McMobile

Remember when mobile phones first started to hit the shelves? I bet back then, most of you emphatically said "I don't need one of those things!"





Sooner or later, most of us probably thought "Well, I guess it might be useful in emergencies..." and today, you've probably got loads - most of them old phones stuffed in a drawer somewhere. You're probably even fiddling with it right now.

There's quite a lot you can do with mobile phones these days. You can sent text messages, photos, videos, play music, play video, buy ring tones, surf the internet, get train times and download football results. You can even use them to make telephone calls, apparently.

Well now, you can even pay for a Big Mac with one, provided you are Japanese anyway.

Now you could say that this sort of thing is convenient. You don't have to scramble around for change and it will be a swift, seamless transaction.
You could also argue that this is yet another example of how marketers are looking to turn us all into a cashless society, making it easier for them to electronically tag what we eat, when we eat it and when we eat. Still, I suppose I'm paranoid like that. ;)

Anyway, we should all be avoiding McDonald's, Prince Charles has told us to.

A disaster waiting to happen

You can never trust cockneys with anything, especially when it comes to relying on them to organise one of the biggest sporting events in the World.




Ever since Seb Coe bleated on about hosting the Olympics, getting youngsters into sport and the "legacy", the bills have been mounting up.

No sooner had the ink on the contract dried, the swimming pool had suddenly doubled in cost, then the organisers somehow forgot that they would have to pay VAT and now it's thought that the actual cost of hosting the games could reach a staggering £9bn.

So anyway, now the opposition have called for someone to be employed to watch the spending. Presumably they would just sit there watching numbers on a computer screen count up and up but anyway, it must be good work if you can get it.

Oh, but the "legacy", the "legacy" cries Lord Coe.
Well Sebastian, given the shocking state of our Amateur sports facilities, the government's London centric thinking and a complete lack of financial nous, the only "legacy" of the 2012 Olympics will be a crippling debt.

Why we need the licence fee

Next year, we'll all be paying slightly more for our TV licence, a piece of paper that costs £131.50 and keeps our national public service broadcaster up and running.




Now the sheer fact that you have to buy this piece of paper should you happen to own any equipment capable of receiving television transmissions doesn't always go down well with certain sections of the general public and it certainly doesn't go well with any media organisation that isn't the BBC (apart from Channel 4 perhaps).
Their argument is that the BBC, like any other business, should be self-sufficient, relying on advertising rather than a public subsidy and perhaps more crucially, be able to operate at a profit.

And it's that latter point that is responsible for the current the mass media slump.
We the consumer have more choice than we have ever had. The established and traditional mediums are seeing increased competition from digital broadcasting and online rivals. Media services now cater for every possible interest, community and niche market and that's just fine.
But that has it's problems. With all these niche markets, advertisers can pick and choose where they aim their products. Got a power drill to sell? Why advertise on ITV when there's a dedicated DIY channel with exactly the sort of viewer you want to speak to?
The net result? Advertising revenue within the mainstream media has plummeted. Overall, television advertising has fallen 3%, with ITV sales dropping by 11%. Google UK now makes more in advertising sales than Britain's biggest independent television broadcaster. The story isn't any brighter in radio.

With the drive for profit not yielding, costs need to be slashed and that has meant quality being sacrificed for quantity. Saturday night is a prime example. Unless you want to watch a talent show of some variety, you're pretty much stuck. Last Saturday's offering included, as far as I could decipher, a contest to see who could fold themselves in half in the most stupid manner possible.

The drive to cut costs has eventually led to the new 'Jack Radio' format kicking off. The idea started in the US and literally involves plugging an iPod into a radio transmitter and .....erm........er.......going home. No DJ's, no talk, just the iTunes collection of a complete stranger.
The worst part is, it's now crossed the Atlantic and heading to Oxford. Many have heralded this as the death of the DJ and have proclaimed that rather than video, it'll be the Internet that kills the radio star.

