Digital TV Blog

…but fail to decapitate Big Brother

Much has been made of the return of The Tudors – the hit US-funded historical drama based upon the reign of Henry VIII of England – to BBC2 after a moderately successful first series which, whilst wildly inaccurate historically speaking, put bums of living room seats to the tune of 2.2 million.

The mutli-part period piece, featuring Gormenghast and Velvet Goldmine star Jonathan Rhys Meyers (right) as King Enry Imself, has been heavily promoted by the Beeb, who used Marilyn Manson’s 1996 hit The Beautiful People to advertise the show, perhaps conscious of Rhys Meyer’s screen pairing with former Manson squeeze Rose McGowan, who played Ann-Margret in the 2005 Elvis mini series.

Last Friday saw around 2.3 million of the British viewing peasantry to flock to their screens; the new series deals with tumultuous events surrounding Henry VIII’s attempts to have his marriage to Catherine of Aragon annulled so that he can slip the ring on the finger of Anne Boleyn.

Despite all the regal fanfare, the impact of The Tudors failed to dent Big Brother over on Channel 4, which pulled in an altogether more majestic 3.6 million punters, who witnessed the booting out of Luke Marsden, AKA the chap who allegedly got the nasty on with fellow evictee Rebecca ‘Bex’ Shiner.

Henry and the gang even failed to fend off a repeat of Agatha Christie’s Poirot over on ITV1 which, scooped a respectable 3.2 million.

ITV to resurrect national current affairs format

ITV’s regional current affairs programmes across England are to be replaced by a single brand similar to the BBC’s regional broadcast Inside Out. The show is to be called Here and Now, the title of a former BBC current affairs programme broadcast in the nineties.

Here and Now will be shown over all the ITV regions in England but will address local issues and be fronted by a regional presenter. The original BBC programme, which was taken off air several years ago, was presented by Sue Lawley and addressed regional issues from around the UK.

However, ITV regions director Michael Jermey has dismissed suggestions that the programme has borrowed ideas from the BBC, insisting that the name was chosen purely because it “says what it is”.

“We are producing something very distinctive. It is going to be a very up-to-date programme based in the locality. It will be a new version of what people already like about regional programming. It will be lively and accessible and I hope it has impact.”

ITV is currently in the process of cutting its regions from 17 to nine, saving the corporation about £40m a year. This has been made easier by Ofcom’s decision to allow ITV to broadcast just half-an-hour’s worth of non-news regional content a week in England. Many ITV staff face losing their jobs.

“We face the inevitable prospect - under whatever map Ofcom approves - of many redundancies across the group,” said Jermey.

There is talk of creating regional news hubs, in which news studios would be located outside their regional areas.

“The ‘hubbing’ of studios in some places could allow us to leave some expensive buildings and make good use of existing studios,” Jermey wrote.

A comprehensive region-by-region report is planned for September detailing how ITV aims to create “the best possible service for viewers within the constraints of the budget.”

The BBC and Channel 4 have both held talks with ITV, seeking to establish ways to help plug the gap in regional programming.

What would Richie and Eddie say?

The cast of ITV soap Emmerdale were apparently not too keen when producers told them that Britain’s third most-watched soap is to be filmed in HD.

Over the years, the West Yorkshire village has been rocked by fires, murders, explosions, the collapse of local pub the Woolpack as a result of the infamous Emmerdale Plane Crash, but nothing has prepared the actors for high-definition telly.

According to New! magazine, the cast are reportedly terrified of the prospect of their show being filmed in HD. A source crowed: “The HD format of the show promises to show every wrinkle, every blemish and every eye-bag. The women especially are worried they are going to be made to look awful!”

Lucy Pargeter (pictured), who plays feisty Chastity Dingle told New!: “We all held our breath because we’d heard all the horror stories. However, it was fine – if you don’t look too closely!”

The Ring Two and The Silence of the Lambs

This Saturday sees a double whammy of psychological horrors in the form of The Ring Two (11:45pm, BBC1) and Silence of the Lambs (11:00pm, ITV2) hitting our screens.

The Ring Two is the follow up to the well-received American remake of the Japanese horror classic Ring, which concerns a cursed video tape which causes anyone who watches it to inexplicable die seven days after watching it. Big budget Hollywood remakes of cult items tend not to go down well, sometimes due to studios not comprehending the source material and making something which alienates hardcore fans (Tank Girl) and confuses the hell out of mainstream audiences not familiar with the subject (Tank Girl).

