailer Prescott says “If you are born working class - you are working class.” He addresses the issue of “Tory toffs” and claims that private schools are still “pushing them out to Oxford” and that an officer class still exists.

However, not all viewers will take to his black and white stance kindly. Prescott has attracted criticism in the past for making much of his working-class background, yet living a life of luxury. He has been dubbed “two-jags Prescott” for owning two luxury cars, and also came under criticism for keeping his grace and favour mansion, Dorneywood having been stripped of his department after his affair with Ms Temple.

The BBC has said that Prescott - a former trade unionist from Yorkshire who came to study economics at Oxford - will explore the contradictions in his life. “How can I walk on a stage with thousands of people and address them, and yet not be able to walk into a restaurant… You talk to my friends. It’s got to be booked, and I’ll come in when they’ve sat down,” he revealed to Esquire this month.

Prescott On Class is due to arrive on BBC2 this autumn.

One-off Doctors & Nurses Doc

Celebrating 60 years of the NHS, this one-off documentary follows three people needing hospital treatment for life-threatening conditions.

Diagnosed with a benign brain tumour when she was just 14, Rebecca is back in hospital two years later with the news that the tumour has grown and will kill her if left untreated. Her mother, Chris, is struggling to cope with the pain of watching her child go through life-threatening surgery. 26 year old Nicky cannot climb the stairs because of her diseased heart, and undergoes heart-transplant surgery. 50-year-old Rosemary from Coventry is fighting for her life after crashing her car head-on into a bus.

60 years after its foundation the NHS treats 13 million people a year. This touching and sensitive documentary observes the pain as well as the miracles of treatment, and you cannot help but admire the talent of the specialists who perform the surgery. Nicky’s new heart is so powerful that it takes some getting used to; caught off-guard, her mother is struck by the implications of carrying around somebody else’s heart: “The thought that somebody else has had to die for this… you try not to think about it, but it’s still there,” she weeps.

Life and Death on the NHS, Tonight, 9pm, ITV1.