It's this very idea that means we should still keep the BBC as a public service. Let's just assume that those "privatise the Beeb" mob get their wish. You can say goodbye to BBC local radio for a start. Radio Leeds has seen it's budget cut in recent years and one of their presenters has told me before that they are literally having to fight for more cash from Wood Lane, just to stop themselves from becoming another Radio Aire or Galaxy. There's no way that Radio 4 would continue in it's current form and Radio 1's 'Newsbeat' would soon disappear. OK, it's not exactly hard-hitting journalism, but as an informative piece, it is very effective in delivering to it's audience. No commercial independent, with the same target audience, does anything to rival that.
The BBC website, regarded as the most respected and comprehensive in the world, would soon become a classified publication of online casino and 'shoot the duck to win an iPod' banners.

TV programmes would suffer a similar fate.
"wastes" a monumental amount of film in pursuit of the perfect programme. A typical programme works on a 20:1 ratio. For every 20 minutes of film shot, one minute makes it on screen. Top Gear uses nowhere near that ratio. It uses an estimated 500:1 ratio. Commercially, it's completely You'd never for instance, get a show like Top Gear on a commercial channel, it's just two expensive. The estimated £500,000 per episode cost doesn't tell half of it. The real story runs on it's filiming ratio.
A typical programme runs roughly on a 20:1 ratio. For every 20 minutes that you shoot, one minute makes the airwaves. For Top Gear, to get one minute into the final cut can take a staggering 500 minutes of tape. Commercially, that's just not viable.

As for the BBC's remit to entertain, educate and inform, when was the last time you saw anything educational or informative on ITV? Scrub that, when was the last time you saw anything entertaining either?

Still, if you don't like it, you can still keep handing £50 every month to Rupert.

Are these two still on TV?

The major outcry this week has been over yet another premium-rate phone swindle, courtesy of Channel 4.








Not content with taking mug Big Brother viewers for a ride, Richard & Judy have apparently been in on the act as well.
Actually, before I get sued for libel, they claim that they haven't been in on the act at all. Instead they've apparently just been pawns in an evil Channel 4 chess analogy and even then, given that the investigation was undertaken by the Mail on Sunday, the claims are most likely just complete bollocks anyway.

But the more pressing question isn't just about a few half-wits trying to phone a £1-a-minute phone line believing that they can overcome monumental odds and get through to the big money, the more pressing matter at hand is the ask why Richard & Judy are still on TV in the first place?

Richard & Judy were the personification of traditional family values. They were seen as everything that was right with Britain. A TV couple that are rarely seen away from each other, ever since they presented 'This Morning' for what seemed like 200 years, along with that weatherman who got his kicks by jumping between some floating islands in Albert Docks.

But despite the fact that their fame is more to do with their image than any actual television ability, they've been on TV long enough to get into trouble before.

In 1994 'This Morning' producer Granada hit with a hefty fine for product placement, after the pair plugged a host of major brands. Come 1999, they'd still not learnt their lesson after viewers complained at heavy plugging on 'The Lion King 2' and viewers complained again in 2003 as the couple tried to peddle their book. In 2005, Ofcom issued another fine for yet another product placement offence.
Channel 4 themselves are, of course, no stranger to misleading viewers into phoning premium rate call centres, so I won't go on any more about them.

But regardless of what, if anything, have gone on with the Richard & Judy show, they're a tired brand. The 'You Say,We Pay' contest is yet another Channel 4 game show which pays out thousands of pounds for absolutely zero skill. If you've seen Ross Noble's 'Randomist' you'll know exactly what I mean (and it's a great DVD, I think you should see it).

For Richard & Judy to step away from C4 now would probably be construed as an admission of guilt, but they're well past their sell-by date and should step-back sooner rather than later.

Sir, we salute you!

Today we pay tribute to a modern great, a man who has changed the lives of millions all around the world and a man who made it much easier to avoid ever having to watch shITV.






Rest in piece Mr Robert Alder, inventor of the television remote control, who died today aged 93.

May your legacy live on.

Huzzah!

Good news everyone, and it's come from the world of sport.








England manager Steve McLaren has declared that the number of friendly games being played by England will be cut, from 20 to 18 in a four year period, starting in 2008.

Now you might think that such a move would be a bad one. Surely with less games, our players would have less time to get together and prepare for yet another fruitless assault on the World Cup or European Championships?

