Archive for January, 2009

After years in the wilderness, La Toya Jackson was thrown once again into the spotlight as she competed in the last series of Celebrity Big Brother. But it seems her new found fame has rather gone to hear head, as she reportedly charged £55,000 for a meet and greet with fans, despite being the fourth evictee from the Channel 4 show.

As well as her extortionate fee, La Toya has insisted that her promoters pay £4,000 per night for a suite at London’s Dorchester Hotel.

But in spite of her extortionate fees, La Toya’s manager Jeffre Phillips says that the singer will be giving no performances during her visits.

One promoter who tried to book La Toya, who had given directions to Big Brother not to film her without make-up, exclaimed his disbelief at the : “It is probably the most we’ve been quoted for an act coming out of the show.

“It’s ridiculous, they need a reality check. La Toya is living in Cloud Cuckoo land.”

In contrast, A1’s Ben Adams who made the top five in Celebrity Big Brother commands a £3,000 fee for his visits, while Shameless star Tina Malone charges £1,750.

The BBC is to screen a major new adaptation of Jane Austin’s Emma as part of its autumn drama season.

The four-part drama, written be Bafta-winning screenwriter Sandy Welch, will be filmed in late spring or early summer this year, with casting yet to be announced.

BBC controller of drama commissioning, Ben Stephenson, said “BBC drama is committed to retelling classic stories for a new generation of viewers and this four-part adaptation – the first serial version of Emma since the 1970s – gives Sandy the opportunity to find new detail and added psychological depth in Austen’s characters.”

However, the production will be the last Austen remake for some time on the BBC, as the corporation recently announced plans to move beyond conventional ‘bonnet dramas’.

“We don’t just want to do 19th century book adaptations. Emma will be our last Austen for a few years,” said Kate Harwood, the BBC’s controller of series and serials.

The 2009 season of period dramas also includes Small Island, an adaptation of the novel by Andrea Levy about Jamaican immigrants after World War II and Desperate Romantics, about a group of painters, poets and critics in 19th century industrial London.

If you fancy yourself as the next Francis Bacon, now’s your chance to prove it as the godfather of Britart himself, Charles Saatchi, fronts a new X-Factor style talent contest for contemporary artists.

Saatchi, who famously elevated young British artists Damien Hurst and Tracy Emin into the limelight during the 90’s, will host the show, to be screened on BBC 2 later this year. The winner will have his or her work shown at the Hermitage museum in St Petersburg in October, and next year at the new Saatchi gallery in Chelsea.

The programme, which has the working title Saatchi’s Best of British, will welcome a breadth of mediums including installation art, painting, digital media, sculpture, printmaking, and performance art.

“It could be a 15ft painting, a video, or a screwed-up ball of paper,” said a source close to the programme.

After a gruelling selection process, the six finalists will be sent to art school “boot-camp” for three months of intensive training with top contemporary artists. Saatchi will monitor their progress and give them feedback before he picks the winner.

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The BBC has received renewed allegations of fakery after admitting that its flagship current affairs programme, Newsnight, presented parts of Barack Obama’s inauguration speech in the wrong order.

The report by Newsnight’s science editor Susan Watts which examined the environmental challenges facing the new US president spliced together several phrases from paragraphs Obama said several minutes apart.

The editing prompted several bloggers to complain on the BBC’s newsnight website, evoking echoes of the “Crowngate” incident in 2007 when the BBC admitted to misleadingly editing a trailer for a documentary about the Queen so that it appeared she had stormed out of a photo shoot with photographer Annie Laibovitz.

At the beginning of the report an audio recording of the new president said “We will restore science to its rightful place, roll back the spectre of a warming planet. We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories”.

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Bucking the current economic downturn, BSkyB has announced that it will create 1,000 new jobs following strong half-year results. The broadcaster said that 171,000 new customers signed up between October and December last year, pushing revenue to £2.6 billion. Operating profits were 31% higher at £385 million.

“We enter 2009 in a very strong position,” BSkyB’s chief executive Jeremy Darroch said.

