Archive for April, 2009

BSkyB has withstood the tide of economic gloom by adding 80,000 new customers to its books in the first quarter of this year.

The satellite broadcaster has also persuaded 243,000 of its customers to take up its high definition service after slashing the cost of its Sky+ HD box from £150 to £49 in January. Over 9.3 million UK households now subscribe to Sky, with 155 of them taking all three of its services - television, broadband and home phone.

BSkyB’s Sky+ customer base has experienced year-on-year growth of 55% to 406,000 new customers annually. Today 54% of Sky customers subscribe to their Sky+ service.

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A record number of adverts prompted complaints by viewers in 2008, the Advertising Standards Authority said in a report published today.

In its busiest ever year, the regulator received 26,433 complaints for 15,556 adverts - an increase of 9.3% on 2007. The number of rulings that were formally upheld increased by 27%, with 2,475 adverts being changed or withdrawn.

A campaign against child abuse by the charity Barnados drew the highest number of complaints for its repeated depictions of violence, including a child being slapped. Although 840 viewers complained about the advert, the ASA ruled that it had not breached its code, and that its aim “justified the use of strong imagery”.

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Virgin Media’s flagship entertainment channel Virgin1 has is to be broadcast 24 hours a day on Freeview from 20th May.

The channel, which currently broadcasts for just 12 hours a day from 6pm to 6am in its existing Freeview slot, has secured a new slot on ITV-owned multiplex SDN, enabling round the clock broadcasts on the new channel. The 12 hour service will remain in its current slot on channel 20, but will be turned into a new one hour timeshift called Virgin1+1. Some viewers will need to perform a ‘rescan’ on their Freeview device after the move.

Virgin1’s daytime schedule will continue to offer a mix of factual programmes, drama, games shows and comedy, including shows such as Star Trek, The X-Files, Take It Or Leave It and My Wife and Kids.

In recent years, a 24 hour Freeview slot has cost in the region of £10 million per year. However, it is thought that Virgin paid significantly less due to the current state of the market.

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The BBC is close to securing a deal with local and regional newspapers and broadcasters that would allow them access to BBC content, training and technology for the first time.

The proposals, which include giving local papers and broadcasters free access to BBC video footage for websites, allowing journalists from local media to train at the corporation’s journalism school, and opening up the iPlayer catch-up service to rivals, will be unveiled today at an industry summit hosted b culture secretary Andy Burnham.

The summit has been arranged in order to find ways of supporting floundering local news providers, who are facing a funding crisis due to a rapid slump in advertising revenues. Helen Boaden, the BBC’s head of news, David Holdsworth, controller of the English regions, and other industry executives will be speaking.

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The BBC is to screen a series of programmes dealing with the recession, including a drama about the financial downturn starring Girls Aloud singer Sarah Harding.

The BBC said that the series of programmes, which includes a series in which leading presenters explain how the recession is changing Britain and a Springwatch-style take on the housing downturn, would examine the effect of the recession on modern society as well as “exploring the issues and offering some practical solutions for coping”.

The drama Freefall, which features a stellar cast including Aidan Gillen (The Wire, Queer As Folk), Dominic Cooper (Mamma Mia, Sense And Sensibility), Rosamund Pike (Love In A Cold Climate, Pride And Prejudice) and Sarah Harding, will focus on the now imploding world of finance and its devastating impact on those at the top at the corporate tree, and those right at the bottom.

BAFTA award-winner Dominic Savage, who wrote Freefall, said that his new film dealt with greed in the financial sector that had spun out of control.

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Shaheen Jafargholi, the Welsh schoolboy who could rival Susan Boyle for the Britain’s Got Talent crown, has landed a show on his local radio station.

The 12-year-old Michael Jackson fan, who impressed the judges with a rendition of Motown classic Who’s Lovin’ You, will present a one-hour show on Swansea Bay Radio, to be broadcast on Bank Holiday Monday, 4th May.

