Archive for July, 2009

Virgin Media has announced a deal with Channel 4 to broadcast many of its shows in high definition.

4HD will broadcast a range of content from Channel 4’s core schedule in high definition, including dramas such as Skins, Shameless and Desperate Housewives as well as documentaries, news programmes and current affairs.

A range of high definition channels will be available on the Virgin Media platform, including FX HD, MTV HD and National Geographic HD which all launch today. ESPN HD will launch on 3rd August, with 4HD and Living’s high definition channel coming soon.

Mark Schweitzer, chief commercial officer at Virgin Media, said: “Channel 4 is home to some of the UK’s most talked about and innovative TV programmes with a great mix of fantastic home grown shows and top imports, and we’re delighted to be bringing them in HD to our customers. We continue to evolve our TV service, across linear TV channels and on demand content, and our growing HD line-up offers a great choice from some of the best UK and US TV series, documentaries, comedy, sport and music.”

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Virgin Media and the sports channel ESPN today announced a deal that will give Virgin Media’s 3.5 million digital customers access to live Premiership football via the ESPN digital channel from 3rd August.

The Disney-owned channel will also broadcast live matches from the Scottish Premier League as well as international football and other sports.

ESPN’s main sports channel, simply called ESPN< as well as their high-definition and Classic channel which features the “greatest moments of UK and European sport” will be free to customers who subscribe to Virgin Media’s XL television package. Those customers on virgin Media’s M or L TV package will have to pay £10 a month to view ESPN and ESPN HD, or £8 if they already subscribe to a Sky Sports channel. All customers will be offered a free trial of the service during August.

Mark Schweitzer, chief commercial officer of Virgin Media, said: “This agreement solidifies Virgin Media’s place as the home of TV entertainment and is unquestionably the best value TV deal for sports fanatics. We’ve got all the sports content you’d expect and adding the new ESPN channels to our line-up will mean our customers can watch all the football action they want.”

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Television presenter Esther Rantzen announced yesterday she will be standing as in independent candidate for Luton South, after the current MP, Labour’s Margaret Moran, announced she would be stepping down because of her involvement in the MPs’ expenses scandal.

Ms Rantzen, the former host of the BBC’s That’s Life, said standing for Parliament would be an “adventure”.

Yesterday the prospective MP toured Luton, wearing a polka dot dress and straw boater in a nod to the area’s traditional hatmaking industry, and giving numerous interviews for radio, television and newspapers.

It is thought that Rantzen will play the anti-sleaze card in her election campaign, in a bid to win votes from the Labour Party.

She said that the “lack of trust in our political system remained”, before attacking Moran for making a £22,500 expenses claim for dry rot in a home that was 100 miles from her constituency.

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Channel 4 is to broadcast a docudrama focusing on David Cameron’s years as an undergraduate at Oxford University.

The programme, which has the working title of When Boris Met Dave, will focus on the experiences of Cameron and his colleague Boris Johnson, now the mayor of London, in the late 1980s. It will depict the Oxford of the day, including the goings on of the elitist Bullingdon Club, a dining society to which both Cameron and Johnson belonged. The Club is infamous for its prohibitive membership fees (including £1,200 for the compulsory tailcoat alone) and destructive binges.

Jonny Sweet, a comic actor featured in E4’s The Inbetweeners, will play Cameron, while Johnson will be portrayed by Christian Brassington, who has played Tony Blair in dramatised sketches for the TV documentary Tony Blair: Rock Star.

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Big Brother’s Tom Oliver has emerged as the second housemate to walk out in the space of just three days, following the departure of Kenneth Tong last Thursday.

Oliver, a chartered surveyor, left the house in the early hours of Sunday morning, after complaining of extreme boredom. ” “I’m not in this to get my f******g photograph taken or get a career,” he told housemates. “I can’t be f****d to spend my time around certain people in here.”

Oliver admitted that he’d had no idea that taking part in the reality show would prove to be so boring, adding that most of his housemates were “deluded”.

“I don’t think anyone quite can predict how actually boring it is without any tasks,” said Oliver. “When you are bored and feeling you are not really connecting with any of the housemates your mind wanders a little bit. It’s very, very boring. Honestly, I could never estimate how boring it is.”

Both Oliver and Tong were two of five new contestants to enter the house the Friday before last. Oliver’s departure follows that of Tong, a self-professed “international playboy”, who escaped the house by climbing onto the roof and over a wall.