But no, far from it. In fact it's a moment of genius from the boffins at the FA. From now on, we'll see much less of the most mind-numbingly boring football team to watch in the world on our TV screens and it might even mean two weeks less of unjustified tabloid hype.

Happy Days!

It's nearly here

What is possibly Labour's only positive contribution to anyone is not far from coming into force.









From July 1st, it will be illegal for the nation's ignorants to shamelessly blow acrid smoke directly into people's faces in pubs, clubs and restaurants - and I can't wait.

To remind us of the fact, we're being told that £30m is being spent on an army of enforcers who will be dishing out £50 to anyone who resembles a chimney after that date. But whilst I fully support the smoking ban, I don't really think that £30m is what is needed to control such measures.

The smoking ban will, by and large, be self policing. With landlords not wanting to risk their license, smokers will quickly find themselves unwelcome in most of the countries establishments. I'd be pretty certain in saying as well that the council chiefs waiting to hand out a plethora of yellow slips of paper won't be venturing out to a local boozer on a working class council estate and instead, they'll be focusing their attention on the already secure bars and clubs in the city centre and student districts, where internal security staff will most likely be on high alert as soon as the clock approaches midnight on June 30th.

Some pubs, I have no doubt, will ignore the ban. There's one I frequent occasionally and I'm confident in claiming that I'm the only non-smoker in their on any given night. The thought of walking into there and finding 100+ 40-a-dayers without a white stick between their fingers just seems too surreal, but we shall wait and see.

All we can do now is look forward to the day. I might even put on of those counter things on here if I can find one.

Welcome to America

The United States of America: Land of democracy, choice and freedom of expression.








That is of course, provided that you aren't a homosexual democrat living in Alabama who isn't partial to Country & Western or Nascar, as proved by the BBC's brilliant Top Gear programme.



Now for a bit of partiality, Jeremy Clarkson is to Anglo-American relations what Margret Thatcher was to trade unions. The programme has told us time and time again that the Americans can't build cars. They can't go around corners, they have stupid buttons in stupid places and their interiors are made of of plastic thinner than tissue paper.
Add to that the multitude of jokes about fat people and gun-wielding manics, and you can see that Clarkson and Co are hardly the greatest diplomats.

So when they drive around the deep south with $1000 cars emblazoned with offensive slogans, they got exactly the reaction they wanted. They made the locals look like the inbred, small minded fools that so many movies portray them to be and the producers made a very good programme whilst doing it.

Sunday's episode was perhaps the funniest Top Gear ever broadcast. The programme is often criticsed from various quarters, those who complain they only show an interest in £120,000+ super cars, the tree huggers who dislike anything more technologically advanced than an Amish butter churner and those who claim the show is obsessed with speed, concerns that reared their head again after presenter Richard Hammonds miraculous escape from a 280mph crash in York.

For 50 minutes, the show was basically three lads mucking about with cars and having a good laugh, which is probably the main appeal of Top Gear. Yes it has a role as a consumer focused programme and does cover plenty of "normal" cars in it's programming, but it's that 'laddish' approach that makes the programme so original and is the very reason why 5-6m people watch it every week.

But despite the jokes and pranks, the drive through a completely destroyed New Orleans, fully 12 months after Katrina had blown though, saw the shows serious side and it was a fitting touch to give their cars away to the less fortunate.

Yes, the show has it's critics. The presenters might prefer to test drive an Aston Martin rather than a Hyundai Accent, yes they might not like speed cameras but it's still a thoroughly enjoyable programme and long may it continue.

Let's have a debate

Transport Minister Douglas Alexander has today decided that we need a 'debate' on the proposed idea of road charging.




The idea is simple: Every car in the UK will have a tracking device. It will know what roads you drive on, when you drive on them and, it will know how fast you are going.
You are then sent a bill every month based on the mileage you do in that month. The 'clever' bit though is that you will pay more per mile for using congested roads at congested times. Drive down a country lane a 2:00am on Sunday morning and you'll pay about 4 pence a mile. Drive on the M621 at 8:30am on Monday morning and you'll pay £1.40 for sitting in traffic.