Jafargholi had started singing a version of the Amy Winehouse hit ‘Valerie’ but was interrupted by Simon Cowell less than a minute in, telling him he was performing the wrong song for his voice. But when Jafargholi started singing Who’s Lovin’ You, an early Michael Jackson song, the judges were bowled over. “This could be the start of something special,” Cowell exclaimed.

Shaheen, who has been attending stage school in Swansea since early childhood, has previously appeared on the TV dramas Casualty and Torchwood, and CBBC’s Grandpa In My Pocket. He has also performed as his idol Michael Jackson in a touring production of the musical Thriller Live.

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Michael Grade has stepped down from his role as Chief Executive of ITV a year earlier than planned and will continue solely as chairman of the company.

Grade will become non-executive chairman of ITV at “the conclusion of the regulatory reviews” before the end of December. The broadcaster said that it was already searching for a new chief executive, and would have one installed by the end of 2009 at the latest.

When Grade became ITV’s executive chairman in 2007, he said he intended to appoint a new chief executive and relinquish day-to-day management duties within three years. However, last year ITV announced that Grade’s tenure would be extended another year into 2010.

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Sky1 has acquired the rights to the award-winning American medical drama House, starring Hugh Laurie as a cynical medical genius with an addiction to painkillers, which previously aired on Channel Five.

Sky1 will broadcast the fifth series of the show, which airs on US network Fox, after signing a deal with NBC Universal International TV Distribution. The series will air on Sky1 and Sky HD from the summer.

The acquisition follows former head of Sky1 Richard Woolfe’s move to become director of programmes at Five. The former BBC3 controller Stuart Murphy has been lined up to take over Woolfe’s position at Sky1.

The medical drama, set in the fictional Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital sees Dr Gregory House head up a team a team of diagnosticians who are often left baffled at House’s theories about his patients’ illnesses, which tend to be based on subtle or controversial insights. The drama has won three Emmys, two Golden Globes and two Screen Actors Guild awards.

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The actress Stephanie Parker, who starred in the long-running BBC Wales drama series Belonging has been found dead, just two days after the show’s last episode was broadcast.

22-year-old Parker’s body was found by a member of the public on open ground near Pontypridd, South Wales, at 6am on Saturday.

The actress had been a regular cast member of the award-winning BBC Wales drama Belonging since she was 15, playing the role of Stacey Weaver. The final episode of the series was broadcast across Wales last Thursday. Parker had also starred in Casualty and The Bill.

Belonging, in which Parker played Stacey Weaver, a young, working class mother living in the valleys of south Wales, was axed after nine series to make way for a new BBC Wales flagship drama.

“I can confirm that we investigated a report of a deceased woman on open ground near Pontypridd yesterday morning,” a police spokesman said. “The incident is not regarded as suspicious and a report has been passed on to the HM coroner.”

The spokesman confirmed that the body was that of Stephanie Parker.

Clare Hudson, BBC Wales Head of Programmes, English Language, said” “Everyone at BBC Wales - especially all those who worked on Belonging - is extremely saddened at the news of Stephanie’s tragic death.

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The stock of Susan Boyle, the 48-year-old church volunteer who stunned the judges of Britain’s Got Talent with a heartrending performance of ‘I Dreamed a Dream’, is continuing to rise with interview requests from Oprah Winfrey and Larry King.

Miss Boyle has already become a global sensation, with assorted clips of Boyle’s performance attracting more than 11 million clicks on YouTube. She has also been one of the top five most talked-about topics on the microblogging site Twitter, with actor Ashton Kutcher saying her performance “just made my night”, while his wife Demi Moore responded that the clip left her teary-eyed. The couple have nearly 1.5 million followers between them.

Boyle is expected to give a performance on the American CNN talk show Larry King Live tomorrow morning and will be interviewed by Oprah Winfrey, the queen of US daytime TV, adding to a string of performances on US breakfast TV shows from networks such as CBS and NBC. She has already given 60 interviews with media outlets around the world.

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