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Jeremy Clarkson is facing fresh criticism over offensive comments he made regarding the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown. Clarkson reportedly made the remarks in front of the Top Gear studio audience two weeks in a row.

Members of the audience reported that Clarkson, who previously had to apologise to Mr Brown after describing him as a “one-eyed Scottish idiot”, called the Prime Minister a “c**t” in not-for-broadcast comment to the studio audience during the a recording of the BBC2 show on Wednesday night. Clarkson is understood to have also used the term to describe Mr Brown as part of a joke made to the studio audience at the previous week’s filming on Wednesday 15th July. This remark was not included in the show’s broadcast on Sunday 19th July.

The BBC2 controller, Janice Hadlow, attending the second recording this Wednesday and is said to have confronted Clarkson about the remark. “There was a discussion about the programme”, said a BBC spokeswoman. “It is certainly not an ongoing issue.”

In a statement, the BBC said: “Janice went to watch a recording of Top Gear as it is BBC2’s top-rated programme, and as controller of BBC2, she holds both the programme and Jeremy in high regard. After the recording, she and Jeremy had a discussion about the programme as controllers and presenters often do.”

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Nadya Suleman, who gave birth to octuplets on 26th January, will be the subject of a documentary by British production company Eyeworks.

The unemployed single mother of fourteen from California, who had six chidren by IVF before her octuplets were born, will receive $250 (£150) a day per child to star in the documentary. The contract for the show was filed in a Los Angeles court on Friday.

During the first year of filming, which is due to start in September, the children will spend a total of 36 days in front of the camera for a fee of $125,000 between them. The children will be filmed for a further 21 days in the second year, and 14 days in the third year, bringing their collective income to $250,000 in total over the course of the contract.

33-year-old Suleman says she views the programme as a documentary rather than a reality TV show.

“What I’m doing is basically creating documentaries about the lives of my children. It will follow them from now until they are 18,” she said.

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The makers of The Jeremy Kyle Show have defended its controversial approach, after a judge accused the programme of “cruelty and exploitation”.

ITV denied the charges, saying that the show offered a platform where people could resolve family disputes.
Judge Sean Enright made the comment after sentencing 26-year-old Jamie Juste to two years in prison, following a hearing at Peterborough Crown Court. The court hears that Juste attacked his girlfriend Rebekah Langley, 24, at the home they shared in Peterborough.

Police said that Juste attacked Langley after the pair had taken a lie detector test during an appearance on The Jeremy Kyle Show.

An ITV spokeswoman said: “With respect to the judge, we are surprised at his remarks given that he pointed out that he has not seen our programme, and we absolutely refute the notion that it involves cruelty and exploitation.

“Jamie Juste and Rebecca Langley approached the production team requesting an appearance on the show to resolve problems within their relationship.

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Sir Michael Lyons, chairman of the BBC Trust, claimed over £33,000 of expenses between October 2008 and the end of March, including a £251 taxi-ride home from London to Birmingham after last year’s Strictly Come Dancing final.

In total, 13 BBC trustees claimed £78,394 on expenses in the six months to the end of March, £17,110 less than in the previous six-month period.

The trustees spent almost £30,000 on accommodation, £14,593 on cabs and “long distance cars”, £18,754 on rail travel and £8,327 on flights.

Of the trustees, Lyons made the highest claims, totaling £33,567. Of that figure, Lyons spent almost £10,000 on accommodation, £1,207 on “long distance cars”, including a £251 trip from BBC Television Centre in west London to his home in Birmingham after the final of Strictly Come Dancing. He claimed a further £1,206 on cars for short trips, including to and from Paddington to Lord’s cricket ground last summer.

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Channel Five has acquired the sci-fi series FlashForward, based on the novels by Canadian writer Robert J. Sawyer.

The 13-part series, which stars British actors Joseph Fiennes and Jack Davenport, has been touted in the US as a successor to Lost.

The series from ABC studios depicts the aftermath of an event that causes the entire world to black out for two minutes and 17 seconds. During this time, everyone on earth experiences a snapshot from their life on a specific date six months in the future.

Five has acquired exclusive UK terrestrial and digital rights to the FlashForward, which will air this autumn on the terrestrial channel Five and digital channel Fiver. The show will premier in the US on 24th September on the channel ABC Primetime.

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