OK it's not a simple idea at all, it's a stupidly complicated idea and most of the revenue will be lost in administration costs, but our glorious leaders think that it will cut congestion and fix the hole in the o-zone layer.

Now quite what Douglas Alexander thinks he'll achieve by having this 'debate' I'm not entirely sure. Call me naive, I'd say that having more than one million signatures on a Downing Street petition against the idea is probably enough to gauge public opinion.

You could argue that the whole idea is a non-issue anyway. I mean with 14m motorists in the UK, no political party in their right mind would alienate about 50% of the electorate. That assumes our political party leaders are in a fit state of mind however.

Road charging isn't that uncommon already. Most major river crossings are now toll roads, the imaginatively named M6Toll is one as is all of Central London. We've got two in Yorkshire, the well-known Humber Bridge, which costs £2.60 to use, and the not very well known Aldwark Bridge, which costs bugger all because nobody knows where Aldwark is.

The most likely way of charging motorists to use the roads will eventually be congestion charges like those in London and Leeds has got that covered as well, or at least, we used to.

As part of the "Supertram deal", Leeds put itself forward to pilot the trial for congestion charges. As a result cameras and detecting equipment was erected on all major routes in South Leeds, tracking every number plate that entered the city with volunteer vehicles also having RFID sensors fitted in them.
Whilst it was merely a trail, HM tax collector could easily start sending out bills to West Yorkshire's motorists, just with the flick of a switch.
Anyway, when the Supertram idea was chucked in the waste paper bin and when the council realised that about £45m had been wasted, the cameras came down in a defiant two-fingered salute back to Westminster.

Of course, I could all go on about how road charging wouldn't be so bad if we all had an alternative to driving but I don't want to be responsible for blocking the blogger server.

Is a Vodafone mobile better than a PC?

Vodafone have announced that they have developed a service that will allow their customers to access and edit their myspace profiles from their mobile phone.










This is indeed groundbreaking technology. Mobile Internet has been around for many years, but isn't the sort of thing people have embraced. Instead, operators have focused on MMS, 3G and all the other gubbins.

But it's nice to know that someone, somewhere, has developed something that can actually make myspace profiles even remotely legible.

Myspace pages are renowned for being completely unreadable. In fact, even their homepage currently has 158 html errors, lord only knows what would happen to the W3C if you put some of myspace's profile pages in there. America's biggest computers magazine, PC World, named myspace as number one in their "25 worst websites" for similar reasons?

I mean honestly, could you imagine having this or even this profile on your mobile phone screen?

You could quite easily view mine though ;)

Happy Safer Internet Day

If you hadn't known already, today is 'Safer Internet Day'.










It's the day when we are all supposed to stay safe on the Internet. The other 364 days we can be as dangerous and reckless as we like, give our telephone numbers to strangers on MSN and post photos of ourselves on funny looking websites but not today, oh no sirree.

And on this momentous day, our glorious leaders have thought of a new way to track down Internet sex offenders.

They think that by making registered offenders hand other their e-mail address and website aliases to the authorities, they'll be able to track down these criminals.

It's just a shame that there's a pretty simple way around it.

Our government really must try harder.

The problem with American sports

American sports can be quite stupid sometimes, which is why nobody else plays them. That doesn't have to be a bad thing though.






Ice Hockey is a good laugh and American Football is a pretty good game as well, once you've learnt how it works.
But watching last night's Super Bowl showed just how much was wrong with American sport.

At this time of year, the statistic that a 30-second advert costs $2.7m is always mentioned and if you are the broadcaster of the Super Bowl, you're going to milk it. The net result is that a 60 minute game of "football", is transformed into a 6-hour QVC presentation.

Watching it was laughable at some points:
"Ladies and Gentlemen, here come the teams.....we'll be back after these messages.....we're back, here's the national anthem sung by Billy Joel......come back after the break......now, here's the coin toss (with each team having four captains for some reason).....now a word from our sponsors.....now, here's the kick-off..[14 seconds].. Touchdown!....commercial break".