However, the 2002 version of The Ring was so successful, that Hideo Nakata, director of the original Ring movie, agreed to sign on as director for the spin-off sequel, which follows an entirely original storyline, based six months on from events at the end of the first movie. This atmospheric follow up traces the origins of the ghostly, mute Samara Morgan and explores the mother-son relationship between Rachael (Naomi Watts) and Aidan (David Dorfman).

Over on ITV2, we are treated to (yet another) repeat of the now-classic film which made both Sir Anthony Hopkins and Dr. Hannibal Lecter household names. The eminently quotable The Silence of the Lambs caused outrage upon its initial release for its violence, liberal application of bodily fluids and unsympathetic presentation of transsexuals – look closely and you’ll see that Buffalo Bill’s mattress is decorated with swastikas. The Fall also make an appearance on the soundtrack, with the track ‘Hip Priest’ underscoring the claustrophobic endgame sequence. Whilst not a sequel per se, it’s release followed on from the celebrated Manhunter, the first of the Hannibal novels to be given a film treatment. Manhunter, of course got remade as Red Dragon, with Hopkins reprising the role of Lecter.

On a side note, Film Four seem to be running a kind of Angelina Jolie tribute evening tonight, showing her fairly recent screen pairing with Brad Pitt Mr. & Mrs. Smith (9:00pm, Film Four) in between CGI-centric Saturday Matinee homage Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (7:00pm, Film Four), and the emotional drama Girl, Interrupted (11:15am, Film Four), for which Jolie bagged herself an Oscar for her performance.

Brilliant TV for everyone?

Apparently, Freesat has been unable to keep up with orders for its HD equipment, and has issued a warning of a shortage “due to very high demand”.

In the May Update message on its site, Freesat say that; “there is a shortage of Freesat HD boxes in the shops at the moment. We are working with Freesat retailers and manufacturers to increase supplies as soon as possible.

“In the meantime some Freesat retailers will allow you to reserve HD boxes for collection when stock comes in. The Freesat website will continue to give you updates.” Of the HD Ready Freesat boxes on offer, there are/were four models available from Bush, Goodmans, Grundig and Humax, all priced between £120 and £170 each.

Freesat, the new subscription-free satellite service developed by the BBC and ITV, was formally launched last week, and looks pretty sweet all in all, with the traditional Freeview channels – BBC’s One to Four, More 4, etc – plus HD options from BBC HD and ITV HD, with presumably 4 HD, currently available on Sky, to follow.

Project Kangaroo given the hop

The highly anticipated video-on-demand and catch-up service being jointly-developed by the BBC, ITV and Channel 4 is apparently going to launch under the name ‘SeeSaw’, according to a recently leaked report.

The service, known so far as Project Kangaroo, due to the fact that it would allow viewers to ‘hop’ from channel to channel has been provisionally renamed SeeSaw, possibly for phonetic reasons, almost certainly because it rolls off the tongue a lot better than Project Kangaroo did.

The trans-channel VoD platform is said to launch sometime next year. BBC Worldwide has yet to seek approval from the BBC Trust, while the project is also being investigated by the Office of Fair Trading.

Currently the project exists in name only - there are no details on how the service would work, whether it would follow the iPlayer/4oD format of offering a 7-day online catch-up service, an archive facility or a combination of the two.

It has been suggested that newly launched Freesat platform will eventually allow customers to stream or view downloaded content from the BBC iPlayer on their living room screens, echoing the recent BBC and Virgin Media agreement.

Viewers return to the (real) third channel

ITV seem determined to reverse recent fortunes by bringing the big guns to bear on the competition in the form of a new brace of gritty gun-toting crime dramas which sees plenty of shooting and killing.

The new drama The Fixer, the pilot episode of which was broadcast last week, is pretty much a rewrite of the gritty 60’s TV show Callan, featuring the same premise; a shady Government body recruits a former ex-Special Forces man and his cellmate to be an unofficial government hitman – they kill people to earn their freedom. Starring Andrew Buchan as John Mercer, the titular Fixer, and Tamzin Outhwaite as a femme fatale, the debut episode revolved around the taking out of an Albanian gangster and netted ITV a nice share of the ratings (6.2m).

