The ThunderDragon: 18 Doughty Street

Showing posts with label 18 Doughty Street. Show all posts

29 October 2007

Beware The Grocers' Apostrophe

Tut, tut, tut, 18 Doughty Street! Really, I expected better. I'd have certainly thought that a political TV station would know the correct plural for MPs. Beware the greengrocers' apostrophe!

I look forward to hearing a public correction live on air during Blogger TV tonight. ;-)

Click to enlarge

Note: If you're not sure where the mistake is, it's the apostrophe in "MP's". It's plural, not possessive.

04 September 2007

Ten Reasons Why Michael Ancram Should Be Taken Outside And Shot

On 18 Doughty Street tonight, Iain Dale is re-launching Vox Politix tonight at 10pm with a "new look". One of the new segments is Top Ten, where they are looking for our suggestions. Tonight's Top Ten will be:

"Top ten reasons Michael Ancram should be taken outside and shot".

Deliberately inflammatory and excessively OTT, so I'll do the same. It should bring up some fun suggestions...

Here are a few of mine:

1. Aren't dinosaurs supposed to be extinct?

2. "Green" stuff is high priority nowadays, right? Let's reduce the methane production by cutting out the bullshit he's producing.

3. Well, you can't cure stupid...

4. He needs to be put out of his misery.

5. Why waste a bullet? Rope can be re-used.

6. Why not?

And I'm out of ideas at the moment. Please feel free to suggest some in the comments!

I wrote a post on the issue that caused this question here.

28 August 2007

TV Is Dead. Long Live TV!

Is TV dying?

One of the founding fathers of the internet has predicted the end of traditional television.
Vint Cerf, who helped to build the internet while working as a researcher in America, said that television was approaching its "iPod moment"
In the same way that people now download their favourite music onto their iPod, he said that viewers would soon be downloading most of their favourite programmes onto their computers...
Over the next four years, it is thought that the number of videos watched over the internet will quadruple, with people moving from short clips to hour-long programmes. (The Telegraph)

I watch very little TV, mostly because it's utter rubbish. Far more than ever before, people my age are turning off the television - and booting up the computer instead. I already stream most of programmes I watch from TV Links or watch them on DVDs - that way, I get what I want, when I want it. I am not dictated to by TV schedules or anything else. It also has a great selection of old programmes which are no longer shown on TV, so I have a far greater choice over what I watch as well as well as when I watch it.

I don't even watch the TV news very often any more. I get my news from the internet sites of the BBC and newspapers and from blogs rather than the half-hour condensed version that you get on the television. It is again about choice - I read the news I am interested in, and not the stuff I'm not, and I can get far more information on it as well.

On this same issue, Mike Rouse has written an excellent guest post over at the Wardman Wire*:

The last 6 to 8 months has seen a massive explosion in the world of online tv-like video, or more in more friendly terms: web telly. 18 Doughty Street started broadcasting on 10 October 2006 and since then we’ve noticed a great array of other web telly operations start up, some of which asked us for advice, like the Roman Catholic Diocese of Westminster while others were more interested in our studio space and time, which is something start-ups in this new age will still struggle...
The movement away from schedules towards a more on-demand style of television is part of our efforts to find yet more ways to save time in our increasingly busy lives. Spearheaded by Sky Plus, the rise in consumer demand is for TV “when you want it” - no more having to wait until 9pm for your favourite programme to start and no more having to set the VCR.

So even as the traditional TV is dying, a new more on-demand style is rising from the ashes. Internet TV stations, like 18 Doughty Street, are providing a 21st century solution to the end-of-TV dilemma. TV is dead, long live TV!

* I am also a guest poster there while Matt is away, but I'm current suffering blogger's block on the posts I want to write! I'll get there eventually...

06 June 2007

18 Doughty Street has developed again - this time into using podcasts. The "Best of Yesterday" podcast will be a ten minute selection of video clips from the day before's programmes. The benefit will be that the highlights of the last nights programmes can be watched without having to download the whole episode through the On Demand player. It is certainly something that I will be making use of.

One feature that I would like to see added would an index page for all of the short videos that are made for 18 Doughty Street. Some of them are very good, but finding them is almost impossible, especially since the don't appear to turn up as search results.

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