Now if you are American, these breaks would be punctuated by brand new, state-of-the-art adverts from Pepsi, Burger King and a host of other multi-national conglomerates.
That creates a problem for British broadcasters. In a civilised nation such as ours, broadcasters aren't allowed to inflict 6 hours worth of commercials on us. So when they've used their allowed 'quota' of commercials, they've still got a lot of time to fill.
So instead of seeing the latest flame-grilled whopper, I had to listen to Don Johnson talking about the game, despite that fact he didn't know much about football but happened to be in Miami Vice back in the 80's, or I'd have the Miami Dolphins cheerleaders telling me what would happen if I pressed the red button. Thankfully the game wasn't forced to kick-off at some stupid time because of another sponsorship deal.
Product placement isn't allowed either and I'd be pretty certain that if you sat an American down in front of BBC4, his head would cease up because the programme wouldn't have big trucks and explosions in it and nobody would tell him which beer to drink or which underwear brand to buy.

In the end, I fell asleep. Not because the game was boring - far from it. I fell asleep because it went on too flaming long. Apparently, the Colts beat Chicago - well done Colts

My Sportingo Debut

After getting an e-mail a few months back inviting me to sign up to Sportingo, I've eventually got round to putting an article up.

It's my preview to the new Super League season which kicks-off on Sunday (one of a couple on there) and you can read it here.

Shop till you drop

Consumer magazine Which? has announced the results of it's 'High Street survey' and it doesn't make good reading for many of the countries big names.



The survey considers everything that they feel the modern shopper might experience and what might influence their buying decision; price, product range, layout, customer service and staff knowledge.
Electrical retailer John Lewis has emerged top of the pile (although I have yet to see a John Lewis store in my life) whilst at the bottom is sportswear retailer JJB Sports.

I had the misfortune of visiting the said store only two weeks ago. My task was simple, some football socks and some shorts - how hard could that be? Very actually.
JJB Sports is actually quite unique in that despite it being a 'sports' shop, no sports equipment is to be found. Ask the 16-year old assistant for a cricket box or rugby shoulder pads and he'll think you've dropped down from Mars, ask him for the latest chav trends however and he'll happily oblige.

It's no surprise as well to find the three DSG stores in the lower regions. PC World, Currys and Currys.digital are all in the bottom seven of the survey, being much criticised for their staff.
That's one bone of contention with me though. I've said before, that most customers walk into a store (especially an electrical one) and expect to be able to speak to an expert on whatever subject they happen to throw up. Quite simply, it doesn't work like that.

Experts don't work on a Saturday afternoon for £5.50 an hour. They don't work in Dixons or PC World and generally speaking, they prefer not to work with the general public. The "pay peanuts - get monkeys" saying rings true when it comes to any industry, retail is no different.
I've experienced this first hand - it happens in the retailer I happen to be at (none of the above mentioned). Occasionally, you'll get one or two bright sparks. Probably someone who is going through a University course or has just left education and using the job as stop-gap before starting his career. Obviously, those people don't hang around for long.
It used to be that we'd hand all potential employees a test. If they passed the test then they got the job but that created more problems than it solved.
The only people who tended to pass were those with degree's, NVQ's or various other qualifications. After three months, those people would be long gone and whilst we used these tests on new applicants, our staff turnover almost tripled. As much as we wanted to keep those people, we just couldn't.

It'd be easier to say "well just pay staff more" or "train staff" but it's not as simple as that. In an ideal world, that would happen but in an ideal world, you wouldn't have shareholders, investors and directors hounding you to maintain profit and sales targets.
Staff training just doesn't happen. It's expensive, time consuming and in an industry where products turn over quickly, it's pointless. B&Q famously admitted as such and if you dug far enough, you'd find that other retailers are exactly the same.

That's one reason why Internet shopping has grown. When making your purchasing decision, you have a wealth of information, reviews and price comparison quite literally at your finger tips. In a shop, you're having to rely on a teenager reading a catalogue.

The survey has it's merits and Which? is a very well respected publication. But it's telling that only five out of the 50 stores in the survey scored more than 50% for customer service. That's just how the industry (on the whole) is I'm afraid.