Archive for the ‘Five’ Category

Today’s digital switchover in North-West England has contributed to a massive rise in the number of dumped analogue TVs, environmental campaigners have said.

Figures from Cumbria County Council, which serves nearly half a million people, reveal a 70% rise in the number of TVs dumped in landfill in the region over the past year. This year, the council dealt with over 50,000 TVs, of which 30,000 could have been converted to digital with a simple set-top box costing as little as £20.

Devon County Council, which switched over to digital earlier in the year, saw the number of dumped televisions nearly double between April and September.

Around 7 million viewers in Cumbria, Manchester, Liverpool and the rest of the Granada TV region had their analogue signal for BBC2 turned off in the early hours of this morning.The permanent digital switchover of BBC1, ITV1, Channel 4 and Five will take place on 2nd December for all households served by the Winter Hill transmitter.

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The culture secretary Ben Bradshaw has warned that Britain’s cultural figureheads are “sleepwalking” into being ruled by a Conservative government that would threaten the BBC’s impartiality, as well as the production of controversial plays such as Enron.

Speaking to an audience of Labour Party members, Bradshaw said that Tory media policy pandered to the interests of Rupert Murdoch’s News International, and predicted that the traditional principle of keeping government and media “at arm’s length” could be abolished under a Conservative government.

“There are far too many people sleepwalking towards the next election, too many people thinking lazily it might have to be time for a change without realising you cannot have change to the Conservatives without negative consequences,” he said, adding that the Conservative leader David Cameron was keen to promote the commercial interests of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire.

During his address to the Labour Party pressure group Progress, Bradshaw claimed that the Conservatives’ pledge to “tear up the multi-annual charter and licence fee represented an unprecedented assault on the BBC’s independence that no previous government, not even Margaret Thatcher, had contemplated”.

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The BBC has announced it will tighten up the procedure for dealing with complaints about party election broadcasts, in anticipation of an outcry from viewers over airtime given to the British National Party ahead of next year’s general election.

New rules will require complainants to clearly state their objections and back them up with evidence. Previously, people who made complaints were not required to meet these requirements as part of a formal process.

Today the BBC Trust published a consultation paper on the proposed changes, which it expects to put into effect before the 2010 general election.

Following the huge furore provoked by the appearance of BNP leader Nick Griffin on Question Time, the BBC is expecting a large volume of complaints about the amount of air time given to BNP election broadcasts.

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18 million households had to retune their Freeview set-top boxes yesterday lunchtime following a nationwide upgrade which will see Channel Five receive almost universal coverage across the UK.

The Freeview platform is reorganising its digital TV transmission signal in order to make room for more high definition channels, as well as sports channels from the BBC and ITV ahead of next year’s football World Cup in South Africa.

The upgrade will also make Channel Five available to the vast majority of UK households, with an estimated 500,000 Freeview homes receiving Five for the first time, provided they retune.

However, the reorganisation will mean that a small percentage of homes will lose access to ITV3 and ITV4 after retuning, while the Community Chanel will no longer be available on digital television in those regions that have already gone through the switchover.

About 5% of homes that have already gone through the digital switchover will also lose some BBC radio stations, although these services can be restored with the retuning.
Around 17.7 million UK homes had access to digital TV via Freeview by the end of last year, according to Ofcom figures.

If you’re a Freeview user, don’t be surprised to find Channel Five missing from it’s usual slot when you turn your TV on tomorrow.But don’t worry it’s not gone forever - all you need to do is retune your Freeview box.

As well as Channel Five, you’ll also need to retune your Freeview box to get ITV3, ITV4 and some radio stations back on your TV.

This is happening because despite many customers switching over to Freeview from analogue, there are still some half a million UK homes which cannot receive Channel Five.

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British viewers have given their overwhelming support to the BBC, with four out of five indicating that they are proud of the BBC, according to a new Guardian/ICM poll.

The research found that 77% of people think the BBC is an institution to take pride in, compared to just 68% in 2004. 63% of those surveyed also think it provides good value for money – up from 59% in 2004.

The results appear to contradict claims that the BBC’s expansion into digital media has a “chilling” effect on consumer choice, made in a speech last month by James Murdoch, European chief executive of News International.

In his speech, Murdoch said that the BBC is unable “to distinguish what is good for it, and what is good for the country”, and also called for a greater embracing of private enterprise in public service broadcasting.

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ESPN has bought the rights previously held by Setanta to the new UEFA Europa League, which replaces the Uefa Cup from this season.

The US sports broadcaster, which also won the right to screen live English Premiership matches when Setanta went into administration in June, will share rights to the UEFA Europa League with Channel Five.

ESPN will broadcast the first Europa League matches later this month, as part of a three year deal with UEFA. The final will take place in May next year.

48 clubs will take part in the group stage, with matches broadcast from 17th September on Wednesdays and Thursdays throughout the season. Amongst the sides involved are current Uefa Cup holders Shakhtar Donetsk, Roma, Lazio, Valencia, Ajax, PSV, Benfica and Sporting Lisbon, as well as British clubs including Celtic, Everton and Fulham.

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Supermarket Iceland has axed Kerry Katona from its advertising campaigns, following allegations in The News of the World that she had been taking class A drugs.

On Sunday the newspaper published photos and video footage that allegedly showed the former Attomic Kitten singer and mother-of-four snorting cocaine in the bathroom of her home in Wilmslow, Cheshire.

Katona has appeared in adverts for Iceland for since she won the TV show I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here in 2004. However, the supermarket chain said that the allegations made it “impossible” for her to continue in the role. The firm added that it would help her get any support she needed.

An Iceland spokesman said that for “most” of her time with the company, “she has been a successful part of our advertising campaigns, but has also been through some tough times in her personal life.

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Kate Walsh, the runner-up in the latest series of The Apprentice, is to host a nightly magazine show for Channel Five alongside TV pundit and former footballer Ian Wright and Melinda Messenger.

The hour-long show, called Live From Studio Five, will air at 6.30pm each evening, beginning next month. The show will discuss a variety of news and showbiz stories, rivalling the BBC’s early evening current affairs programme, The One Show. Produced by Sky News, it will combine live and recorded location reports with celebrity interviews and “gossip and banter” based around the day’s news.

“This is news but not as you know it,” said the Five channel controller, Richard Woolfe. “It is a chatty, forthright, spirited magazine [show]. Every other broadcaster’s schedule at this time is totally predictable and I believe there’s a huge opportunity for a show like this which will shake things up, put Five on the map and get viewers talking about the channel.”

The three presenters will be supported by a team of Five News reporters and the Sky News team.

Earlier this year, Walsh presented a women’s fashion slot on GMTV. She is engaged to fellow Apprentice candidate Phillip Taylor.

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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