ITV have also been heavily punting their adaptation of Jake Arnott’s He Kills Coppers, which is concerned with the murder of three Met officers in 1966. Spanning two decades, the series begins in the build up to the final of the 1966 World Cup, it takes in the ‘Clean Up The World Cup’ initiative on strip clubs in Soho and moves through to the 80’s to the Greenham Common protests, providing a neat alternative to Life on Mars/Ashes to Ashes on the BBC;  it turns out that David Bowie is a huge fan of Jake Arnott’s work.

Executive chairman Michael Grade has insisted that company is experiencing a turnaround. He said: “We’re focused on a three to five year growth plan, we’re fixing the fundamentals of the business, we’ve recruited a phenomenal team, (and) viewers are coming back to ITV.”

The Fixer is broadcast every Monday at 9pm on ITV1, and He Kills Coppers unloads both barrels this Sunday the 23^rd of March.

‘You will go, on my first whistle’

The ITV leotarded superhit of the 90’s is all set to be remade for the 21^st Century on Sky this May, with Kirsty Gallacher and Ian Wright stepping into the shoes of Ulrika Jonsson and John Fashanu, and being joined by bellowing athletics coach John Anderson, famous for his delivery of lines such as “Contenders… Ready!”

Infamous events from the series such as The Wall, Joust and Hang Tough will be making a return, as will the final Eliminator obstacle course. Wolf fans hoping for a return of Michael Van Wijk, will be disappointed; 12 brand new Gladiators will face off 32 contenders chosen from 20,000 applicants in the new series.

The show also marks Kirsty Gallacher’s return to TV since she took time off to become a mother. Of the show she said: “I grew up with Gladiators so I couldn’t be more excited to be involved in the new series. It promises to be great entertainment on a major scale and I can’t wait to get started.”

Fellow Scot Anderson was also optimistic about the new series: “Only the strongest will succeed… the best athletes, the best contenders, winners. We want men and women that can beat the Gladiators in their arena.”

Hopefully the fist-pumping soundtrack, largely compromising of Queen, and squalling guitar solos will make a return.

Even more regulation

Sky are to challenge the government order to reduce its stake in ITV. The Competition Commission said in December that the shareholding was detrimental to competition in the pay TV market and against the public interest; Business Secretary John Hutton eventually ordered the satcaster to cut its holding to 7.5 percent.

Sky said it would appeal to the Competition Appeal Tribunal this Friday; Chief Executive Jeremy Darroch offered that the “reality is that competition in this marketplace is as vigorous as ever – a merger has not taken place, Sky and ITV are distinct entities with independent strategies and Sky could not block a shareholder resolution without voting rights,” and that the commission’s case was built “on a series of implausible hypotheses and has recommended an arbitrary remedy for a nonexistent problem.”

Sky stand to lose well over half the cash amount it paid out for the stake in 2006 if forced into an immediate sale.

We also find out what bears get up to in the woods

In news which will come as a shock to absolutely no-one, Secretary of State for Business John Hutton has ordered Sky to reduce their stake in ITV from the current 17.9 per cent to less than half that amount at 7.5.

The statement released from the Department for Business reads:

‘The Secretary of State has decided to make an adverse public interest finding, taking account of the Competition Commission’s decision that this transaction results in a substantial lessening of competition within the UK market for all television.

‘The Secretary of State has also decided to impose the remedies recommended by the Competition Commission to address the substantial lessening of competition identified in their report: divestment of BSkyB’s shares in ITV down to a level below 7.5 [per cent] and behavioural undertakings from BSkyB requiring the company not to dispose of the shares to an associated person, nor to seek or accept representation on the board of ITV and not to reacquire shares in ITV.’

Thus ends one chapter of the tangled war of attrition between Sky and Virgin Media, with enough arcs and twists to be considered worthy of a Lost season. The Byzantine legal wrangling over the carriage fees farce is still ongoing, as is a separate but closely related joint complaint by BT, Setanta and Virgin over Sky’s so-called ‘vicious circle’ of control over sports broadcasting. Ofcom are to decide whether the latter case should be referred to the Commission by the end of the month, but it is looking unlikely.

BT’s beef is related to its battle for broadband – Ofcom regulation saw the telco having to open up it’s network of phonelines to rival ISPs, including Sky. BT are currently market leaders in the broadband market, whereas Sky sit pretty atop of the pay TV pile.