BSkyB plans to recruit 600 engineers and 400 call centre staff in its new Leeds office as it launches a major push to persuade customers to sign up to its new HD packages. The satellite broadcaster currently has 779,000 HD customers, 171,000 of whom signed up in the last quarter of 2008. Sky estimates that 7 million households in Britain currently have TV sets that can display programmes in high definition.

As part of the drive, Sky today slashed the cost of its Sky+ HD box from £99 to £49, with free set-up for new customers.

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Sky have again slashed the price of their high definition Sky+ HD set top box, which allows customers to watch a range of top quality Sky programmes in glorious high definition and enjoy pin sharp Dolby Digital surround sound.

Previously, subscribers would pay £99 for the Sky+ HD set top box, along with their Sky TV subscription - this charge has now been reduced to £49 for new customers, and existing customers thinking of signing up for Sky Multiroom.

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Ofcom has accused the Home Office of funding ‘propaganda’ documentaries about Police Community Support Officers.

The ITV programme Beat: Life on the Street was supported with £800,000 of funding by the Home Office for its first two series, which portrayed PCSOs as friendly and helpful assistants to the full time Police force.

Ofcom ruled that the two series, broadcast in October 2006 and January 2008, breached its broadcasting code because they did not show clearly enough that the programmes had received Home Office sponsorship. However, Channel TV, which made the programme, told Ofcom that the Home Office had no influence on the content of the programme, and that the end credits clearly stated that the programme had been made with government assistance.

Ofcom received several complaints from viewers about the programme, saying that it amounted to government propaganda, and that the involvement of the Home Office should have been made clearer to viewers.

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UKTV will this month launch its Blighty Channel, an “unashamed” celebration of all things British.

Blighty, a rebrand of the channel UKTV People, will first go on air at 9am on Tuesday and will broadcast a range of programmes with a British theme, including the BBC series Coast, which covers various subjects relating to the natural and social history of the British coastline, Louis Theroux’s documentary series When Louis Met… and the genealogy programme Who Do You Think You Are . An accompanying website, www.loveblighty.co.uk, will be launched on the same day.

Blighty, which according to UKTV will “revel in what makes this country brilliant” will carry the tagline “One nation under a channel” in both its TV and press advertising.

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The BBC is under renewed pressure to broadcast an emergency appeal for Gaza run by the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) after it received over 10,000 complaints from viewers because of its refusal to show the film.

BBC director general Mark Thompson said that the BBC has so far declines to show the appeal because of fears that it would breach the corporation’s perceived impartiality in the Arab-Israeli dispute. In recent years seom critics have accused the BBC of tilting heavily toward Israel whilst others claim it has a pro-Palistinian bias.

However, the BBC’s decision has received wide criticism from politicians, the media and charity sector. Today, more than 50 MPs are due to back an early day motion in the Commons urging the BBC to broadcast the appeal by DEC, an umbrella group of humanitarian charities including Oxfam, Save the Children and the Red Cross. Douglas Alexander, the international development secretary, Ben Bradshaw, the health minister, and Hazel Blears have all expressed disappointment at the BBC’s decision. Shahid Malik, the justice minister, said he had not met anyone who supported the BBC’s stance. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, also gave his support for the broadcast.

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Tonight sees the return of disgraced BBC presenter Jonathan Ross, who filmed the first taping of his eponymous chat show earlier this week for broadcast later this evening.

His opening words made light of the events surrounding his dismissal, along with a promise not to be such a cast-iron bell end in the future. “So, where were we?” he says, before knowingly riffing on former US President George Bush; “What sort of idiot would say stuff like that knowing it was going to be broadcast?”

“And on that subject, there can’t be many viewers watching who aren’t aware that this show hasn’t been on recently and the reason for its absence.

Well, I am going to take this opportunity to apologise for what I said on the radio because being on the BBC, and being allowed this level of freedom to communicate openly with people, it’s a great privilege and it’s something I’ve always enjoyed and I value enormously.”

Seemingly paraphrasing a line from Spiderman, Wossy said that, from now on he’ll be “more aware of the responsibility that comes with such a gift.”

Contrary to rumour, Hollywood veteran Tom Cruise turned up as a guest, as did Twinings spokesperson Stephen Fry, comic Lee Evans, along with music from Franz Ferdinand.

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